Meredith Grey

"At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. So, you can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines … that are way too dangerous to cross."

- Meredith Grey

Meredith Elizabeth Grey is the current head of general surgery at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. She is the daughter of the now-deceased Ellis Grey, a famed general surgeon, and Thatcher Grey. She was married to Derek Shepherd until his death; they have two daughters, Zola and Ellis and a son, Bailey.

Early Life
When Meredith was young, her father, Thatcher, would bring her to Seattle Grace Hospital to visit her mother, Ellis, at work. As a small child, Meredith got to see her mother perform surgery. As a gift, Meredith was given an "Anatomy Jane" doll by her parents, which contained 24 parts/organs to take out, and extra parts to simulate pregnancy. Meredith would bring the doll with her to the hospital. Years later, an adult, and now a doctor, Meredith uncovered the doll while she and Derek were unpacking boxes in their house, which was previously owned and inhabited by her mother and father before their divorce, and by her mother after, until Meredith was forced to place her mother in Roseridge Home for Extended Care, due to Ellis suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's. The doll brought up old memories for Meredith, along with a renewed attachment to the doll that resulted in adult Meredith bringing it to work with her one day. Upon recognizing an Anatomy Jane doll and her own remembered fondness for her own as a child, Dr. Miranda Bailey allowed Meredith to scrub into a surgery that day on a patient being treated for an inoperable tumor. During the surgery, it was obvious that Dr. Richard Webber was quite disturbed, and also feeling a little guilty, at the sight of the doll, as he had been reminded of a young Meredith craving her mother's attention and love, yet not getting it since Ellis was not only very focused on her surgical career, but also because he and Ellis were having an affair when they were both interns and residents.

Meredith's parents had a troubled marriage, though part of this was due to Ellis spending too much time working and normal everyday problems. But a large part was due to the fact that for years, Ellis had been involved in an affair with one of her colleagues and best friends, Richard Webber. Their marital issues proved too great, and eventually Thatcher left the home when Meredith was five years old. He tried to visit her on several occasions, but he got nowhere. Eventually, he stopped seeing his daughter and subsequently started a new family with his new wife, Susan Grey, and had two children.

When Thatcher left Ellis, she continued her relationship with Webber, although he still had a wife, Adele. Although Richard tried to conceal his relationship with Ellis, Adele always knew, so if she was in their company, she would just play with Meredith. Eventually, Richard broke off his relationship with Ellis, as he felt he was being the better man, by walking away from Ellis, with Meredith only meters away, riding on a carousel. Meredith vaguely remembered her mother's pregnancy with Webber's child after he broke it off. In the memory, Ellis made it clear that she did not want to even look at the child. Shortly thereafter, Ellis accepted a fellowship opportunity at Massachusetts General Hospital. She relocated to Massachusetts with Meredith, and Thatcher lost all contact with his daughter. As an adult, her only childhood memory of Thatcher was giving her cereal in the morning.

In the 8th grade, her English class had to read Romeo & Juliet. For extra credit, their teacher Mrs. Snyder made them act out all the parts. A boy named Sal Scafarillo was chosen for Romeo, and all the girls were jealous of Meredith, who was chosen for Juliet. But Meredith was not happy, and she complained to her teacher that Juliet was an idiot because she had fallen for the one man she knew she could never have. Then she blamed fate for her own bad decision. She told her that if Juliet was stupid enough to fall for the enemy, drink a bottle of poison and go to sleep in a mausoleum, then she deserved whatever she got. Therefore, at the age of 13, she was very clear that love, like life, was about making choices. Meredith later described her high school years to Cristina by saying, "I wore a lot of black. Had the whole angry pink hair thing going on. Wouldn't have been caught dead at prom."

She went to college at Dartmouth, and despite excessive drinking and partying, she graduated. Following her graduation, Ellis suggested that Meredith find another direction in her life, not being convinced that her daughter had what it took to survive medical school and make it in the surgical world. Following an argument about Meredith's future, Meredith spent two months traveling in Europe with her best friend Sadie Harris, who also hated Ellis. But during that time, Meredith's mother Ellis Grey was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease and placed into a nursing home in Seattle. Ellis's diagnosis gave Meredith the push she needed to go to medical school. After graduating from medical school, Meredith moved back to Seattle from Boston and into her childhood home in order to begin her internship at Seattle Grace. Meredith was the only one who knew about her mother's condition outside the nursing home staff, whose personnel were bound by contract to keep Ellis's condition confidential. Ellis also made Meredith promise not to tell anyone. Cristina later helped "diagnose" Meredith as having a case of "severe abandonment issues," as the cause of her relationship problems with Derek, due to the fact that Thatcher left her, when she was a child, that she had to suddenly leave her childhood home when she was five, and that Ellis was absent for most of her childhood, due to her work and the affair she was having with Richard.

Beginning Relationship with Derek Shepherd
After having a one-night stand with Derek without knowing that he was her boss, she and Derek began dating, initially discreetly. But soon Bailey, Meredith's resident, caught her and Derek together and made it her mission to make Meredith's life at work as miserable as possible, as she was involved with her boss, who was also Bailey's boss. Meredith soon learned that Derek was still married when his wife, Addison, came to Seattle to get Derek back. At first, Meredith was angry with Derek for not telling her, but she later admitted to still loving him and begged him to "pick me, choose me, love me." When Addison handed him the divorce papers to end their relationship officially, Derek remained hesitant and soon after decided to stay with Addison, much to Meredith's dismay. Although the two constantly flirted and Derek still hinted at having feelings for her, they both agreed to remain friends and Addison, too, attempted to be friends with Meredith.

When Derek's best friend, Mark Sloan, visited Seattle, he was quick to realize that Meredith was "the one" for Derek and tried to persuade Addison to stop fighting for her marriage as Meredith was Derek's true love. Meanwhile, Meredith rescued a dog, Doc, in an effort to move on, but after her housemates, Izzie Stevens and George, gave her an ultimatum to choose them or Doc, she gave the dog to Derek and Addison. Doc was taken to the vet and diagnosed with bone cancer. Meredith started to date Finn the vet, much to Derek's annoyance. Meredith dating Finn also caused Derek to end the friendship with Meredith and call her a whore.

On the night of the Seattle Grace Hospital Prom, Derek went with Addison, while Meredith went with Finn. The two soon after met with each other in an exam room where Derek confessed that he still loved her and they had sex. Addison discovered Meredith's underwear in Derek's pocket and the two finally agreed to divorce. Meredith, however, was still dating Finn, and issued a contest between the two boys to see which she would settle with. She ultimately chose Derek and they reconciled.

Drowning in Elliot Bay
Meredith, Izzie, George, Alex, and Bailey went to the site of a massive ferry boat accident. After Meredith finished stabilizing a patient's badly wounded leg with the help of a little girl just by the water, the man panicked and pushed Meredith off the edge into the bay. Later, when Derek was shown Meredith's fate by the little girl, he jumped into the water and then retrieved a pale, seemingly lifeless Meredith. He tried to perform CPR in the ambulance, but she did not respond. The doctors all tried to revive her, but she flatlined. Then Meredith entered a seemingly state of limbo in her mind, where she interacted with deceased acquaintances like Denny, Dylan Young, Doc, Bonnie Crasnoff, Liz Fallon and her own mother, Ellis Grey. Eventually, she left this state of limbo, and came back to life slowly. Meredith recovered, but Derek remained concerned that Meredith was a good swimmer, and that perhaps she had not tried hard enough and had given up.

Derek's Proposal and Wedding
When one of Derek's patients, Jen Harmon, found out that Derek was going to propose to Meredith, the two started to become friends and she wanted to help with the proposal. When she died, Derek blamed himself for her death. He ended up quitting his job and he moved back into his trailer. Richard told Meredith later that day that Derek was going to propose to her. Later that night, Meredith went to the trailer to find Derek drunk and hitting empty beer cans into the woods with a baseball bat. They started to argue and Meredith said, "I know there's a ring!" Derek froze. Meredith then told him that the chief had told her about the ring and that she was not going to give up on them. Derek then hit the ring into the woods. The next time Meredith went to see Derek at the trailer, she told him Izzie had metastatic melanoma and that it spread to her liver, skin, and brain. And that he was the most qualified surgeon to remove the tumor. Derek later asked Meredith to marry him, but she rejected his proposal. Derek ended up going back to work and removed Izzie's brain tumor successfully. That night, Derek proposed to Meredith in the elevator, which was decorated with surgical scans from their past cases. This time, Meredith accepted. Izzie Stevens began to plan the wedding, but right before, Derek and Meredith decided to give the wedding to her and Alex Karev. Later, Derek and Meredith got married in the resident's lounge, on a blue Post-It note from Cristina Yang.

