Suddenly

"Victims of a sudden impact are some of the hardest to treat. It’s not just the collision that injures them, it’s everything after, the centrifugal force keeps them moving; tossing them from vehicles, throwing them through windshields, slamming their internal organs into the skeleton, their bodies are injured over and over again. So there’s no way to know how much damage is actually been done until they stop. You can't prepare for a sudden impact. You can't brace yourself. It just hits you. Out of nowhere. And suddenly the life you knew before is over. Forever."

- Meredith Grey

 is the tenth episode of the eighth season and the 158th overall episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Short Summary
A severe car crash involving an entire family results in an all-hands-on situation in the ER, as the eldest daughter is left to make the toughest decision of her life. Meanwhile Teddy, still in the dark about Henry's death, calls upon Cristina to help with her patient in the O.R., and Lexie finds herself working alongside Mark's new girlfriend, Julia, during an eye surgery.

Full Summary
Meredith and Alex take in the horrific accident scene outside their ambulance, and immediately start trying to help the victims who can be helped.

At the hospital, Webber, Bailey and Hunt wonder how long they can go without telling Teddy -- who is repairing a woman's heart -- that Henry is dead.

The accident scene is chaos. Meredith tries to keep a teenage girl calm. She's handed the baby from the ambulance to the girl and instructed her to hold the baby and keep pumping the baby's respirator while Meredith works on the accident victims. Meanwhile, they learn there is yet another accident victim, a boy whose legs are trapped under the car. Alex sees another car's headlights rounding the corner and Meredith, in a dramatic moment, decides to stand in front of the oncoming car so it won't run into the overturned car. As the vehicle turns the corner, they see it's an ambulance that stops at the scene.

Meredith and Alex get back to the hospital with the accident victims. Derek wants Meredith to get treated for the cut on her head, but she wants to focus on the victims.

April comes out from Teddy's surgery to see if she can help with the accident victims, but Hunt tells her to go back and tell Teddy she wasn't needed. Hunt then explains to April that Henry died in surgery, and April gets emotional. Hunt tells her to back to the gallery and watch the surgery from there, because he can't risk April breaking down in front of Teddy.

Arizona tells Alex he's done "extraordinary work" getting the baby back to the hospital safely while making it through the accident. But she tells him to sit the rest of this one out because of what he's been through. He leaves unhappily.

Teddy pages "911" from her surgery and Hunt goes to see what's going on, fearing she knows about Henry. Instead, he finds her asking for Cristina because she needs her help, but Cristina isn't responding. She's insisting on having Cristina help her. Hunt says Cristina's exhausted, but Teddy demands that she help.

Sloan is preparing to operate on one of the accident victims who has a shard of glass in her eye. He calls his new girlfriend, a surgeon at Seattle Presbyterian, to come help. Meanwhile, Meredith tried to save the mother of the family, while the teenage girl watches from the window. Meredith tries in vain to restart the mother's heart, and helplessly announces the time of death while seeing the woman's daughter crying in the window.

Alex tries to "sit it out," as Arizona requested, but can't help himself. He's back working on the baby when Arizona comes back. He tells her he "didn't go through hell with this kid to just back off." She relents, and asks him to "just slow down."

Hunt chases down Cristina, who realizes that Hunt hasn't told Teddy about Henry yet. Cristina doesn't want to operate anymore, and especially after learning that Teddy doesn't know about Henry. But he convinces her it's worth it to save someone's life.

Sloan's girlfriend is now at the hospital looking at scans with Derek, Sloan and Lexie. They agree to try to save the patient's eye, even though it's risky. Lexie is uncomfortable with her new colleague. They already have a history, given the softball game, where Lexie beaned Sloan's girlfriend on purpose. Sloan's girlfriend is now referring to Lexie as "Fastball."

Meredith asks the teenage girl, who is a wreck after watching her mother die, and knowing that her father is also in trouble.

Sloan's girlfriend is a bit of a maverick in surgery, making Derek a little nervous at first. But she successfully gets the shard of glass out of the eye.

