Some Kind of Miracle

"There are medical miracles. Being worshippers of the altar of science, we don't like to believe miracles exist. But they do. Things happen. We can't explain them, we can't control them, but they do happen. Miracles do happen in medicine. They happen everyday, just not always when we need them to happen. At the end of a day like this, a day when so many prayers are answered and so many aren’t, we take our miracles where we find them. We reach across the gap and sometimes, against all odds, against all logic, we touch."

- Meredith Grey

 is the seventeenth episode of the third season and the 53rd overall episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Short Summary
Meredith fights to stay alive, as Derek fights to hold himself together. Cristina is unable to handle the reality of the situation and leaves.

Full Summary
Meredith awakes in an afterlife version of the trauma room. There she meets Denny Duquette; Dylan Young; her mother's scrub nurse, Elizabeth Fallon; and a former patient of hers, Bonnie Crasnoff, who died.

Meredith won't accept that she is dead and shuts Denny and Dylan up. She says, if this was her afterlife the person she wishes to see the most is her former dog, Doc. Doc appears and Meredith cheerfully welcomes him. After that Denny and the others try to make Meredith understand that she has not much time and has to decide if she wants to die or not. Meredith doesn't want to listen to them. Shortly after that, Bonnie starts to bleed out and "dies".

Meanwhile, in the real world, The Chief, Dr. Bailey and Dr. Burke try to resuscitate her without success. They all are wondering if they should stop, but then Richard reminds them that Meredith is not dead until she is warm and dead, so they try to warm her up with warm IV fluids and blankets. During the warming process, Addison enters the room and looks at Meredith with surprise and disbelief of the situation and she whispers that Meredith couldn't do that to Derek. After Addison is paged away to Jane Doe, she finds Derek sitting in the hallway and gives him a summary of the things happening.

In the meantime, Cristina goes out on a shopping spree and ends up in Joe's Bar and starts drinking. When Joe asks why she isn't at the hospital saving people, Cristina answers him that she is coping. At the same time, Derek is wandering around in the hospital and ends up in Ellis Grey's room, where he yells at her that she has broken her daughter. He only stops after Addison interrupts him.

Meanwhile in the afterlife, Meredith talks to Denny. After a while Meredith admits to him and herself that she,while drowning in the bay, she doesn`t saw the sense in living anymore. After Denny talks to her about the feeling of being dead, Meredith realizes that she actually wants to live. After that recognition, water starts floating in to the trauma room and Meredith realizes that she is out of time.

After a while Preston enters the bar and talks to Cristina about Meredith, the bond they share and her guilt if she will not go back to the hospital. After that conversation Burke gets paged and leafs Cristina to think about that. At the same time Ellis starts to crash, so that Derek enters the room again and starts to resuscitate her. In the trauma room Richard, Preston and Miranda recognize that Meredith is now warm and still has no heart beat. They are ready to give up, but then Cristina enters the room and asks if they can try it one more time.



Main Cast

 * Ellen Pompeo as Dr. Meredith Grey
 * Sandra Oh as Dr. Cristina Yang
 * Katherine Heigl as Dr. Izzie Stevens
 * Justin Chambers as Dr. Alex Karev
 * T.R. Knight as Dr. George O'Malley
 * Chandra Wilson as Dr. Miranda Bailey
 * James Pickens, Jr. as Dr. Richard Webber
 * Kate Walsh as Dr. Addison Montgomery
 * Sara Ramírez as Dr. Callie Torres
 * Eric Dane as Dr. Mark Sloan
 * Isaiah Washington as Dr. Preston Burke
 * Patrick Dempsey as Dr. Derek Shepherd

Special Guest Star

 * Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Denny Duquette
 * Kyle Chandler as Dylan Young

Guest Starring

 * Elizabeth Reaser as Jane Doe
 * Anna Maria Horsford as Elizabeth Fallon
 * Monica Keena as Bonnie Crasnoff
 * Kali Rocha as Dr. Sydney Heron
 * Steven W. Bailey as Joe
 * Sarah Utterback as Nurse Olivia Harper
 * Kate Burton as Ellis Grey

Co-Starring

 * Moe Irvin as Nurse Tyler
 * David Downs as Man
 * Yvette Cruise as ICU Nurse
 * Billy Wood as Perfusionist

Notes and Trivia

 * This episode's title originated from the song Some Kind of Miracle, originally sung by Kelly Clarkson.
 * This episode scored 27.39 million viewers, making it the most watched episode in the show's history.

Quotes

 * Meredith: I was swimming. I was fighting. And then I thought, just for a second, I thought "What’s the point?’ And then I let go. I stopped fighting. Don’t tell anybody."
 * Denny: Okay
 * Meredith: What?
 * Denny: Izzie.
 * Meredith: You can see her?
 * Denny: No. Sometimes we’d be at the same place at exactly the same time and I can almost hear her voice. It’s like I’m touching her. I like to believe she knows I’m there. That’s all you get. That’s it. Moments with the people you love. And they’ll move on and you’ll want them to move on. But still, Meredith, that’s all you get. Moments.
 * Meredith: Is this really happening?
 * Denny: I don’t know. This is your afterlife, not mine.


 * Denny: What happened in that water?
 * Meredith: I swam, I fought.
 * Denny: No, you didn't, and you can't stay here, Meredith.
 * Meredith: I don't want to!
 * Denny: Yeah, you do. It's easier, but you can't. Because George's Dad died, because Izzie lost me, and Cristina, when she was nine she was in a car accident with her Father and he bled out right in front of her while they waited for an ambulance to arrive, and Alex...
 * Meredith: Stop!
 * Denny: They are barely breathing, this will break them, and none of them deserves that. And this, this is the big one, so you pay attention. Do you know what kind of miracle it is that Derek is who he is? Do you know how rare it is that someone like him even exists? He's still an optimist. He still believes in true love and magic and soul mates. He's waiting for you, and if you don't come back from this...you will change who he is.
 * Meredith: Oh, God...