When I Get to the Border
Season 19 • Episode 5
[Warning: The below contains major spoilers for the Grey’s Anatomy Season 19, Episode 5, “When I Get to the Border.”]
Now we all know why Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) is leaving Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital on Grey’s Anatomy. Whether it’ll be a brief or everlasting departure, although, stays to be seen!
But we’re getting forward of ourselves. At the beginning of Season 19, Episode 5 — November 3’s “When I Get to the Border” — Meredith and Zola (Aniela Gumbs) are touring Brookline STEAM Academy in Boston. It’s one of some totally different colleges they’re testing as they attempt to discover a extra supportive setting for a pupil as gifted as Zola is.
And whereas Zola spends a college day together with her attainable new classmates, Mer checks in with an previous buddy who lives there in Beantown: Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams). And she tells him that she thinks she’s having a psychological breakdown.
Raymond Liu/ABC
Jackson, in fact, continues to be heading the Catherine Fox Foundation. And when he hears from Meredith that Zola is experiencing extreme nervousness and is particularly nervous about Mer getting Alzheimer’s, Jackson has a easy answer: “What if you tried to cure Alzheimer’s?” he asks Mer.
Easy, proper? Well, no, however Jackson thinks Mer attempting to treatment the illness that killed her mom would get the form of funding that results in medical breakthroughs. He needs Mer to work on the challenge from Boston.
Mer doesn’t need to put Zola by means of much more upheaval, however Jackson continues the onerous promote, telling her that he was operating on “cruise control” in his life till he reconnected together with his father and realized he didn’t need to stay with failed potential like Robert Avery did. He thinks Zola’s present disaster and Mer’s profession trajectory are dovetailing. “Maybe it’s all these pieces of your life coming together,” he says. “I kinda think you’re having a breakthrough, not a breakdown.”
Liliane Lathan/ABC
And when Mer returns to the Brookline college, she finds Zola bonding with different ladies over a physics demonstration. Zola tries taking part in it cool in regards to the college, however it’s only a entrance. She simply doesn’t need her mother giving up her job. And as soon as Mer tells Zola to let her fear about her profession, Zola confesses that she loves it in Boston. So Mer sends Jackson a textual content: “I’m in.”
The B-plot of the episode follows Bailey (Chandra Wilson) and Addison (Kate Walsh) as they drive from Grey Sloan to Pullman, WA, to volunteer on the Eastern Washington Family Planning Center, a clinic run by Bailey’s school roommate, Cynthia. The clinic desperately wants extra employees, since ladies have been flocking there from Idaho, the place abortion is illegitimate. Bailey and Addison, nonetheless, can barely get to the entrance door of the clinic on account of all of the anti-abortion protestors mobbing the doorway.
Liliane Lathan/ABC
Bailey and Addison deal with some sufferers on the clinic, however then Cynthia will get an emergency name from close by Moscow, ID, the place a 39-year-old lady named Susan is wants medical consideration that she will be able to’t legally entry. Susan has an ectopic being pregnant, with the fetus hooked up to her C-section scar.
So Bailey and Addison, calling themselves the “medical Thelma and Louise,” drive throughout state traces to retrieve Susan. But Susan begins bleeding on the best way again — simply as Bailey, within the driver’s seat, encounters a site visitors jam. Addison clambers to the again seat and does what she will be able to to cease Susan’s bleeding, however Susan flatlines, and never even Addison’s roadside CPR can save her.
Addison is infuriated that anti-abortion legal guidelines price Susan her life. “How are we supposed to treat patients when we are hamstrung by laws that are written by people who are so far away from this?” she asks, pointing to the puddle of blood that marks the place Susan died.
Later, Bailey tells Addison she as soon as had an incomplete miscarriage and wanted a dilation and curettage (D&C), which she says is identical factor as an abortion. Now she needs to coach Grey Sloan docs within the process.
And once they get again to Seattle, Addison tells Bailey she needs to journey to the place ladies want her, and Bailey has an thought. Bailey reveals Addison the Physician Response Team truck, the cell working room that her husband, Ben, was utilizing earlier than the town mothballed the challenge. And Addison, seeing this gleaming “operating room on wheels,” is all smiles.
Liliane Lathan/ABC
Back in Boston, we see two extra acquainted faces, as Catherine Avery (Debbie Allen) meets with Tom Koracick (Greg Germann) on what she tells Jackson is a secret challenge. But the key is that Catherine’s tumor is rising, and she or he’s not telling anybody however Tom, her physician. Tom pleads with Catherine to inform Jackson and Richard in regards to the growth. “Your son thinks you’re still in remission,” he says.
But Catherine has been pursuing various therapies, and she or he needs to spend no matter time she has left — even when it’s solely a “few good years” — truly dwelling. “I am lying to protect my privacy and my peace,” she says.
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There is a few Grey Sloan motion on this episode, however not the form of “action” that members of the brand new intern class suppose is going on. Adams (Niko Terho) has been serving to Amelia (Caterina Scorsone), his hush-hush aunt, with childcare whereas Meredith is out. But all the opposite interns simply suppose he’s chipping in as a result of he and Amelia are sleeping collectively.
Kwan (Harry Shum Jr.) tells Amelia that he is aware of about her and Adams’ secret, and she or he’s relieved to listen to that the remainder of the interns know now. Of course, Amelia and Kwan speaking about two various things, which Amelia begins to know as soon as Kwan asks for extra surgical procedures and makes a giant level of telling her he’s good together with his palms.
Adams intervenes and pulls Amelia into an empty affected person room, and that’s the place he lets on that the opposite interns suppose they’re having intercourse. Amelia, shocked, begins placing the items collectively. “Kwan was just trading me sexual favors in return for surgeries!” she exclaims.
Amelia tells Adams to clear up the misunderstanding, however Adams blames her for making it exceedingly onerous for him to fake like he and Amelia aren’t associated. He says that he has all the time lived with folks considering he has an unfair benefit as a result of he’s a Shepherd. “I thought I’d see what happens when I’m not one,” he provides.
But Amelia is unmoved. She is horrified that the opposite interns suppose she’s giving an edge to an intern boy-toy. This is her skilled fame at stake, in any case. “You have three days,” Amelia tells Adams. “And then if you haven’t told them, I will.”
Maybe it’s higher Mer is shrugging off the Grey Sloan interim chief place — now that one other HR concern is headed to her inbox!
Grey’s Anatomy, Thursdays, 9/8c, ABC