Bailey is in surgery, working on the boy whose legs were trapped under the car. He has a tear in his liver. His heart rate and temperature increase, and they all race to get ice and decrease the temperature in the room as low as it will go, as he's at risk of malignant hyperthermia.

Cristina braces herself and heads into the O.R. to help Teddy. She holds it together at first, but Teddy quickly tells her, "Thank you for Henry." Teddy tells Cristina she's sorry they had to lie to her about who she was operating on, "but you were the only that I trusted to do it." She asks Cristina if she gets it or if she's mad. Cristina says, "No," and leaves to scrub in.

Callie is upset that Hunt put Cristina in the same O.R. with Teddy while her (Callie's) patient is on the table. Hunt reminds Callie that her mistake is what got everyone into this mess, and she says nothing.

Back in the O.R., Teddy wonders what April is doing up in the gallery while there's a big trauma going on. She also asks Cristina if she got a chance to check on Henry, post-op. Cristina ignores this and says April is in the gallery because no surgeon wanted to work with her, and she proceeds to make fun of April's screechy voice. April can hear all this through the gallery's speakers. Avery walked in to join April, who tells Avery that Cristina is making fun of her because she can't handle the Henry situation. Avery offers to turn off the intercom, but April says she can handle it. In the surgery, Teddy decides to take the heart out to do the work before putting it back in. She asks Cristina if she can handle and Cristina says, "You bet."

In her surgery, Meredith realizes the boy's condition and reaction to the drugs they gave him is genetic. She runs to warn the surgeons operating on his sister and father. Back in the O.R., Bailey thanks Dr. Warren for noticing the boy's condition and he says he didn't want her to lose another patient today (referring to Henry, who was part of the clinical trial).

Alex comes rushing back to do a procedure on the baby. He tells Arizona he forgot to do it, but she reminds him that she watched him do it. She insists, this time, that he take a break. She checks his pulse and he wonders what's going on.

Teddy compliments Cristina on her work on the heart, and tells Cristina to shout, "Woo!" repeatedly to help her stay awake. Owen comes to the gallery and asks April what they're doing. She says, "I think they're having fun."

The teenage girl sits at her father's side, telling him she's "sorry for being such a jerk on the camping trip." She says she'll help her brother with his homework and babysit. Meredith comes to tell the girl that her brother and sister are OK. The girl asks Meredith to make sure nobody tells her siblings about their mother dying. She wants to be the one to tell them. Meredith says yes, and then the girl's dad codes. The girl steps to the side and again watches Meredith try to save her parent.

Avery gives the husband of the heart patient an update, explaining that they had to take her heart out to do the repair, but it went well and everything is good. The man gets upset at Avery's characterization that things are "good" while his wife's "body is in pieces on some O.R. table." Avery apologizes. The man says nothing and Avery walks away.

Alex is stitching up Meredith's forehead. She gives him the update that the kids are doing well, but the oldest daughter of the family watched her mother die and now won't leave her father's side as he keeps coding. Suddenly, he codes again and Meredith goes in again to try to save him. Meredith tries to get the girl to leave the room, but she demands to stay.

Sloan's girlfriend finishes her part of the eye surgery and asks Lexie to come with her to give her the post-op instructions. Outside, she reveals that she was incredibly nervous while operating with Derek. She thanks Lexie, who tells her she was completely on top of it. After she leaves, Lexie tells herself, "Dammit. Now I like her."

The teenage girl's father is now on life support, and Meredith explains to her that it's getting harder and harder on her father's body every time they revive him. Meredith tells her that his organs are also starting to fail. The girl asks Meredith again about the "extraordinary measures" she'd asked about previously. She asks if these are extraordinary measures, and Meredith says yes. She asks Meredith to take him off life support, and Meredith says it's not that simple because she's a child. The girl explains that she turned 18 four hours earlier. It's her birthday, and she's spent several hours watching the doctors "torture" her dad. She asks Meredith to take him off life support and if he lives, he lives. If not, he should go peacefully.

