S1 E04 No Man's Land
Intimacy baffles Meredith Grey. She is trying to figure out the rules. How do you know when you’ve crossed the line? All she knows so far are that they come attached to the three R’s: Relatives, Romance and Roommates.
Cristina Yang is determined to perform a surgery today and sneaks into SGH at 4:00 AM (yes, 4:00 AM) to call dibs on the perfect candidate—a pancreatic cancer patient who needs the rare “Whipple” surgery. The patient was a former scrub nurse at Seattle Grace and knows exactly the game Cristina is playing. Nurse Fallon puts Cristina in her place saying, “I’ll call you Cristina. You call me Nurse Fallon.” Yes, Ma’am! This is going to be fun—for us, not for Cristina.
Meredith asks Cristina if she has any other leads on surgeries but Cristina won’t reveal a thing. She needs every advantage because “she’s not the intern screwing an attending.” Apparently, Cristina’s not a morning person.
Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd invites Meredith to breakfast but she wants to keep it professional and says no. We’ll see if she changes her mind.
Izzie Stevens’ prostate patient refuses to let her touch him because she’s only a model. He wants a real doctor like Bailey or Burke. Izzie thinks it’d be easier of someone else handles the case but Bailey refuses saying, “Easy isn’t in the job description.”
McDreamy operates on a guy who accidentally shoots himself in the head with a nail gun – 9 times! Cristina is so jealous that Meredith is in on this case and she’s stuck with nagging Nurse Fallon.
Nurse Fallon calls Cristina “an aggressive little witch” right in front of Burke and the Chief. Snap! And then, totally rats her out for “hogging” her chart so the other interns won’t get it. Chief Webber says that he was going to assign Meredith to Nurse Fallon but she’s working on the Nail Gun Guy. We love when Nurse Fallon just rubs it in Cristina’s face. Then Burke gets in on it too! It just keeps getting better.
Alex and George are relegated to researching nail gun injuries. Alex wants the scoop on Izzie and Mer and teases George that he’s like their sister. George is mortified that Mer might think of him as one of the girls and not a potential boyfriend.
Cristina is so over being Nurse Fallon’s “cruise director” and confronts Burke about why they haven’t performed the “Whipple” yet. “Is she here just to die?” Burke doesn’t answer. She knows she’s right.
The MRI reveals that Nail Gun Guy has a brain tumor. Derek gives him two treatment options. Surgery which would give him 10 years but his personality might change. Radiation which would give him 5 good years.
When the couple chooses the surgery, Meredith tries to convince the wife to change her mind but the wife says (Warning: you are going to cry. We did.), “It’s his decision. If it means 10 bad years, that’s what I’ll give him because I love him.”
When Cristina asks Nurse Fallon why she didn’t tell her they weren’t going to do the ““Whipple””, she quips “But where’s the fun in that?” You can tell she’s growing on Cristina. They’re so much alike. In the middle of their moment, Nurse Fallon starts crashing. Cristina jumps to save her but Burke tells her that she’s DNR (Do Not Rescusitate). Cristina won’t give up and Burke has to pry her off. Cristina calls time of death for the first time.
Meredith finally meets Derek for a date, a real one involving a meal. She wishes there was a guidebook for intimacy so you know when you’ve crossed the line, but maybe there are no rules. Maybe she has to define her own.