Photo: Eric McCandless/ABC
Mental health is on the Grey’s Anatomy docket today, folks; more specifically, taking care of it. It looks like everybody needs a little help in that regard — doctors, patients, TV recappers who want to punch a hole through a wall because Amelia Shepherd is the worst. No one is immune!
Leading the charge on putting mental health at the forefront is our fearless residency director Miranda Bailey. Bailey has struggled with tending to her own mental health in the past: We’ve seen her stress levels play a role in her heart attack, she’s taken sabbaticals after suffering from burnout, and now she’s lecturing the interns on paying attention to it and handing out gift bags full of fidget spinners and oranges. On one hand, this is nice — she is well aware that doctors can easily flame out. On the other hand, if the original five interns were to learn about Bailey’s well-being goodie bag, oh, they would laugh and laugh. Taking care of your mental health is objectively good, but come on, baby, sharks don’t use fidget spinners! All I’m saying is, this is not the Grey’s of yesteryear. Is that good or bad? You decide.
As is tradition, we get a whole slew of story lines about dealing with mental health. You know who is suffering a bit these days? Mika Yasuda. She’s still pissed at her girlfriend for taking her off a cool impalement case to be thrown up on by drunk med students, even though Helm tries to explain that she was just doing her job. The whole situation seems complicated! In the great Grey’s Pantheon of people dating their subordinates, has it ever once gone well? Meredith and Derek made it work in the end, sure, but man, were there some rough patches. I like Mika and Helm together, but let’s be realistic here.
This week, she’s on Teddy’s service and they wind up taking care of an incarcerated man suspected of having tuberculosis. When they take a closer look at Mr. Jiménez’s lungs, however, they find a mass. Even worse: His CT scan shows mets all over his body. It’s cancer, and it’s bad. Throughout all of his testing, Mika finds herself deeply empathetic toward his situation. Mr. Jiménez was 17 when he was arrested — they never reveal why since, as Teddy points out, it isn’t pertinent to what they’re doing — and has spent 40 years in prison. He spent the past year trying to tell people something was wrong, but was ignored. He never thought this would be the way he goes out, but when Teddy explains the situation and how the treatment, even if approved, would be hard on him and only give him a few more months, he declines it. Mika’s upset that there is nothing else they can do for him — “His punishment was time, not death” she says. It’s a sad story that functions in two ways: First, it is clearly putting a spotlight on the state of health care in prisons; second, it’s used as a teaching moment for Mika. Teddy talks to Mika about how part of their job is to trust that sometimes their patients know what is best for them, as hard as that can be, but it’s good that Mika cares so much — that she’s willing to fight so hard for her patients. Not once does Teddy bring up the fact that she went and married a patient to save his life that one time, which feels like it could be applicable here. Do you think she forgot she did that? Honestly, there’s a 50/50 shot.
While it’s good to care so much, it certainly takes a toll, one that you can see all over Mika at the end of the day. Helm tries to talk to her, but all Mika wants is to be left alone. That is not a great long-term strategy, but we’ll see how it shakes out.
Lucas, meanwhile, is on the opposite end of things. He’s still working with Webber on Dorian, our fisherman gunshot victim, and Dorian is not doing well, emotionally speaking. If you’re like, Wait, hasn’t this guy been at Grey Sloan forever, how are we still talking about him?, well, you’re right and that’s the problem. Dorian has been in ICU for weeks and it is wearing on him. He’s hooked up to all sorts of tubes, he still can’t eat real food, he’s tired of being poked and prodded — he’s done with it all. He refuses to let anyone touch him. It’s an issue for a lot of reasons, but at the top of the list is the fact that he has a curiously low hemoglobin count, and that could mean something is really wrong.
