Phillip Nichols

Phillip Nichols was the first case of HIV to come to Seattle Grace Hospital.

History
In 1982, Phillip came into the hospital and was diagnosed with a hernia. After his surgery, he was getting worse instead of better, so the residents were challenged to figure out why. Ellis Grey and Richard Webber, the two outsiders among the residents, worked together and discovered that he had cryptococcus. They were uncertain how he could have contracted it. They asked his girlfriend, Eileen, to leave so they could ask him if he had sex with other men, because they suspected he had GRID, now known as AIDS. He was offended at the implication and denied it. He threatened to sue the hospital.

Phillip came back to the hospital a few months later with Kaposi's Sarcoma. He apologized to the doctors and admitted they were right. He asked them to help him. He had an intussusception, almost unheard of in adults. L. Gracie refused to operate on him because he had AIDS, so Ellis and Richard did his surgery, even though they didn't know at the time how AIDS was transmitted. The surgery was successful, but eight months later, he came back to the hospital with PCP pneumonia. He died a week later with only Richard and Ellis by his bedside.

Romantic
He was dating a woman named Eileen, but he was also sleeping with other men, which is how he contracted HIV.

Notes and Trivia

 * He was Irish.