George's Death
When Meredith was treating a John Doe, who soon would be identified as George O'Malley, he attempted to write on a pad before surgery, but wasn't successful. While recovering in the ICU, he attempted again to write on Meredith hand, and she soon realized that it was George after he traced "007" on her hand multiple times. Meredith was alarmed and alerted the other doctors, who originally believed her when he was taken in for brain surgery. During George's brain surgery, his brain swelled and he was declared brain dead. Lexie thought it wasn't George because she didn't think he was tall enough, so Callie checked for a Texas-shaped birthmark on his hand, which she saw, confirming it was George.

Hospital Merger and Richard's Drinking
During the start of the merger with Mercy West Medical Center, Meredith was hospitalized from having donated a portion of her liver to her father, Thatcher Grey, since he was unable to be placed on the transplant list due to his alcoholism. Richard's drinking escalated again, causing him to make an error during surgery which almost killed a patient, until Dr. Bailey stepped in, fixing the problem and scheduling weekly followups with the patient to ensure he had no lasting effects. Richard's alcoholism led him to do one-on-one teaching sessions where he showed Meredith various surgical techniques and she discovered his drinking again. She kept this from Derek, but he became very angry with Meredith, and made her tell him what was going on. When Derek found out about the drinking, he reported Richard to the board, forcing him to either step down from surgery and go to rehab or retire. When he chose rehab, Derek was named the interim Chief of Surgery.

Shooting at the Hospital
Near the end of their third year of residency, Meredith revealed to Cristina that she was pregnant. She also planned on telling Derek, but the mass shooting intervened. The husband of a deceased patient, Gary Clark, entered the hospital and shot many people, killing many, including Dr. Reed Adamson and Dr. Charles Percy. The hospital was placed in lockdown while the shooting occurred. Gary Clark also shot Derek in the chest while Meredith watched from afar. Cristina had to do his surgery herself after barring Meredith from the OR. When the shooter entered the OR, Meredith entered too and told him to shoot her. However, he ended up shooting Owen, though his injuries were comparatively minor. While tending to Owen's injury, Meredith suffered a miscarriage.

After the shooting, all involved were made to go through a psych consult to be cleared for surgery. Meredith was the last one to be cleared. She was cleared by Dr. Andrew Perkins only after she admitted her pregnancy and miscarriage.

Derek began speeding to cope with the trauma and was arrested several times for "reckless endangerment." The only people that knew about Meredith's miscarriage were Cristina, Owen, and April. Meredith ended up leaving him in jail on the night of Cristina and Owen's wedding. The next day, angered at having been left in jail overnight, Derek had an argument with Meredith in the hospital hallway. Derek tried to calm Meredith down and Meredith admitted that she had been worried about him since he started speeding and the only time she got relief was when he was in jail, because she knew he was safe. She then told him about her miscarriage. Derek and Meredith kissed and hugged, and Derek agreed to drive more carefully from that point on.

Alzheimer's Trial and Adoption of Zola
The couple had recently been told that Meredith had a hostile uterus and conceiving a child would be difficult. Meredith and Derek met Zola when she was brought to the hospital for a spina bifida operation as part of Alex's program. Derek immediately bonded with Zola and suggested adoption. Meredith took a little longer to bond with Zola, but eventually, she was unable to avoid falling in love with the child. However, Derek found out that Meredith had tampered with his Alzheimer's trial just as the couple was granted temporary custody of Zola. When the social worker on their case, Janet, discovered that Meredith and Derek weren't living together and that Meredith had been fired, red flags were raised in the system. Fearing that she would lose Zola, Meredith hid with Zola in the basement of the hospital for 4 hours. Zola was taken away from them for a time, during which Meredith and Derek rekindled their relationship. They were given a date to see a judge about the adoption after Alex went to the judge directly. That date was subsequently cancelled and Janet told them that it was unlikely that it would end in their favor and suggested that they move on. But the decision did end in their favor, and Janet brought Zola to them, finalizing the adoption.

Plane Crash
At the end of her residency, Meredith, along with Derek, Mark, Lexie, Cristina, and Arizona, was involved in a plane crash on the way to Boise to help in a conjoined twins case. Lexie died due to a part of the plane crushing her, and Meredith was horrified and mourned. The plane crash also led to Mark's death, Arizona's loss of her leg, and Derek's severely damaged nerves in his hand.

The group ended up spending four days out in the woods before they were found and airlifted to Boise Memorial Hospital, where they were treated before being sedated and flown back to Seattle.

Lawsuit, Pregnancy, and Buying the Hospital
All the survivors of the plane crash filed a lawsuit against the plane company. Their attorney informed the survivors that they would be pursuing action against the hospital instead of the plane company since the hospital put them on the plane. This alarmed the doctors. However, they decided to go ahead with the lawsuit, because Derek went to see the plane wreckage and believed if they settled, they wouldn't properly investigate what went wrong so it couldn't happen again to someone else.

The doctors went to trial and were awarded $15 million each. Callie decided that their win should be celebrated, and Meredith, Derek, Callie, Arizona, and Cristina all went to dinner to celebrate, where Meredith revealed that she was pregnant.

During Meredith's pregnancy, Dr. Alana Cahill was brought to the hospital to assess efficiency, as the plane crash verdict forced the hospital into bankruptcy after its insurance refused to pay the penalties after finding a loophole. The doctors learned that Dr. Cahill was planning to clean up the hospital so that it could be sold to a company called Pegasus Horizons. But Richard and Callie conducted additional research of the company and learned that it would be a terrible asset to the hospital. They brought the survivors together for a secret meeting and discussed purchasing the hospital so they could maintain the hospital in which all the doctors had been trained and which they still loved.

The doctors went to investors looking for a partner to come up with enough money to purchase the hospital. After exhausting all their other investment options, they eventually were given $175 million by the Harper Avery Foundation to purchase the hospital. The Harper Avery Foundation, led by Catherine Avery, made Jackson Avery their spokesperson on the board, which was upset all the other doctors. They, however, all resolved the conflict when Jackson tried to bring the board together by proposing the hospital be renamed to reflect their beliefs and reasoning behind purchasing the hospital in the first place. This resulted in Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital being renamed to Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital in 2013, after Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan, the two fatalities of the plane crash.

Giving Birth and Richard's Accident
Despite Derek's warnings to slow down, a heavily pregnant Meredith couldn't keep from joining in on a surgery at the beginning of the superstorm. However, Meredith was forced to leave when there was a risk of explosions in the OR. She talked to Alex about beating up Jason Myers, only to find out that Jo was the one who had beaten up Jason. She followed Jo into a staircase, where Jo promised she would never let Alex take the fall for what happened to Jason. As Jo left, a construction worker told her that they were done with the grinder in the OR. "Then why aren't I up there?" she angrily asked, and as she ran up the stairs, she slipped and rolled down the stairs. She sent Derek a message and got checked out by Connie Ryan, and she promised that everything was fine with the baby. While the surgeons were preparing the hospital and the storm hit Seattle, Meredith's water broke.

Meredith was admitted, but had to wait for Connie, who was busy with other soon-to-be mothers. Cristina, who found it typical for Meredith to go in labor during a superstorm, stayed by her side while Derek went to look for Connie. He found her, but as she did a check-up on Meredith, she told them that there was face presentation. As she mentioned that a C-section was necessary to deliver the baby safely, the lights went out and the back-up generators failed to engage. Even though they were, at first, hesitant to perform surgery in the dark, they realized there were no other options. The surgery went well, and Derek took his newborn son to the NICU to make sure everything was fine. While closing up, Connie got called away for another mother in need, and she and Meredith trusted Shane to close up. However, Heather and Shane discovered heavy bleeding, and Meredith realized that she had suffered an internal bleed from her fall on the stairs. Before losing consciousness, Meredith instructed Shane, who had found out that her spleen was bleeding, how to stop the bleed. Meanwhile, Heather went to find Dr. Bailey to assist them. Bailey overcame her fear to operate and pulled Meredith through. Meredith was kept in the OR until she was stable, and later moved to a room in the maternity ward, where Derek and Zola visited her and their new family member.