Webber wants Lucas to keep trying to get through to Dorian. When Webber mentioned that this kind of despondency in long-term ICU patients is common, did anyone else immediately think, Yeah, we know, dude, remember Lexie Grey and Ceviche? That was a top-tier patient story right there! Like Lexie and Ceviche, Lucas bonds with Dorian. Dorian ended up on that fishing boat because he felt so pressured by his parents to become an engineer and he needed a break — that choice led to him in agony in a hospital. Lucas tells him how his parents always pressured him to go into medicine and he refused … until he got into a terrible car accident his junior year of college and surgeons saved his life, yadda, yadda. I guess the lesson here is “Listen to your parents or you will get into a life-threatening accident.” Hear that, youths?!
Okay, actually, the lesson might be “Listen to your doctors or else you will end up vomiting blood,” which is definitely a thing that happens to Dorian. Dorian crashing opens up the door for Webber, who we know has been a little hesitant to perform any medical procedures, to shake off his doubt and save Dorian’s life like the boss he is. It also gives Dorian some perspective on his situation. It turns out the real lesson here is “Stop pushing away the people who care about you.”
It’s a lesson that applies to Dorian, but perhaps even more so to Lucas, who is still crashing at Aunt Amelia’s instead of facing whatever is going on between him and Simone. Lucas realizes he needs his support team, too, and decides to move back into the Ellis Grey Estate. Unfortunately for him, when he arrives, he finds Kwan moving into his room. That’s right — he’s been replaced!
Although I feel for Lucas, it’s actually a very cute set of circumstances that leads to this predicament. Since Kwan confided in Simone about his mental-health issues during med school, he thinks Simone told Bailey and that’s why Bailey kicked off this whole mental-health awareness program. This is in no way the case, but the two do start bickering in the hall and agreeing that the goodie bag is in no way helpful and the whole thing is ridiculous. Bailey overhears them and sends them both home for the day; a true power move. The two of them wind up using their free time to study together and generally get to know each other as people instead of just colleagues. In a lovely little moment, they bond over their dead moms and Kwan, who learned how to cook on a budget from his mother, teaches Simone, who never got the chance to have cooking lessons from her mother, how to make stir-fry. Kwan assures Simone that he has the mental-health stuff in check and Simone takes pity on him when he mentions his less-than-ideal living situation. By the end, they are legitimate friends and we love that. Intern-wise, we’ve been pretty focused on Lucas and Simone, but is Kwan the dark horse for Intern Most Likely to Emotionally Devastate Us? Watch this space!
• There’s a whole story line about Catherine supervising Link and Monica’s work with the 15-year-old daughter of two major hospital donors, which is … fine? Misty undergoes an osseointegration on her amputated leg, a complicated and fairly new surgery, especially on a teenager, that winds up being successful. As Jules points out, “It pays to be rich.”
• Monica Beltrán seamlessly fits into Grey’s, but I’d love a little backstory on her at this point. She’s clearly passionate about her job — and I love that she is pushing Schmitt to show a little passion, too, when it comes to peds instead of his whole “people say I’m good at it” reasoning to pursue a fellowship in the field — but she needs some more layers.
• Listen, I’m sure that figuring out screen time for your child with a co-parent can be frustrating, but where does Amelia get off making snide comments about Link while he is in the middle of a conversation with another doctor about a patient? How is that in any way professional or adult behavior?! Amelia’s reign of terror at Grey Sloan is endless.
• Obviously, we are setting up an Amelia/Monica romance here, but, seriously, why is Monica into Amelia? I get opposites attract and all that, but Monica seems to be very anti-nonsense, especially in regards to work, and Amelia is like 92 percent nonsense.
• Turns out Bailey needs some TLC, too, so she decides to take off early and have some “me” time … which then turns into “me and Ben” time. If you don’t watch Station 19, you should know that Ben started secretly taking testosterone and is all sorts of horned up. Frankly, I love that for these two.
• Lucas finishes his procedure log and I’m glad to see he won’t be the last intern to do so — that man already has enough to brood about.
• Could Link’s label for Scout’s tablet be larger?
