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“Grey’s Anatomy” recap: Episode 7.19 – “It’s a Long Way Back”

Hi kids! Bridget is in Mexico, hunting drug lords and eating pineapple, so she asked me to fill in for her this week. Considering she picked up the Grey‘s recapping baton for me when I was in France during this season’s start, it was the least I could do. Also, she’s married to my boss, so there’s that. Cripes, I hope I remember how to do this recapping thing. Welp, we’re about to find out.

Callie and her preem, Sofia Robbin Sloan Torres, are both fighting their way back from the near-fatal car accident that Arizona caused when she took her eyes off the road for way, way longer than anyone realizes. Arizona has either selectively forgotten that fact or decided it’s a shameful secret she’s taking with her to the grave – not unlike my unfortunate mullet phase.

Today, Callie is trying to tell her brain, “Talk to the hand, bitch” (literally), while Sofia is just trying to get her beauty rest, but the NICU is so bright and noisy, who can sleep, even with diva eyeshades?

Proud papa, Mark, comes rushing into the room to show his baby mama the latest video of Sofia. Knowing how obsessed new parents can be, the video is probably only 10 minutes newer than the last one he shot. He hasn’t used his cell phone camera this much since he taped himself taking the Activia challenge.

Elsewhere, Owen and Alex are getting reamed out by Gladys, a rich, old curmudgeon with lung cancer because she can’t smoke in the hospital, and what a crummy hospital it is, anyway. Alex leaves her room and finds Arizona looking at a child’s x-ray. The kid has all sorts of wrong with him, but she can’t help him, even though she promised she would, because he, and a dozen like him, are in Africa. Alex stupidly asks why she doesn’t simply bring everyone to Seattle, as if she has an invisible plane just idling in the parking lot.

Meredith is loitering around a nurse’s station when the Chief comes in. After some good-morning pleasantries, he slips out of his coat and wanders off in search of his office. Meredith sees a Post-It fall from the back of his sweater and scoops it up off the floor. What does it say? “Kick me”? Maybe it’s another marriage proposal. Or a reminder to buy more Post-Its. We don’t know yet. I hope it says “Kick me.”

As Cristina changes Callie’s bandages, she explains how not cute Sofia is.

Callie: I need to see my baby.

Cristina: She’s mostly tubes and wires. And she looks more like a chicken than a baby. A featherless, beakless chicken. You want to wait ’til she’s cuter.

Callie: You’re the worst godmother ever.

Cristina: You picked me.

Hey, that’s what you get when you ask an Asian to be a godparent. We don’t sugarcoat things. I told my godson that no one likes a crybaby after I ate the last Pudding Pop.

April comes flouncing into the room like she’s auditioning for a Garnier commercial and chirps that Sofia opened her eyes for the first time. Too bad you missed it. Callie starts to bawl and desperately tries to get out of bed, probably ripping some stitches in the process. Nice going, Pollyanna.

Derek is in the middle of a brain surgery for his Alzheimer’s study when Patient #122 suddenly has a massive heart attack and dies on the table. Derek halts the trials until he can figure out what happened and maybe check his malpractice coverage.

Later that night, Teddy cuts her date short to go to her paper husband, Henry’s house to take his pulse. His blood sugar is low, so she whips out a doggie bag of cannolis and regales the latest installment in her series, “Dating Stories from Hell.” First of all, the guy’s name was Irwin.

Have you ever dismissed someone because they had a messed up name? Don’t feel bad. Happens all the time. Anyone who names their kid Irwin, Long Dong or Blanket is obviously not thinking things through.

Alex wrestles a Marlboro and a lighter from Gladys’ wrinkled hands. Crabby as always, she wants to get sprung from this second-rate medical hovel, but her test results are getting worse, not better. She tells Alex he’s a worthless bastard and yells at him to get his stupid face out of her sight. I think I worked for Gladys once.

When Alex tells Owen that Gladys is being a bitch, Owen questions Alex’s take-charge abilities and his chances in the competition to be the new Chief Resident. Alex stammers he has an awesome plan that will showcase his initiative, thank you very much. As Lexie eavesdrops, Alex blurts out that he’s bringing a dozen sick African kids to America, and treating them right there at Seattle Grace Mercy West. It’s ambitious, expensive and improbable. And straight out of his ass.