During a board meeting in her room, the others informed Meredith what had happened during the superstorm. She tried to help out as much as she could, but Derek and the other told her to rest after her major abdominal surgery. While the others left, Cristina stayed behind to chat a little until she got paged. Though it was said at the meeting that the ER had to close, Meredith got confused when she witnessed Stephanie and Jo exchanging supplies to use in the ER. When a stressed Alex entered her room, Meredith managed to calm him down by letting him hold her son. He told her about Richard and Heather, and he gave the baby back to her so she herself could recover her own calm. Meanwhile, Cristina and Bailey started arguing over the course of treatment for Richard, only to find out that Richard had listed Meredith as his medical proxy, which in turn had forced her to choose between Cristina's and Bailey's plans. She decided to do so by relying on science, and asked to rerun some tests. While waiting for the results, Callie sat down in her room to have a little chat about how she was doing. When Richard's results came back, Meredith decided to side with Bailey and allowed her operate, which Cristina had advised not to be done. While Bailey operated on Richard, Meredith asked Cristina to admit that the decision was right, and Cristina did.

Meredith later talked with Cristina and Alex about Richard's decision to make her his medical proxy, wondering if she was in his will too. After Richard's surgery, Owen came to Meredith's room to tell her that Bailey had closed Richard back up once Catherine started yelling at them from the gallery. Meredith also consoled a sad Derek, who had lost Heather in surgery. After Meredith ordered Derek to go home with Zola, who had spent enough time in daycare now, Callie and Sofia came in to drop off some things. Callie told them that she had moved out of the apartment and that they would stay at a hotel for a while. Meredith decided to let Callie stay at their house, and she later told Arizona, who had no idea where Callie and Sofia were, that they were at her house. While trying to fall asleep, the interns bothered her to ask for help finding Heather stories to tell Heather's mother, and Meredith told them what she had told George's mother after he died. When the interns left, Jackson came in to tell her that his mother was planning on moving Richard to another hospital. Alex and April came in too to talk about their problems, and as they left one by one, they all refused to bring her a wheelchair. However, she somehow got herself a wheelchair and went to Richard's room in the ICU with Bailey. Bailey still thought that they should open him back up, and Meredith made the call to book an OR for Bailey. Later, back in her room, Cristina and Alex talked with Meredith about medical proxies, and it turned out that Cristina had actually disapproved of Meredith's decision for Richard. After Bailey's surgery, Catherine still wanted to have a second opinion. Meredith told her that Richard chose her to make his decisions, and not Catherine. They started arguing as Richard opened his eyes, and Meredith enthusiastically greeted him.

Derek Leaving for D.C.
Despite his promise to Meredith to take care of the kids so that she could have a year to focus on her work, Derek started to consult on a time-consuming brain mapping project for the White House. The presidential team asked him to become more involved in the project, but he initially refused the offer in an attempt to keep his promise to Meredith. While at April and Matthew's wedding, Derek received a call from the president himself and ended up accepting the offer to put his name on their federal research initiative.

This caused Meredith to become upset with him since she had wanted to continue with her own research work. Derek later learned that the federal team wanted him to run the project's advisory board. While on a trip to Washington, D.C., Derek was offered a full-time job at the National Institutes of Health, and he found a job for Meredith at James Madison Hospital.

However, Meredith later told Derek that she refused to leave Seattle after Cristina reminded her not to let what Derek wanted eclipse what she needed. Forced to choose between his family and the brain mapping job, Derek decided to stay in Seattle as well and rejected the offer.

However, there was excessive tension between Meredith and Derek. Derek was unsatisfied with his job at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, especially because his sister Amelia had taken over as head of the neurosurgery department.

Meredith was upset with Derek for being so attached to the federal initiative position and told him that she never wanted him to give it up for her. Deborah Curzon, a special assistant to the president, came to Seattle in a last attempt to recruit Derek for their team. Derek told her that he was unfortunately unable to accept the offer, but he took her card anyway. Later that day, he got into a fight with Meredith, who told him to take the job in D.C. and leave. Derek called the woman he had spoken to earlier and told her that he did want the job after all.

He packed some clothes and went to the airport while Meredith threw away the Post-it note that had signified their marriage. The next day, Meredith and Derek talked on the phone and decided that they can make their relationship work, even if Derek had to take the job with the president. She told him that even though she could live without him, she did not want to, and Derek reciprocated. They both agreed on wanting to work on their marriage after his resignation.

Although Meredith found it hard to sleep in their bedroom alone, she carried on with her life in Seattle without Derek for the time being.

Derek's Death
Derek was involved in a car accident with serious injuries. Ultimately, he was declared brain dead, and Meredith had his ventilators turned off. He had been on the way to the airport for a final trip to D.C. where he would wrap up his work and hand in his resignation. After Derek died, Meredith took Zola and Bailey and left Seattle in the middle of the night, much like her mother did with her when she was a child. All Meredith left was a note saying that she and the children were safe. Her friends tried to contact her repeatedly, but she didn't answer. Finally, Meredith answered on Thanksgiving, telling Alex to stop calling her, that she and the kids were fine.

Building a New Life
Meredith put out feelers with a real estate agent to see whether anyone would be interested to buy her house. But she forgot to inform Amelia, which sparked a fight between the two. Amelia was mad at her for not having called her before pulling the plug on Derek, so she couldn't say goodbye. Meredith broke down after the confrontation. She later went to Alex and explained that her house didn't feel like her home without Derek, so she asked if she and the kids could stay with him and Jo for a while. He agreed to that, but Jo got mad at him for not consulting her first. Meredith felt guilty about forgetting that Amelia was also supposed to be her sister, and gave her her old phone with Derek's last voice mail message. Later that day, she intervened when Catherine and Richard were too angry to get married. Meredith played the dead husband card and got them to the altar after all. That evening, Meredith hosted a party for the newlyweds at her house. At the party, she told Maggie, who was upset about her own parents' divorce, that she could always come talk to her, about anything. Amelia joined them as Meredith said that a house filled with happy people would be the perfect last memory, as that had been what Derek had wanted. She took Amelia and Maggie's hands and they went inside to dance it out together.

As Jo found a loft for the two of them, Alex moved out of the house and sold it back to Meredith, who moved in with her kids and sisters. The sister started carpooling to work, and Meredith started to teach an intern anatomy class at the hospital. Initially, there were some tensions among Meredith and Amelia, including an argument over whether or not they were going to tear down the wall between the kitchen and the living room, as a drunk Meredith had mused about. Maggie intervened to call a truce. Meredith and Amelia apologized to each other, and Meredith admitted she doesn't know how to talk to Amelia as she's a lot to handle sometimes, and Meredith doesn't totally like her. However, she considered Amelia as family, so she didn't have to. She then decided it was okay to tear the wall down.

After a busy day where Bailey, the new Chief, dumped all her patients on Meredith, Bailey rewarded Meredith with a promotion to Head of General Surgery. However, Bailey made Meredith an offer with a low salary. After consulting with other department heads, Meredith stood up for herself and asked for the salary she deemed fit. It turned out that Bailey was actually testing her to see if she would stand up for herself.

Hooking Up with Nathan
When Nathan Riggs arrived at the hospital, it did not take long for Meredith to discover the reasons regarding his feud with Owen. Out of loyalty, Meredith asked Owen if they hated Nathan, to which Owen said yes. Despite her promise, however, she ended up hooking up with Nathan in her car, four times in one night. Both developed feelings for each other, and realized that they had a lot more in common than they thought, including losing their loved ones.

Rekindled Romance with Nathan
Eventually, Meredith finally agreed to dinner with Nathan, but their plans were postponed when Maggie's mother died and Meredith had to take care of her. She found herself on an airplane with Nathan, as both were heading to a conference. They ended up hooking up in the airplane bathroom. Both had to tend to patients when the plane hit turbulence. The experience allowed them both to become closer and for Meredith to open up to Nathan about her history. She agreed to stay in a hotel room with Nathan, marking another step in their relationship.

Personality
She is intelligent, compassionate, hard-working, has good medical instincts, and a natural flair for medicine. Other than that, Meredith is also easily distracted and indecisive, and oftentimes outspoken.

Meredith and Derek have been described as polar opposites. She described herself as "dark and twisty" due to her negativity, in contrast to Derek's charismatic optimism. And unlike Derek, who viewed the world in distinct shades of black and white, Meredith tends to see things in shades of gray, which Carolyn Shepherd remarked to her son that was what he needed, while she was visiting Seattle.

