Double Trouble
It’s Maggie’s turn to visit Pacific North in this week’s episode but she’s faced with a difficult dilemma as her newly-found cousin is in need of emergency surgery. Grey’s Anatomy delivers another emotional and controversial chapter this week, briefly touching on abortion and the difficult decisions surgeons have to sometimes make. We start with Maggie greeting Catherine for her first day back while the latter asks her and Jackson to join her for a meal as she’s not aware they broke up. After speaking with Jackson about the issue, Maggie is surprised to meet her uncle and cousin, Sabi, who looks identical to her. They all decide to pay Richard a visit at Pacific-North and after the reunion, Sabi reveals that she has a large tumour in her chest. While they wait to get her tested, Maggie realises that not only they look alike but they have a lot of other things in common too. During the scan, Richard explains that his brother and sister have been resenting him for his professional success and haven’t seen them in years. As they get the results, they see that the tumour is so big that she needs surgery right away. Sabi is nervous about Maggie performing the surgery though as she’s family so Webber suggests the on-call doctor from the hospital. In Pac-North trauma, a mother arrives after having fallen down the stairs. While checking her out, Owen tells her that she’s pregnant which upsets her as it looks like she was trying to get rid of the baby. As Amelia and Owen probe this situation further, she explains that she wasn’t able to get an abortion but tried taking some herbs which made her dizzy. As they walk away, Amelia comes to blows with Owen, trying to convince him to perform the abortion at the same time as removing her spleen, but he seems adamant he doesn’t want to. After leaving the hospital, Amelia and Maggie bump into Meredith on her lunch break and they discuss their patient. Amelia tells her sisters that she thinks Owen is mad at her for being pregnant. Suddenly Maggie gets a call about Sabi crashing. As she arrives in her room, she notices that the tumour is obstructing her lungs and needs to operate on her now. In the waiting room, Gemma arrives to comfort Richard and as she holds his hand, Catherine witnesses the exchange. Richard’s brother comes back but tension are high between the two. Outside the hospital, Catherine speaks to Gemma and offers her a job in her foundation but stresses that it will have to be outside of Seattle. Sabi’s surgery is not going well either and is having even more trouble due to the anaesthetist making a mistake. She then stops everyone to get their attention as they only have 3 minutes to save her. Meanwhile, Amelia manages to get her patient seen by the OB who gives her a termination pill. This inevitably causes Owen to confront her for going behind his back. After discussing their own issues surrounding this, he finally understands her and they joke about their complicated situation. Back in the waiting room, Richard and his brother slowly build bridges while Sabi’s condition deteriorates. Maggie struggles to let her go but Karev reasons with her and convinces her to stop trying. Struggling to pull herself together, Maggie heads to deliver the bad news to Sabi’s father. Unable to accept his daughter’s death, he storms out of the room while Catherine tries her best to get the family together to say their goodbyes to Sabi. This week’s episode was certainly an eye-opener and focuses on the difficult tasks surgeons have when they’re forced to deliver bad news to their patient’s relatives. This was quite tough to watch and heart breaking. Amelia and Owen seem to have finally cleared the air about the issues from their failed marriage too and it looks like they’ll form an unusual but fun family unit with their respective children. It’s worth noting too that the whole episode was spent in Pacific North hospital which to me hints that we might see a merger at some point this season. Seeing the struggling hospital slowly improve thanks to the talented and hardworking surgeons has definitely become a very interesting plot and in true Grey’s Anatomy fashion, I can imagine more melodrama is heading their way.