Cristina hatches her own wacky plan to unite mother and chicken and enlists the help of the others. They descend on Callie’s room while she’s sleeping, and using a bunch of portable machines and stuff, they mobilize and roll her out the door and towards the NICU. No, Callie, you’re not having a nightmare.

Bailey is standing in the way, so Avery takes it upon himself to distract her with the hypnotic effects of his piercing blue eyes. Bailey’s tired and immune to his Vanessa Williams shtick, but it’s enough to get the Keystone Docs past her and into the baby viewing area.

Derek tells Meredith that Patient 122’s family lied about his heart condition to get him into the trial. Bastards! Those are some serious allegations. I certainly hope Derek has a white board and a conspiracy theory to back up that claim.

Meredith petitions for the Chief’s wife, Adele, to replace the dead guy in the trial but Derek reminds her Adele isn’t far enough along in her disease to qualify for surgery. Oh yeah? Have you seen this?

I still like “Kick me” better.

Five weeks later, Sofia is doing a little better, but Callie is growing more and more frustrated with her recovery. She’s chased off yet another physical therapist for not pushing her hard enough, and yells at Arizona that Sofia needs her.

Callie: You can hold the baby, Mark can hold the baby. I can’t hold my baby. Don’t tell me it’s OK!

Arizona: I’m sorry.

Callie: Then bring me those balls, please.

There’s a phrase Callie hasn’t uttered in a while. Isn’t that how she ended up with a baby in the first place?

Alex tells Dr. Stark about his Out of Africa plan and asks for a gajillion dollars to pay for the surgeries. Robert has absolutely no faith in Alex’s pitch and says plainly, “There are people who can do this sort of thing, but you’re not one of them.” Considering Alex lives in a trailer in Lot D, I have to agree.

Alex’s solution is to hit up Gladys for the money. She clearly has the dough and won’t live to spend it anyway, so why not? She calls him Sally Struthers (hee), barks at him to get out of her face and hacks up another piece of lung.

Derek agrees to let Adele come to his Alzheimer’s party, but Meredith would like to do more, like, say, give her the medicine and not the placebo. Derek reminds her that fooling with the blind study could ruin the trial, not to mention both their careers. Foreshadow much?

Elsewhere, Sofia needs a critical surgery. Arizona wants the best neonatal surgeon on earth, but they don’t have time to write a crossover episode with Addison Shepherd, so Robert steps in. Uncharacteristically considerate, he offers to let Arizona observe in the OR. Since she’s not related to Sofia — not technically anyway — it would not violate any hospital policy. Ya know, if you can’t have equal rights, there’s nothing wrong with exploiting the rules whenever you can.

Callie is pushing Cristina down the hall on a gurney as part of her own, homemade physical therapy program. Like a bus, she picks more passengers on her route. Alex asks for a lift over to radiology. I think I saw this on Biggest Loser once, but it was all uphill and Jillian Michaels was screaming her head off.

Arizona stops an out-of-breath Callie and tells her about Sofia’s emergency surgery. Just then, Callie grabs her gut and pulls her hand away to reveal blood in that  “I’ve been shot” kinda way. She’s sprung a leak and collapses in Arizona’s arms. See that? I knew working out was bad for you. That’s why I avoid it at all costs.

Now Callie and Sofia are both in surgery simultaneously. As Bailey and Cristina work to repair Callie’s rupture, Robert and April cut into some white meat to get at Sofia’s teeny, tiny heart valve. Worried family members, Arizona and Mark update each other on their cell phone from their respective OR’s.

Is that allowed? I thought you couldn’t use a cell phone in a hospital because it screws up the machines. Well, the important thing is everyone’s going to be all right, except maybe the lady in ICU whose monitor has just start beeping in Lady Gaga ringtones.

Meanwhile, Alex flashes pictures of adorable African children at Gladys, which only infuriates her more. But he gets a reversal of fortune when she insists that only he, and not that nitwit, Lexie, knows how to turn her.

Alex stands in the doorway and says he’s not coming any closer unless she gives him $100,000 for the surgeries. Lexie’s jaw drops to the floor. Alex is capable of a lot of stuff, but extorting money is a new low, even for him.

Gladys: Fifty.

Alex: One hundred.

Gladys: Seventy-five.

Alex: One hundred grand, final offer.

Gladys: You don’t know how to negotiate.