However, this difference in viewpoints have culminated in what could be a breach in their marriage, when she messed up Derek's Alzheimer drug trial. She secretly accessed the pharmacy, where the trial drugs were stored, and subsequently swapped the placebo for the actual drug, for Patient #122, aka Adele. And when busted by a drunk Alex, who had seen her behaving suspiciously, she much later confided in Cristina that she felt that her actions were justified, as Adele was Richard's wife, and she should do something since Adele was about to have saline injected into her brain, and the trial drug sample could help her from becoming a 'vorked out lump', in her own words.The couple subsequently got into an argument in the changing room, where Derek argued that it was Alzheimer's, a disease that she could potentially have, and one whose progression he was trying to stop or cure, while at the same time espousing that everything was black and white, a right and a wrong. Meredith responded that the situation was much more complicated than that, as it was Richard and Adele.

Derek Shepherd
Meredith and Derek first met at Joe's Bar the night before her first day at Seattle Grace Hospital. Derek approached her, they got drunk, before ending up at her place, sleeping with each other. When she went to work, she discovered, much to her shock, that Derek too worked at Seattle Grace, as an attending, so she staunchly refused to date him, although they did manage to sneak by a few stolen sexually charged moments. However, it was eventually at the unexpected house party that went out of control that she finally gave in and the two got intimate in the car. Despite Miranda Bailey, who felt that Derek was beginning to show signs of favoritism towards Meredith the following day, catching them in the act, the pair began to date secretly, something which her roommates would eventually discover, and thus were mostly not too pleased about as they thought she was trying to win favors and felt uncomfortable sharing living space with their "boss's boss." They became public quickly, although Richard Webber discovered and disapproved of the relationship, knowing that Derek was still married to Addison. Their relationship ended temporarily relationship ended when Addison Shepherd arrived at the hospital for a medical case, and claimed to be Derek's wife, thereby surprising her.

Meredith stayed away from Derek, but later asked him to make a choice between her or Addison. Derek tried to make a decision, but it was a hard one, as he had been married to Addison for eleven years. He eventually chose Addison and Meredith was left heartbroken. Addison stayed at Seattle Grace and Meredith was left alone and when news of the scandal leaked out, she became much of the hospital's talking points and gossip. After avoiding each other, they attempted friendship, but on the night of the Seattle Grace prom, they had sex in an exam room despite the fact that Meredith was dating Finn Dandridge and Derek was married to Addison. An unexpected event of the secret rendezvous was Meredith losing her panties, when Derek had pocketed them. The next day, Addison found Meredith's panties in Derek's pocket and realized her marriage was over. After Derek caught Addison and Mark Sloan together again, they both admitted their relationship was finished. He told Meredith that if she wanted, they could date and that he loved her. Meredith tried to choose between Derek and Finn, but when she was unable to decide between the two men, she decided to date both of them until she decided. After Derek decided to be a better person and let her go and be with Finn, she realized she wanted Derek and broke up with Finn. She didn't tell Derek immediately, because he was going through his divorce with Addison but when she finally did, he no longer cared, as he was suffering from Addison's secret about her and Mark living together for months, after he had left her.



They started dating again, but Derek later complained that she was constantly leaving him and that she should be worried that the highlight of his week was meeting another girl at Joe's. When Cristina and Burke called off their wedding, she broke up with Derek, not convinced that relationships could work. They tried to stay apart but began having break-up sex, and mockery. Later, Derek kissed a nurse named Rose in the scrub room; when Meredith found out, she severed all ties with him. Derek and Meredith started a clinical trial but Derek began dating Rose and her feelings for him started to come back as the clinical trial continued. After their last clinical trial patient survived from surgery, Meredith and Derek celebrated and she showed him a house of candles she had made. He kissed her and they got back together. Trying to take steps forward, Meredith asked him to move in and he accepted. They stayed together and after his mother's visit, Derek decided to propose with his mother's engagement ring. Meredith originally thought he was avoiding her because of a conversation they had about babies, but he insisted that he wanted to have all her babies. Derek planned to propose to her, with a ring from his mother, but remarked to Mark that the timing had to be right, otherwise she would bolt. Derek's plans to propose left his mind after he accidentally killed a patient. Richard told Meredith about the ring, but the despondent Derek hit the ring into the woods, with a baseball bat. He apologized and she forgave him and he proposed properly to her later. They planned a wedding, but when they realized that Izzie had stage 4 cancer, they eventually gave their wedding to Izzie and Alex. With very little time to get married themselves, they went to the locker room, wrote down their vows on a Post-it note, and married each other. After their Post-it marriage, they referred to each other as husband and wife and in the days immediately after their wedding, they had sex frequently, while often getting caught in the act, in different places in the house, by those living there. Later, she found out she was pregnant. The shooting that happened after the death of a patient of Derek's, when the patient's husband shot numerous people, also shooting Derek was traumatizing for both of them, especially as Meredith miscarried because of the events of that day. She waited to tell him about this long after his recovery wondering how he would react. Then they proceeded to try to conceive, but they learned Meredith had a hostile uterus, which made it unlikely she would conceive naturally.

Eventually, the two did formally marry, as it would make it easier for them to legally adopt Zola, an African girl Derek got to know while treating her spina bifida. Derek engaged Meredith in his Alzheimer's clinical trial, trying to find a cure for her mother's disease. When Adele Webber became part of their trial, however, Meredith's emotions started to cloud her judgment, and as a result, she switched the placebo with the active medication, so Adele would get better. This caused Alex to become suspicious when he saw her acting weird. When Alex was drunk, he told Owen Hunt about this incident, who continued to alarm Derek and Richard. Derek then continued to become really angry at Meredith, accusing her of not knowing the difference between right or wrong and saying it wasn't any way to raise a child. It took them a long time to resolve these differences in their marriage and their separation caused trouble with Zola's adoption, for which each blamed the other. However, in times of crisis, they made up and all of them lived happily as a family after Alex, feeling guilty, managed to get them Zola back. Even after enduring the horrible plane crash, in which both her sister and his best friend died, and Derek's hand was severely injured, their bond only grew stronger and they helped each other. Meredith discovered she was pregnant with Derek's child. Though both of them were really happy, Meredith was very concerned due to her hostile uterus, but Derek remained optimistic, and she was still pregnant. During the "super storm," Meredith gave birth, via c-section, to a baby boy whom she named Derek Bailey Shepherd after both Derek and Miranda Bailey.

After the birth of Bailey, Meredith and Derek enjoyed their time with their children. Eventually, Derek was offered a job with the president. At first, Meredith was upset as Derek promised her that she could kickstart her career, but eventually grew not to mind. They were going to move to DC. but Meredith decided she wanted to stay, so Derek resigned from Grey Sloan.

The couple argued on and off over his new job and he moved to DC in the heat of the moment. He flew back and forth between Seattle and DC, putting a strain on their marriage. He eventually grew to realize that he was miserable without his family and wanted to be with them more than "saving the world." Meredith also realized that she could live without him, but she didn't want to. They both agreed to work on their marriage once he moved home to Seattle permanently. On his way back to DC to resign, he got into a car accident and died. When Derek died, Meredith was pregnant with his baby.

Finn Dandridge
Finn Dandridge was a veterinarian to Doc, Meredith and Derek's dog. He met Meredith when Doc got sick and Meredith brought him in. He asked her out and she agreed, despite her and Izzie being celibate. They started a serious relationship, and often had sleepovers, but never even kissed. At the Seattle Grace prom, Finn said he had plans for his and Meredith's future. Meredith was happy and tried to make the relationship work. However, after an argument with Derek, Meredith ended up cheating on Finn with Derek. Finn found out, and albeit annoyed, he wanted to work past it. Meredith was glad, but she realized she couldn't choose between Finn and Derek, so she started dating them both at the same time, until she chose. After a fierce competition, Derek decided to let Meredith go, but as soon as he let her go, Meredith realized she wanted to be with him. She broke up with Finn, who told her Derek was no good for her before he walked out for the last time. His nickname was "McVet," as opposed to Derek's "McDreamy."

William Thorpe
When he and Meredith worked together on Brian Carson, he flirted with her and asked to follow up with her. She initially didn't realize he was flirting, but once she figured it out, she went back and gave him her personal number.

He then called her several times, but she didn't answer the phone. Still wanting to pursue her, Will came to the hospital and asked Meredith on a date in person.

Meredith agreed to go get drinks, but panicked and cancelled. However, he showed up at the hospital after she got out of surgery and offered to take her home. They got food and ate in the car, talking.

On their third date, Will and Meredith had sex. However, the morning after, Meredith yelled at Will, asking him to leave immediately. He later came to the house and she told him about Derek and said she thought she was ready, but she wasn't. He said he'd back off for a while and wait, but he'd call and then come back. He believed she was worth waiting for.