Back in the O.R., Teddy asks Cristina if she wants to close up the patient. Cristina says April can close, and looks up at April, who's still in the gallery, and tells her to close the patient. She asks Teddy if she can speak with her privately. Cristina gathers herself and very professionally explains to her the complications that arose when they operated on Henry. She finishes with, "He did not survive the surgery." Teddy starts to cry and asks Cristina to say that he's dead. She never really thought about how and why doctors are trained to deliberately say to the family that their loved one is "dead," but it's so that the finality actually registers. She asks Cristina again to say it, and Cristina tells her, "Henry is dead." Teddy thanks her, cries and leaves the room. Cristina lets out a massive breath.

Hunt finds Cristina and asks where Teddy is. Cristina is livid that Hunt made her stay in a room with Teddy and lie to her and joke with her. Cristina tells Hunt, who's upset that Cristina told Teddy, that it isn't about him and it doesn't matter who told Teddy. Hunt tries to apologize to Cristina, but she says she doesn't want to hear it. She tells him Teddy won't, either.

Teddy goes to see Henry's body and cries.

The 18-year-old's father is taken off life support, and she hands Webber the signed form making it official. She asks Meredith what happens now, and Meredith explains the process of organ failure and that when there's no pulse or breathing, then he's gone. Meredith says she'll wait outside, but the young woman asks her to stay with her, and Meredith hugs her while she cries.

Avery tells Callie she "should be taking the fall for this," and she agrees, but says it's actually on her because she's his attending and that means she has to take the fall for his mistakes. She tells him she hopes he's learned something and will double check his work. She tells him she now has to go talk to the family, which hates her almost as much as she hates herself. She goes to talk to the woman's husband, who is still extremely upset and tells Callie he needs a "real explanation" as to what happened. Avery stands to the side and watches.

Bailey apologizes to Dr. Warren for lashing out earlier when he mentioned Henry. She says she needed some space. They're sitting in a break room and he's a few tables over. She finally tells him she wouldn't mind if he didn't give her quite so much space, so he comes over to her table and sits down.

Meredith leaves the 18-year-old girl in a room with her younger brother and sister, and the young woman gives her a very slight, thankful smile.

At home, Meredith and Derek get some rest after a 39-hour day. She says she ordered a pizza. He tells her they'll be OK, the two of them. The door bell rings, but it isn't a pizza delivery. Meredith stands at the doorway looking at Janet, the social worker, who is holding Zola. They both smile and hug and kiss the baby.

Main Cast

 * Ellen Pompeo as Dr. Meredith Grey
 * Sandra Oh as Dr. Cristina Yang
 * Justin Chambers as Dr. Alex Karev
 * Chandra Wilson as Dr. Miranda Bailey
 * James Pickens, Jr. as Dr. Richard Webber
 * Sara Ramírez as Dr. Callie Torres
 * Eric Dane as Dr. Mark Sloan
 * Chyler Leigh as Dr. Lexie Grey
 * Kevin McKidd as Dr. Owen Hunt
 * Jessica Capshaw as Dr. Arizona Robbins
 * Kim Raver as Dr. Teddy Altman
 * Sarah Drew as Dr. April Kepner
 * Jesse Williams as Dr. Jackson Avery
 * Patrick Dempsey as Dr. Derek Shepherd

Guest Stars

 * Scott Foley as Henry Burton
 * Jason George as Dr. Ben Warren
 * Dylan Bruno as Griffin Lewis
 * Holley Fain as Dr. Julia Canner
 * Stella Maeve as Lily

Co-Starring

 * Janora McDuffie as Social Worker Janet
 * Amber Bela Muse as Laura
 * Dan Conroy as Robert
 * Saige Ryan Campbell as Abby
 * Bridger Zeiden as Michael
 * Evelyn Reese as Grandma
 * Denice Sealy as Nurse
 * Jeffrey Muller as Code Team Person
 * Justin Benson as Drew

Notes and Trivia
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 * This episode's title originated from the song Suddenly, originally sung by Billy Ocean.
 * This episode scored 12.12 million viewers.
 * Some sound effects used in this episode were previously used in both parts of the Grey's Anatomy Season 6 finale.

Quotes

 * Teddy: I need another me and Cristina is the closes thing. Don't tell her I said that.


 * Mark (to Derek): Your ex-wife was brilliant and she slept with me.