Alex: I’m not negotiating.

Gladys: Oh, don’t pretend to be smart, you crooked little bastard.

Alex: And don’t pretend you’re poor, you evil, old bitch.

Now he’s talking her lingo. She agrees, just so he’ll flip her ass over. I wonder if she’d buy me a horse if I rubbed her bunions?

Back at Henry’s place, Teddy has come by once again, this time with pasta and a story about her latest dating nightmare: the guy had a ponytail longer than hers, a fact he hid in his online profile.

Kids, if you’re going to use the online personals, do everyone a favor and don’t lie or use a picture that’s 10 years old. If you think your personality is so dang scintillating, it can overcome that kind of deception once you meet in person, think again.

Alex brags to Meredith that breaking the rules is awesome. But as the words are leaving his mouth, his pager goes off. He runs back to the Dragon Lady’s room but she’s dead. Damn it. There goes my Arabian.

While Alex is shaking dead Gladys, hoping some loose changes falls out of her pockets, Meredith runs into Adele in the lobby. She asks her how she’s holding up, but it’s soon clear that Adele thinks Mer is Ellis, her mother and the Chief’s old flame. Adele begs Meredith, “Give me back my husband.” Honey, you can have him, but still. Awkward. Time to start shaving Mrs. Chief’s head.

The Chief thanks Meredith for getting Adele into the Alzheimer trial, saying “You’ve done everything you can.” Has she? Hmmm.

Alex doles out patient files from his African airlift to Cristina and company. Arizona stops by to say, “Good job, you!” and wanders off to play peek-a-boo with Sofia. Where’s she going? Considering she started the whole thing because she was worried about breaking a promise to sick kids, and being all about third-world medicine in the first place, Arizona is oddly blasé about the children’s imminent arrival. Eh. I got the same way when I hear The Real L Word was coming back.

Lexie soon finds out Alex’s secret: He doesn’t have the money to pay for any of it.

What started out as a good way to get noticed has turned into a runaway train of promises and unpaid bills. Alex barrels forward anyway, knowing he’s going to stiff people, disappoint those who are counting on him, and dash the high expectations he’s promised but can’t deliver on. After Alex gets out of jail, he has a bright future as a television programmer.

Meanwhile, Meredith is knee-deep in her own shenanigans when Alex almost busts her switching medications to ensure that Adele gets the actual drug and not the placebo. Adele is the new Patient 122, whose mystery envelope contains the placebo. Meredith sneaks in and swaps envelope contents with Patient 123’s packet, which contains the drug. Patient 123 is going to be super pissed. If they remember to be pissed.

The only reason Meredith doesn’t get caught red-handed is because Lexie runs up to Alex at that very moment, and holds up a check from Gladys. The old bat came through, not only with the $100,000 she promised, but with an extra $100,000, just cuz.

In baby news: It’s been 12 weeks and Callie is ready to go home. Too bad someone has replaced her beakless chicken with the only baby I’ve ever seen who needed their eyebrows waxed.

Dr. Stark tells Callie, Mark and Arizona that since they’re all doctors (and crazy over-protective) he’ll let Sofia go home if she can sit in a car seat for an hour without distress. The test amounts to having several adults stare at a baby, who’s passed out in a car seat, happy as can be.

Cristina reminds everyone in her usual artless way, that we’re biologically wired to like babies’ small features and oversized eyes so that we don’t want to eat them. This also explains the continuing popularity of the Olsen Twins.

As soon as the reality of bringing Sofia home hits Callie, she freaks out. It’s too soon! It’s too dangerous! Bailey gently tells her her freak out is not because she’s a car accident victim; it’s because she’s a parent now. The world is full of moving cars and rabid squirrels, teetering bookcases and germy germs. Life is scary! Don’t forget choking hazards, funny-smelling grandparents and aggressive hair bows. Yikes.

If anyone cares, clueless Teddy just dropped off some more leftovers at Henry’s and jumped back in a car, where Anne Heche’s husband Dr. Perkins, the psychiatrist who treated everyone after last year’s shooting, is waiting for her. Poor Henry.

Alex’s kids finally arrive from Africa. Or the nearest Benetton’s. Hard to tell.

Lastly and most importantly, Callie, Sofia, Arizona and Mark all go home to start life as a family.

Apparently, it really does take a village. Pray for that kid.

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