Nathan Riggs
Meredith slept with Nathan in her vehicle four times in one night. Both claimed afterwards that it meant nothing, but they both felt a spark between them. However, when Maggie confessed to Meredith that she had a crush on Nathan, Meredith decided that getting together with him would hurt Maggie and she shut it down. She did instruct Nathan to turn Maggie down gently, which he did, but Meredith and Nathan stopped pursuing each other.

When Alex later noticed the way Meredith looked at Nathan, he encouraged her to go after him, but soon changed his mind when he and Nathan disagreed over a case. Meredith told Nathan that butting heads with Alex was not the way to pursue her. Later that day, Nathan told Meredith to stop listening to what people were telling her about him and listen to her own feelings for a change. He admitted he kept thinking about her and that he'd be all in if she wanted it to happen. He left her to think about it, and she decided that she wanted him to give her a reason to go for it. He spent an entire day trying to come up with her, but instead told her about how he fell for her the first time he saw her. Meredith then told him to ask her out to dinner, which he did, and she said yes.

However, their dinner plans were cancelled when Maggie's mother's health took a turn for the worst and Meredith had to support Maggie throughout her mother's treatment. After Diane eventually passed away, Nathan and Meredith agreed that their timing wasn't right to start something between them and indefinitely postponed their dinner plans, since Maggie woud heavily rely on Meredith in the near future.

Meredith and Nathan found themselves sitting next to each other on a plane, both heading to a conference. Meredith went to the bathroom, but Nathan followed her, intent on talking to her about their situation. They ended up having sex. After the plane landed and passengers were tended to, Nathan proposed that they get a hotel room and Meredith accepted.

Zola Grey Shepherd
Meredith and Derek met Zola when she was brought to the hospital for an operation as part of Alex's program. The couple had recently been told that Meredith had a hostile uterus and conceiving a child would be hard. Derek immediately bonded with Zola and suggested adoption. Meredith took a little longer to bond, but eventually couldn't help falling in love with the child. However, Derek found out that Meredith tampered with his Alzheimer's trial just as the couple was granted temporary custody of Zola. When the social worker on their case, Janet, discovered that Meredith and Derek weren't living together, Zola was taken away from them for a time, during which Meredith and Derek rekindled their relationship. They were given a date to see a judge about the adoption after Alex went to the judge directly. That date was subsequently cancelled and Janet told them that it was unlikely that it would end in their favor and suggested that they move on. Then, one night after a long day of work, Janet showed up at their door with Zola and told the couple that she was theirs.

Derek Bailey Shepherd
Meredith and Derek's son was a surprise to both, because an OB/GYN had described Meredith's uterus as hostile.

Ellis Shepherd
Ellis was conceived before Derek's death. During her birth, Meredith was bleeding heavily. Zola called an ambulance, saving her.

Lexie Grey
Although Meredith originally hated Lexie, she quickly realized that although she had reason to hate the idea of her, she had no reason to hate Lexie herself. Initially, she didn't like the way Lexie followed her around and seemed envious of her rapport with Derek. She claimed that Lexie was someone she never wanted to know, even denying that Lexie was her sister. However, after Bailey explained that Lexie probably thought she hated her, because of their family links, and after a traumatic day when Cristina brought Lexie home with her, Meredith made an effort to bond with her and they danced and drank tequila. The next morning, Meredith even tried to make breakfast for her and Lexie was so enthusiastic that she ate it, despite knowing she would have an allergic reaction. Lexie and Meredith didn't get too close, both having two different sets of friends, but they did eventually become friends which was made easier with the presence of George O'Malley who was good friends with both of them. Lexie gave up the apartment that she and George had rented, and moved into the attic of Meredith's house, where she occasionally bemoaned the fact that she didn’t have a proper room instead. They later become so close, that Meredith gave Thatcher a piece of her liver, because Lexie asked her to and she doesn’t want to her sister to feel the loss of her father, something of which she had experienced herself. She also sat with Lexie for 36 hours, after she has a PTS breakdown and had to be committed to the psychiatric ward, against her will. And when Lexie got jealous over how April was all chummy with Meredith, she told her the reasons for that, and the fact that "you're not crazy, you're a Grey and you're my sister, Lexie,." At the end of Meredith's residency, Lexie died after the plane crash because she was stuck under the debris. Upon hearing of her death, Meredith cried hysterically.

Later, Meredith obsessed over saving a patient's life when she had the same injuries as Lexie after being crushed by a car. At the end of the day, Meredith was talking to Cristina and simply said that, "Lexie's dead." From that, it appeared that Meredith had accepted the fact that Lexie was gone and was at peace.

Ellis Grey


Ellis Grey was the mother of Meredith Grey. Their relationship was strained due to Ellis's devotion to Richard Webber and her work, often forgetting about Meredith. Meredith was a rebellious teenager and she drank excessively and partied during college. However, while traveling in Europe, she received a call and was told that her mother had Alzheimer's. Meredith was made look after Ellis and keep her secret from the rest who knew her. Ellis would rarely recognize Meredith but one day she woke up and was lucid, but it wouldn't last long, she found herself very disappointed in her daughter who was no longer driven, just "happy." However, before she died, Meredith saw Ellis in a vision and Ellis hugged her and told her she was extraordinary and to continue being extraordinary. Later, Meredith found her mother's old diaries and used them to get to know who her mother was and she realized that she liked her and her mother was quite similar to her best friend, Cristina Yang.

Thatcher Grey
Due to Ellis and Richard's affair, Thatcher left Ellis and Meredith when Meredith was very young. Ellis asked him not to visit and Meredith did not see him again until she was in her thirties and she discovered he had another family. His wife Susan persisted in trying to get them to bond and they began to but when Susan died in a surgery, Thatcher blamed Meredith, even going so far as to slap her across the face and asked her not to attend the funeral. Weeks later he arrived back at Seattle Grace and told her he was sorry and so proud of her but Lexie later informed her that he only said it because he was drunk and he did it all the time. Thatcher went into a program and he started making amends. He asked Meredith and Lexie to forgive him, Lexie hugged him and Meredith congratulated him and said good luck and then left the office they were in. Several months later, Thatcher came in to Seattle Grace vomiting blood. He was found to have cirrhosis of the liver. He was told that to be put on the transplant list, he had to be sober for at least a year, but he had only been sober for 90 days. Lexie was not to be a match for her father's liver, but Meredith was. Willingly, she offers up her liver, not for Thatcher, but for Lexie's sake. Meredith then spent several weeks at home in bed, recovering from the transplant operation. When Thatcher quietly returned to the hospital, with bouts of pain, neither Grey knew, until Miranda Bailey informed them of his check in. When he revealed that he had a young girlfriend, Meredith was actually happy for him, and had to talk to Lexie, who was not to pleased at that discovery.

Susan Grey
Susan Grey was the second wife of Meredith's father, Thatcher. After Ellis Grey died, Susan reached out to Meredith and after a rough start, Susan and Meredith bonded. Susan would wash her clothes and make dinner for her, and was like a surrogate mother to her. However, she came to Seattle Grace with the hiccups and she died during a relatively easy procedure, due to complications.

Doc
Doc was Derek, Addison, and Meredith's dog. She and Izzie rescued him from a shelter and brought him back to their home. Doc was very playful, but he became too much for Izzie and George who quickly demanded that he leave. Due to Meredith's friendship with Derek, Derek and Addison agreed to take him in. After taken to a vet, Doc was diagnosed with bone cancer. When the cancer spread, he was put down and Meredith and Derek agreed to bury him on his favorite spot on Derek's land. During her near death experience, the very first being she wanted to meet was Doc.

Maggie Pierce
Maggie is Meredith's half sister, daughter of Ellis Grey and Richard Webber. She was adopted as a newborn and moved to Seattle and got a job at GSMH to know more about her biological mother, whom she only knew by name. Meredith and Maggie were immediately in conflict at work. Eventually, it came out that Maggie was Ellis' daughter. Initially, Meredith didn't believe it. The next day, Meredith, helped by Alex, matched the information about Maggie's birth with what she remembered and was able to access about Ellis' hospitalization, and she had to admit that Ellis Grey was actually Maggie's birth mother. After that, Meredith and Maggie ignored each other, but Derek pushed Meredith to make the first move with Maggie (like he had done for Lexie), so Meredith showed Maggie the old diaries of her mother that correspond to the period in which Maggie was conceived.

