It’s training day at the Elena Bailey Reproductive Healthcare Clinic. A handful of OB/GYN and advocacy fellows from states with abortion bans and restrictive abortion laws are in Seattle to get clinical training on abortion care and reproductive health care that are no longer offered through their own residency programs. Where they’re from — places like Idaho, Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee — they can no longer be fully trained in the specialty of their choice. Let that miserable sentence sink in! The whole thing is spearheaded by Bailey and Addison, who’s been off making a name for herself with her mobile abortion clinic — she’s also been collecting a whole lot of enemies. About 100 of those enemies have somehow learned she’s in town and arrive to picket at the clinic. So what is supposed to be an empowering, important day quickly turns into a terrifying one.
Things start off pretty smoothly: Bailey, Addison, Carina, and Jo — a dream team of a vagina squad if ever there was one — lead training while assisting patients, and everyone is appropriately eager to be doing the work. Yasuda and Kwan are assigned to a best-friend pair, Marni and Andra. Marni is six weeks pregnant and there to get a medical abortion; Andra is 34 weeks pregnant and there for emotional support. Honestly, get yourself a friend like Andra, who went so far as to make an abortion playlist for Marni. Over the top? Sure, but supportive nonetheless. With this story line, Grey’s continues to do a bang-up job of showcasing the wide swath of reasons why a person might seek out an abortion. Here, Marni has some issues with her own mother and doesn’t feel ready to take on a child of her own. It’s as simple as that. Mika hands her the mifepristone and misoprostol, and the whole thing is done with very little fanfare.
But the crowd of protesters outside is growing, and eventually, a brick comes flying through one of the windows and hits Kwan right in the face. He’s fine, but things spiral from there. Everyone’s scared, and one of the trainees, who happens to be pregnant herself, admits to Kwan and Mika that she posted about working with Addison today and blames herself for the anti-abortion crowd finding out about the clinic. “We shouldn’t have to hide who we are to practice medicine,†Mika tells her.
Bailey tries to rally everyone and remind them why they’re here in the first place, and that they need to support one another as they fight the good fight. It turns out that it’s Addison who needs this Bailey speech the most. Bailey finds Addison sobbing in a supply closet. She’s been trying to put on a brave face, but all the vitriol she’s been facing while trying to run her mobile clinic has gotten to her. It would get to anyone — the online trolls, the doxxing, the need to buy a bulletproof vest, the harm she’s put her own family and now Bailey’s clinic in — it’s a lot. She doesn’t know how to assure the new OBs looking to her for guidance that everything will be okay, when she is very much not okay.
Addison gets a reminder as to why the work she’s doing is important, even if it is hard, when Andra goes into labor. Andra’s understandably upset since she wasn’t planning on going into early labor while trapped in a health clinic surrounded by people chanting “baby killer,†but at least she’s surrounded by some of the best OBs in town, and Bailey does something. She, well … Bailey starts singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,†the same song she uses to settle down Pru when she needs her to do something, and everyone else in the clinic joins in. It works! Andra agrees to push and Addison comes out to assist with the delivery and everyone is aweem away–ing their little hearts out. Listen, LISTEN, I know this sounds insane when it’s written out like this, but also the scene made me cry? I’m only 10 percent embarrassed to admit that because, babes, this is life when you watch Grey’s Anatomy.
Things seem to calm down after Andra delivers a healthy baby girl and they figure out a safe way to get everyone out of the clinic using the back door. But then, just as you think they’ve all survived the day, a protester in a car mows down Addison and the pregnant trainee in the middle of the street. Well, we knew it was going to be a two-parter, but this?! This?! We did not see this coming.
Let’s pivot from something a little less terrifying and a little more oh my God, do Lucas and Simone have it bad for each other. Lucas is having a — relatively, let’s be real, given what we just discussed — bad day. He forgot to pay the gas bill so his roommates are mad at him since there’s no hot water at home, and he’s working with Maggie on a 22-year-old patient with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and can seemingly do not one single thing correctly. He’s distracted and floundering. Nick notices and takes pity on the kid. They have a real Sad Boy Convention when Lucas admits that with Meredith gone, he doesn’t know what he’s doing at Grey Sloan anymore (Nick could say the very same thing!) and that he’s worried he’s only in this program because Mer did him a favor, not on his own merits. Nick tells him to quit with the bullshit — Meredith Grey would never hire someone for sentimentality. “She’s too good for that and so are you,†he tells him. He gives Lucas a lesson on how to present patients to attendings better and generally is just a great teacher. I’m sorry but I love Nick! Will he be staying around or will Meredith finally admit she heard him profess his love for her and have him move to Boston? I’m very torn about the whole thing.
Regardless, Nick boosts Lucas’s spirits just a bit. If only the guy knew what was going on with Simone, he might really feel like his day has turned around. In a terrible coincidence, the IPF patient, Jessica, is supposed to get a direct donation lung transplant from her boyfriend, RJ, but on the way to the hospital, RJ gets in a car accident and, you guessed it, has blunt-force trauma to his chest, gravely injuring his lungs. Winston and Owen pull off some major surgical wizardry in order to not only save RJ’s life but to allow for the possibility that one day he might be able to donate part of a lung again (for now Jessica’s transplant surgery is off), but that’s not the big news, at least not in my house.
There’s a great moment right before RJ’s surgery when Simone and Jules are scrubbing in: Simone admits that she and Lucas have kissed, and then she goes on and on about how she loves Trey and he’s an actual adult who can pay bills and he makes her happy. She is so wildly defensive, Jules gives the only correct response in this situation: “The kiss was good, huh?†Jules! Girl! You have no idea!
We get confirmation — like we needed any — that Jules is on the right track later, when Lucas brings Jessica to see RJ after his surgery. Lucas and Simone are left to stand there in the room as Jessica talks to her boyfriend about their first kiss, how “no one had ever kissed me like that before†and how it “changed my life in an instant.†The look on Lucas’s and Simone’s faces says that they understand exactly what she means. In fact, it’s so overwhelming, Simone has to run out of the room. And what does she do? She calls up Trey and tells him she wants to push their wedding up — she wants to get married next month. She tells him that it’s so her grandma is well enough to be there and enjoy it, but come on, we all know this hastily rushed wedding means Simone is trying to prove a point. Oh friends, this is going to be so messy and I welcome it wholeheartedly.
The OR Board
• How’s everyone feeling about the big news that Kelly McCreary is peacing out of Grey’s Anatomy in the next few weeks? I guess we have an answer as to if Maggie and Winston’s marital issues are a temporary rough patch or something more permanent, huh?
• An interesting development: After Winston’s big save in the OR, Owen tells him that he thinks it would be a mistake for him to leave cardiothoracics and become a vascular surgeon fellow. Is this setting things up so that once Maggie leaves, Winston can become head of cardio? This is my greatest wish for this man.
• Will wonders never cease? Teddy is thriving as chief of surgery! She and Owen do not argue one tiny bit! Are things turning around for this character?
• “Training Day†was also Kim Raver’s Grey’s Anatomy directorial debut, so that’s fun!
• The episode makes it a point to show Link super-worried about Jo while she’s over at the clinic; will this trauma finally get these ding-dongs to say they are in love with each other?