Cristina Yang


Cristina bonded with Meredith instantly and their relationship grew, resulting in Cristina and Meredith becoming best friends and each other's person. They were known around the hospital as the 'Twisted Sisters.' As such, there is very little that the two of them do not know, about the other, since day one of their internship. Meredith frequently talks about her problems with Derek, to her, and all the talk about her and Derek, have been a sore point with Cristina, at least a couple of times. She became Cristina's maid of honor during both weddings to Preston Burke and Owen Hunt. Meredith and Cristina also have several sleepovers at each other's houses, sometimes in Meredith's bed with Derek in it. As well as being one of Cristina's pillars of support, during when she suffered from PTSD, as a result of the shooting.

They bonded over a complex case on their first day, but the relationship was put to the test after Meredith was chosen for a surgery, instead of Cristina. However, they overcame the obstacle and their friendship grew. After Meredith and Derek's break-up, Cristina protected Meredith by asking Derek to stay away. Outside the hospital, they would hang out at Joe's bar, and in the hospital, they would help each other, wherever possible. Cristina was often there for Meredith during her worst times and vice versa. Meredith was the only person who knew about Cristina's pregnancy, and Cristina about Meredith's. When Addison came to Seattle Grace, Izzie and Cristina stole a patient from psych to make her feel better and when Meredith was put on Erica Hahn's service, Cristina selflessly gave Meredith lots of advice on how to impress Hahn.



They had their first big fight after Richard Webber blamed Cristina for knowing of the interns' secret meetings and Meredith did not defend her. Although Meredith at first refused to believe Cristina was ignoring her, she eventually accepted it. The two spoke to each other as little as possible, and when they did, they would argue with each other, Meredith even insulted Cristina by saying that to some people things came naturally, but Cristina was one of the people that had to practice. However, after Meredith broke down after attending the execution of a murderer, Derek brought her to Cristina and they made up. They began to bond over Meredith's mother's old diaries and Meredith found herself comparing Cristina to her mother. When Meredith announced her own wedding, she chose Cristina as her maid of honor.

After a fight with Owen, Cristina showed up at Meredith's house. They laid on the floor and talked about her problems. When Owen came to Meredith's house looking for Cristina, Meredith said, "I already fixed her." And Cristina went home with Owen. Also, when both of their husbands were angry with them, Derek at Meredith for tampering with his clinical trial and Owen at Cristina for wanting an abortion, they leaned on each other. Cristina stayed at Meredith's house, both of the men away, and helped take care of baby Zola. They would sleep in the same bed and have routines in the morning.

George O'Malley


From the moment George O'Malley met Meredith, he fell in love with her. Meredith however, was in love with Derek Shepherd so she never really thought about George as more than a friend. Only a patient and George's best friend Izzie knew how he felt about Meredith. After a small push from Izzie, George decided to tell Meredith how he felt. Meredith had had a very bad day at work so when George confessed his feelings for her, she thought that maybe George was her guy and she had just overlooked him. They proceeded to kiss but during sex, knowing it wasn't right, Meredith burst into tears. George was humiliated and furious and for weeks, he refused to speak to her. Eventually, he accepted her apology, but admitted that he was partly to blame too, he had known how she felt about Derek, and knew that she didn't love George. Their friendship continued and he moved back to her house. When George discovered that he had to repeat his intern year, he drew away from his group of friends, but things soon went back to normal. Meredith and George's friendship continued, and was strengthened, as she was his resident. On George's last day at Seattle Grace, he was hit by a bus after pushing Amanda out of its path. When he was admitted, nobody could recognize him. Meredith was his doctor and she defended him in front of some of the other doctors. After he traced "007" on her hand, she realized it was him and had him rushed into the O.R.. George later died, and she and the other doctors at Seattle Grace attended his funeral. As the janitor cleaned out George's cubby, as they "need(ed) the space," Meredith realized that what had happened was real and broke down in Derek's arms.

Izzie Stevens
Meredith formed a close bond with Izzie on their first day and her relationship with Izzie grew more so when Izzie and George moved in with her. Initially, Izzie was not pleased to know that Meredith was in a relationship with Derek, as she felt that Derek would be favoring her over the other interns, and thus giving her a much better career prospect. She finally learned that Meredith actually loved Derek, and it was not a fling. When George and Meredith were fighting, Izzie told Meredith she would be siding with George if they had to choose sides but fortunately, Meredith and George's issues were soon resolved. Izzie felt close enough to talk to Meredith about her relationship with George and how he pecked her like a chicken and when she discovered that Izzie and George were dating, she supported them. After Izzie was diagnosed with cancer, and when the condition relapsed and Meredith was informed, she and Derek gave their wedding to Alex and Izzie. However, after Izzie left Seattle Grace when she was fired prior to the merger with Mercy West, Izzie refused to answer calls from any of her friends and only returned when a former teacher of hers was sick and sought Derek's help at Seattle Grace. She returned later on, after Meredith called her and told her Alex might be moving on, the same night that Alex slept with Lexie. Meredith decided that they should keep it between the three of them. Later that night, Meredith found Izzie cleaning out her old room, ready to leave for good after Alex dumped her. Meredith begged her to stay because this was her home, but Izzie told her that it wasn't. It was just a place she worked at and she could find a new workplace. Meredith was left speechless and walked away.

Alex Karev
Initially, Meredith disliked Alex, after he insulted her on her first day of her internship, by calling her a nurse. But when he became Bailey's intern and Izzie made friends with him, Meredith gradually lessened her dislike of Alex. After discovering that Alex failed his board exams, Meredith helped him to study and they occasionally have heartfelt and meaningful conversations. When Izzie was revealed to be quite sick, Meredith offered her wedding to Izzie and Alex and Alex made her his best man for the wedding. When Izzie left the hospital after being fired, Meredith became a source of support. She rang Izzie to tell her to come back because Alex might be moving on, after witnessing Alex and Reed flirting and the next morning she found Lexie and Alex in bed together but advised them to keep it secret. There is no sexual attraction between the two, as shown when Meredith sits in the bathroom and has girl talk with Alex. while he is in the shower. When Derek walks in and looks at the two of them, she explains by saying he's being a girl for her right now.

However, that friendship may have run its course, seeing as how he had sold her out, while in a drunken stupor, to Owen Hunt, while the residents were all in the race for Chief Resident. Meredith subsequently confronted him, in a fit of anger, telling him that she probably will get fired, and that she wanted him out of the house by the end of the day. And while he was actually updating the adoption agent, on the medical status of Zola, Meredith had the misconception that Alex was trying to ruin her chances of adopting the child.

However, it appeared that with Alex's apology, they mended their fences and went back to their former relationship, as he was there to provide some physical support, after Meredith learned that Zola had to be surrendered to Social Services for the time being. Cristina told Alex to help Meredith with trying to keep Zola from being taken from her, because Meredith was the only one who "gave a rat's ass" about Alex. Alex also spilled to Cristina that she and Meredith were all he had and that they were his family, and that realization made him help Meredith and attempt to get Social Services to let Meredith keep Zola. With the departure of Cristina, Alex became Meredith's new "person" and the closest thing to a brother she had.

After the death of Derek, Meredith left Seattle without telling anyone where she was going. Despite numerous calls from Alex, she refused to answer. She eventually FaceTimed him, saying that she and the kids were fine and she wished he would stop calling. When she later gave birth to Ellis, there was a problem and he was her emergency contact person, so the hospital called him and he came to San Diego to see her.

Sadie Harris
Sadie Harris was Meredith's best friend and she too hated Ellis. Following her graduation from college, when Meredith was in her twenties, she left to go traveling around Europe for two months with Sadie where they partied and drank frequently and experienced some of the adventures of "Death and Die." They had a big fight in Amsterdam, and though they made up and stayed friends, their friendship never truly recovered and they were never as close again. When Meredith received a call about her mother, she left Europe and went back to Seattle. Years later, Sadie made a surprise visit at Meredith's house and became an intern at Seattle Grace. Sadie and Meredith picked up their friendship as though no time had passed, causing Cristina to be extremely jealous. However, when George alerted the chief that Sadie did not seem to have much medical knowledge, she quit and asked Meredith to leave with her. But Meredith said she had a life now and could no longer be sleeping her way through Europe. Sadie told Meredith that the hospital had changed her and left.

April Kepner
When April first came to Seattle Grace, Meredith did not approve of her. When April came back after being fired, Meredith liked her even less, because she was way too friendly to Derek. Later, when Derek got shot, Meredith said that April didn't have the right to cry because of Derek, but she told Meredith that Reed, her best friend died. Meredith ended up comforting April, creating a bond. Later, Meredith let April and Jackson move into her house, and she admitted to liking April more and more, after she went off on a tirade, after being continually teased for being a virgin the whole day. Meredith and April appeared to have a relatively friendly relationship, with April often turning to Meredith for advice, and Meredith genuinely being kind to her.

Callie Torres
Although Callie and Meredith were friends, they were never great friends. Meredith allowed Callie to move into her house for a while and Callie saved her from embarrassment at work and gave her advice about her dog, but Meredith was better friends with Izzie, who disliked Callie, so she often sided with Izzie in arguments. After George and Callie divorced, Callie moved in with Meredith's best friend, Cristina, so she and Callie bonded a bit more and both of them protected her from Owen Hunt, when they thought he might hurt Cristina, after he choked her, while he was asleep. Callie played a big part of Meredith's career at the end of her residency, helping her study for the surgical boards that all 5th years take, helping Meredith pass. Callie and Meredith also have the common bond of being mothers which has helped their friendship a great deal. Meredith also helped Callie with the custody trial of Sofia and even comforted her after she lost sole custody to Arizona.

Richard Webber
Meredith Grey and Richard Webber had a very strained relationship for a very long time. He was the main cause behind her parents' divorce and because of him, she was always cast aside. Upon coming to Seattle Grace, they acted civil, but there were issues under the surface. Because he had been so close to Ellis, he felt close to Meredith, and he was close to her as a child and she thought that he thought he was her father. After she started disregarding his authority, Richard realized that although he was not a bad man, he was the bad man in her story. Richard started becoming frustrated with Meredith and even more so when he looked at her and was frustrated to see Ellis Grey inside her, the woman who he loved but had almost ruined his marriage. He never looked Meredith in the eye and eventually Derek Shepherd spoke to them both. He told Richard that he was the most professional man except for when it came to Meredith Grey, who he didn't always treat as a colleague. Richard apologized to Meredith for his actions in the past, he had been aware that she had grown up alone but never tried to stop it. The two forgave each other and it was proven by his fatherly behavior towards her during her solo surgery and her offering him the diaries of her mother. Meredith later tells a shooter that he should kill her because she is the closest thing Richard has to a daughter. Most of the doctors in the hospital acknowledge Richard and Meredith's relationship, often getting her to use her dead mommy connections to get something.

Meredith also helped get Richard and Catherine back together after their fight.

Owen Hunt
Meredith and Owen have had a turbulent relationship, as they have often clashed over Cristina, whom they both care about very much. In the beginning, Meredith was supportive of Owen and Cristina's relationship, but after he strangled Cristina during a PTSD nightmare, she gave him the cold shoulder and kept him away from Cristina. After they got back together, she was civil to Owen for Cristina's sake, although the two shared a few arguments over how to handle Cristina, as Meredith claimed to know her better than Owen did. The cold peace between them finally came to a stop when Meredith learned that he had cheated on Cristina, which resulted in her despising him for a long time. However, Cristina made her accept that she would decide her fate with Owen herself, and Meredith would just have to deal with it. Afterwards, her relationship with Owen got better, and upon Cristina's departure, she considered Owen as her friend and promised to be his person for Cristina. That promise soon came to use, as Nathan Riggs' arrival to the hospital caused Owen to become moody and isolated, prompting a worried Meredith to turn to his mother, who revealed her the truth behind Owen's mood.

Nathan Riggs
Nathan and Meredith were initially at odds, with her disliking him out of loyalty for Owen. Due to Owen's stories, she began to notice he was prone to making rash medical decisions, and their opinions quite often differed. However, she has shown to be able to put her dislike aside so it wouldn't affect patients, or when Nathan told her his side of the story. When Meredith had a bad day, he confronted her about it in the parking lot. They started arguing and ended up having sex in her car. It happened four times, but Meredith didn't want him to get too attached to her. He claimed he knew they were just friends who had sex, but during Owen and Amelia's wedding, he smilingly looked at her, indicating he had started to feel more for her. Later at the wedding, Nathan and Meredith flirted and he asked her to dance, only for Maggie to interrupt and dance with him, leaving Meredith to watch the two. Nathan continued to try to get closer to Meredith, and although she liked him, she kept brushing him off as she knew Maggie liked him too. Finally, Nathan showed up at Meredith's house, verbally confirming his feelings for her. Meredith lied to him, saying she didn't return the feelings, out of consideration for Maggie. Meredith also warned Nathan that Maggie was going to ask him out, which Nathan believed to be the reason Meredith rejected his pursuits. Nathan still wants to be friends (or a bit more) with Meredith but out of loyalty to Maggie, she continued to ignore him.

Miranda Bailey
Bailey was Meredith's resident and had earned the nicknamed "The Nazi" before Meredith had started at Seattle Grace. She rarely got involved with people and their problems, unless it affected their work. When Bailey found out about Derek and Meredith's relationship, she didn't speak to Meredith and would punish her, by sending her non surgical tasks, to even up the playing field when she felt that Derek was favoring-her. However, after their break-up, when Derek tried to talk to Meredith, Bailey grew protective and told him not to, that Meredith was hurt and he would just make it worse. Bailey taught Meredith and the interns with a tough love method. And as the interns became residents, Bailey became friendlier to them, often dispensing advice and chastisement when needed, while still managing to maintain her fearsome professional reputation as a doctor and general surgeon. She attends Derek and Meredith's Christmas dinner to impress her father, and shows a motherly protection over Meredith.

However, upon learning of Meredith's tampering with Derek's trial, she voices her strong disapproval of her, as evidenced from her interactions with Meredith, when she got fired, and the Chief, when asked to write a recommendation letter for her.

When a storm hit the city, Meredith went into labor and had started bleeding internally after giving birth. All of the surgeons were busy except for Bailey, who at the time was not operating because of her recent MRSA scare, but ultimately decided to save Meredith. Meredith's baby was named after Bailey.

Addison Forbes Montgomery
When Addison came to Seattle Grace although she wanted Derek back, she was civil to Meredith and even defended her in front of a mislead patient. In a scrub room, Addison told Meredith that if there was even a chance that Derek still loved her then she wasn't leaving Seattle but she would if he didn't. Derek chose Addison over Meredith, but when Derek and Meredith decided to be friends, Addison tried to be friends with her, too. The three stayed friends, even taking in Meredith's dog, but Addison sometimes felt tension between the two and realized that everybody knew Derek loved Meredith, except for Derek and Meredith. She and Derek eventually divorced but after a short while she managed to have a friendship with both of them. The relationship was proven when she came back to Seattle for a visit and hugged Meredith, although she was quite annoyed, and quite tempted to kick her ass physically, after learning that Meredith was letting Derek go off with Rose.

Mark Sloan
When Mark first met Meredith, he flirted with her and was punched in the face by Derek. Privately, she labeled him as “McSteamy”, and Mark called her "My Favorite Dirty Mistress," while she was high on morphine for pain management. But when he asked her out, she said no because she loved Derek. When Derek forgave Mark for breaking up his marriage and they resumed their friendship with him, Meredith too became friendly towards him, although Mark still threatened her, only half-jokingly, on her wedding day. He later dated her little sister against her wishes, which caused a fight between him and Derek. When the plane crashed and killed Lexie, both she and Mark were left shocked and distraught with Meredith crying hysterically and a depressed Mark had a heart complication.

Preston Burke
Because Burke was dating Cristina, Meredith and Derek were often invited over to their house for dinner and vice versa. She tried to mediate and fix things between Cristina and Preston, after Cristina went to Chief Webber, about the tremor in Burke's hand, but to no avail. However, Burke left Cristina on the day of their wedding and there was never any contact between them again. Except once, for Derek to tell Cristina about his resignation.

Erica Hahn
When Erica Hahn was hired at Seattle Grace, she almost immediately assigned Meredith to her service in order to see if Meredith had any of her mother's skill. She was impressed by Meredith but when Meredith lied and said she had performed a certain surgery when she hadn't, Hahn told her that if she did it again, she'd never let her operate in her OR again.

Career
After attending medical school, Meredith secured a spot at Seattle Grace Hospital as a surgical intern and moved from Boston to her mother's house in Seattle. She attended Dartmouth College.

Because of her mother's reputation, Meredith was often treated differently from other doctors, sometimes favored and sometimes disliked. Meredith showed promise as an intern, she made a difficult diagnosis on her first day and during the rest of her internship, she assisted in several advanced procedures, particularly neurosurgical cases.

After correctly diagnosing a patient with a brain tumor, she approached Derek Shepherd with the idea of a clinical trial. On their thirteenth patient, they had a success and the clinical trial was published in a medical journal and named The Shepherd Method. But she was not too pleased, to find that she was not mentioned in the article and was somewhat upset to hear from Derek that he was the one taking the risk, despite her doing all the work.

Soon after, Meredith discovered numerous journals belonging to her mother, while she learned more about her and also picked up some surgical skills and even a doll from her past, Anatomy Jane, which helped her save a young girl.

On her wedding day, she was given a colon removal operation, from Derek, as her first solo surgery, as a wedding present. Without any intervention from other doctors, she successfully completed the surgery, despite Richard and Mark observing in the background. Richard Webber informed her that her mother would have been proud, while Meredith said that her mother was likely to have been glad that she didn't kill anyone instead.

She later also performed a solo neurological surgery by herself, as Derek, the attending doctor, was occupied with another patient in another OR. When Derek was setting up the Alzheimer's trial, Meredith was there to assist him. But she was not entirely pleased to find out that he chose Alex, over her, to help him. It was only later, that Alex explained that Meredith was more suited to be his assistant, as she had personal experience, in dealing with the patients and family. But when she tampered with the sample that Adele was supposed to get, Alex suspected that something was amiss. That culminated in him outing her, while he was drunk, and she being suspended, before being fired by the board. Richard took the fall for her, but she and Derek agreed that they shouldn't be close at work too, so Meredith decided to leave neurosurgery.

Electing general surgery as her specialty, Meredith passed the boards and is now the Head of General Surgery at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.

Notes and Trivia

 * Meredith's Catch Phrases/Running Gags:
 * 1. Commonly using well-known phrases, but trails off at the end and replaces the last word with "whatever" e.g. "You're my knight in shining whatever"
 * 2. "Mc" Labeling: "McDreamy, McSteamy, McGuilty, McVet, McAss"
 * Meredith loves tequila.
 * Meredith states that Duran Duran, The Go Go's, and The Eurythmics are right answers to "What's your favorite 80s band?", suggesting that she enjoys their music.
 * Meredith does not like big weddings.
 * Her favorite ice cream is strawberry ice cream.
 * Her first patient was Katie Bryce.
 * Her blood type is AB.
 * Meredith hates it when people change channels during the commercials.
 * She's had both her appendix and spleen removed. She also donated part of her liver to her father, but a liver regenerates.
 * She was the angry pink hair kid in high school.
 * She knows how to swim.
 * Meredith used an iPhone with the password 1515 until she bought a new phone after Derek's death.
 * She does not play video games.
 * According to Chief Webber, Meredith has the best surgical skills. This is later reinforced by Callie agreeing with him.
 * Meredith is happy and cheerful when she is hopped up on morphine or drunk.
 * Meredith is a very intuitive surgeon with a natural flair for medicine.
 * In the original pilot script, Meredith was mentioned to be 32 when she started her internship, although it was never mentioned in the TV series. In Before and After, Meredith told Sadie that they were no longer 25, sleeping their way through Europe. Because a medical school application cycle takes at least a year in the US, and the medical school takes 4 years to complete, Meredith would have been at least 31 when she started her internship. When her dad left home, Meredith was 5. Because Thatcher was said to be only eventually remarried and Lexie is 24 when she started the internship, it also suggests that Meredith was at least 30 or 31 when she was an intern.
 * In the episode Thanks for the Memories, Cristina says to George over the phone in reference to alcohol "How is that possible? She's a W.A.S.P." This confirms that she's a W.A.S.P.
 * She lost her virginity to Paul Waxmen when she was 16 in her sophomore year of high school. She says he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
 * According to Meredith, she is a girl with abandonment issues.
 * Her mother and Richard Webber met when she was three.
 * She is Richard Webber's and Cristina Yang's medical proxy.
 * She had 4 letters of recommendation for her internship at Seattle Grace Hospital.
 * Throughout the first trimester of her pregnancy, she cried often, whether she was angry or happy.
 * Meredith requested that her roommates be non-smokers, have no pets, and absolutely no Bush supporters.
 * Meredith hates Chinese food.
 * She snores loudly, a trait which she inherited from her father, Thatcher.
 * Meredith is one of the "Grey Sloan Seven".
 * Meredith is one of the "Seattle Grace Five".
 * Meredith cares about the environment, which is the reason she initiated carpooling with Amelia, Maggie, Alex, and Jo.
 * Her password on her old phone was "1515". Her current phone password is "1008", which she revealed to Jo during a surgery.
 * She used to drive a Mercedes-Benz GL350 with license plate MRH 273. She currently drives a Lexus LX 570 with license plate NYL 360.
 * Amelia has referred to herself, Meredith, and Maggie as "Lady Chief Trifecta", "The House of Lady Chiefs", and "Sister Lady Chiefs".
 * When Meredith became an attending, she chose a plain purple scrub cap. However, after her husband's death, she now wears his favorite ferry boat scrub cap in his honor.
 * Her favorite Christmas gift was a suture kit.
 * Her emergency contact is Alex Karev.
 * She is not a Bush supporter.
 * Her pager extension is 2120.

Notable Episodes
These episodes are Meredith-centric or are otherwise very informative about her life.

Memorable Quotes

 * Meredith: The Game. They say a person either has what it takes to play, or they don't. My mother was one of the greats. Me on the other hand... I'm kinda screwed. I can't think of any one reason why I'd want to be a surgeon. But I can think of a thousand reasons why I should quit. They make it hard on purpose. There are lives in our hands. There comes a moment when it's more than just a game. And you either take that step forward or turn around and walk away. I could quit, but here's the thing … I love the playing field.


 * Meredith: Okay, here it is, your choice … it's simple, her or me, and I'm sure she is really great. But Derek, I love you, in a really, really big pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window, unfortunate way that makes me hate you, love you. So pick me, choose me, love me.


 * Derek: Ok. What do we wanna promise each other?
 * Meredith: That you'll love me... even when you hate me.
 * Derek: To love each other, even when we hate each other. No running. Ever! Nobody walks out. No matter what happens.
 * Meredith: No running.
 * Derek: What else?
 * Meredith: That we'll take care of each other, even when we're old, and smelly, and senile. And... if I get Alzheimer's and forget you...
 * Derek: I will remind you who I am, every day. To take care when old, senile, and smelly. This is forever. Sign.
 * Meredith: This is our wedding. A post it?
 * Derek: Mhmmm. If you sign it.
 * Meredith: Now what?
 * Derek: Now I kiss the bride. (They kiss)
 * Meredith: Married.
 * Derek: Married.


 * Meredith: At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. So, you can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines … that are way too dangerous to cross.


 * Meredith: You don't feel finished because this isn't the end for you. There is no finish line. There is no end point. You've just got to go.


 * Meredith: (to Cristina) Derek is the love of my life, but you're my soulmate

[storms out of bathroom]
 * Lexie: I forgive you.
 * Meredith: Lexie--
 * Lexie: No. I forgive you. I forgive you for treating me like crap, and I forgive you for letting your friend treat me like crap.
 * Meredith: Lexie...
 * Lexie: I don't know how you get up in the morning, I honestly don't. Our dad abandoned you. And your mom by all accounts was the meanest person ever and you can't let Derek love you, and it all really, really sucks. But ever since I knew you existed, I had this fantasy about my big sister, and you have failed on every occasion to live up to that fantasy. But I still love you whether you are capable of letting me or not. So, I forgive you.
 * Dr Wyatt: [comes out of bathroom stall] Two o'clock work for you?
 * Meredith:  Yeah... okay.


 * Meredith: I'm a doctor. Dr. Grey. I'm a surgeon, just like my husband was. I know how this works. You've waited the requisite number of hours, and now you can officially declare him dead. Normally, you'd talk to me about organ donation. But by the looks of his chart, there's not much left that works to donate. So, the ICU needs a bed. Those must be the papers... the papers you want me to sign to decide what to do with my husband... Now that he's dead, but not really dead. Do we ship him off to a long-term-care facility and cross our fingers and hope for fairy tales and magic? Or do I pull the plug? And stop all curative intervention? Discontinue all routine monitoring, remove all the catheters, drains, and tubes, end any and all treatments that might provide comfort to the patient. Terminate all life-sustaining measures... and behave as any sane doctor would behave. Does that about cover it, doctor? Is that what you want to talk to me about... while I sit here with my sleeping children? You want to talk about killing my husband? Give me the papers.


 * Meredith: Perfect Penny killed my husband.

Appearances
Meredith Grey Meredith Grey Meredith Grey