'Grey's Anatomy': Arizona's $25 million birthday surprise

Tonight's "Grey's Anatomy" was all about cases involving kids, which means Arizona Robbins and her unit where miracles and magic exist was front and center.

So magical, in fact, that while on rounds, the docs encounter Wallace, who at first seems like a wee Doogie Howser (he's about to turn 11), but is in fact a patient. Afflicted with short gut syndrome, he's been in the hospital for seven months and has been through 15 surgeries. Yet he's a remarkable kid, who Arizona helps with his math and science homework by letting him go on rounds. Wallace's parents, grateful that he's reaching his 11th birthday when they didn't think he'd ever see 9, decide to give $25 million to Seattle Grace/Mercy West, for research to find a cure for his condition.

Arizona, who shares a birthday (but won't make a big deal out of it) with Wallace, is stunned and grateful. The Chief and Larry Jennings (Mitch Pileggi) of the hospital board see dollar signs.

Karev is working with Bailey and Arizona in the nursery, taking care of some really sick babies including a little girl born at 30 weeks, who had a stroke in the womb after her mom was in a car accident and who doesn't look likely to make it. Reed inexplicably keeps hanging around a snarling Alex, whose life just got more complicated by Izzie's $200,000 treatment bill. The baby's mother, a neuro patient, is struggling to hang on but horrified at the thought that her baby could die before anyone has even held her. Alex takes care of the holding part in the nursery, all the while verbally swatting at Reed like a pesky fly. Bailey notices that being held has really helped the baby, and gets Alex to take off his shirt to have skin-to-skin contact with her.

Hunt and Callie are coping with Hillary, a 15-year-old girl who's managed to fall off a roof and break 52 bones. Then the tox screens come back, showing that she was high on mushrooms when she fell. Hillary scoffs at her parents' attempts to admonish her, saying (quite rightly) that she's a parent's dream: straight-A student, student council, runs the school newspaper and tutors underprivileged kids. She just "explored the bounds of her consciousness with mushrooms." "You're bummed I miscalculated because it reminds you of your own fallibility," she tells her astounded parents. "I'm bummed too. Let's just leave it at that."

But in surgery as Callie, Hunt, Avery, and Cristina basically rebuild the girl's legs, she ends up with an air embolism in her chest. Everyone wants to wait until cardio shows up, but Cristina jumps in and takes care of business with an unauthorized procedure, which sends everyone's heads exploding. In her defense, she wasn't just pulling a Hillary, doing what she wanted because she could. She knew what she was doing and had last done that procedure with the Chief -- which she tells Owen when he (rightly) reads her the riot act about how badly things could have gone and how wrong she was.

Your luck's going to run out at some point, he tells her later -- which actually seems to snap her out of her cocky haze, or at least enough to be self-aware about what happened and end up yelling at Hillary -- who was on the phone with a friend looking to score more drugs -- for being so stupid.

Back in the nursery, Reed keeps annoyingly hanging around, trying to help, or be nice to Alex, or whatever she's doing. But he's sitting there, shirtless, with this baby like he's her only line on life. In fact, she's his. He can't go home, he says. He doesn't know where Izzie is, she could be dead, he's got her giant hospital bill, and he can't do anything about any of it. But he can hold this baby. It's great stuff from Justin Chambers.

Getting back to Wallace -- he needs another operation, but Arizona cautions against it, saying he's not strong enough to handle it. She attempts to prepare his parents, but they're determined that he have surgery -- anything that will buy him a couple more months. Those parents will get the surgery whether you do it or not, the Chief says, pushing her into doing something she doesn't want and knows is wrong for the patient. Way to protect those dollars, Chief -- go ahead and sell out your surgeon and her career as long as you get your Benjamins. Where was that "can-do" spirit with Isaac's tumor last week?

Arizona's really troubled by what she's facing, and relies on Callie for a pep talk, which Callie is only semi-good at. Wallace clearly knows what's up -- he's a sick kid who's seen other sick kids die, and he's scared that the same thing will happen to him. Things aren't going well in the OR, particularly with the Chief watching, but Charles emerges from his jackhole shell for long enough to help calm down a jittery Arizona -- and Wallace pulls through. But she gets paged back in when the boy goes into septic shock, and ends up furiously and absolutely correctly telling the chief to get the hell out of her OR, since all he sees when he looks at that boy is a $25 million pile of cash.

I have no idea how someone gets away with talking to her boss that way, but it's making me wonder how many more of these confrontations will need to take place before the Chief gets it through his thick skull. The way he and Jennings have been hovering around this case -- while understandable -- is still unbelievably transparent, if not somewhat ghoulish.

Wallace doesn't make it, and Arizona puts the responsibility for telling his parents on the Chief and Jennings. She's upset, she's a liability, and she knows it. Which is what she's carrying around with her when she walks into the surprise party Callie planned for her. Mark Sloan couldn't have been more right about what a bad idea that was. Worst. Idea. Ever. On top of it, Callie's not exactly the greatest at comforting her crying girlfriend, who does pull it together and goes back to the hospital. She takes Wallace's parents to see him, and in a touching moment does a "bad dreams go away/good dreams come to stay" ritual where his mother leaves off. And Wallace's father tells the Chief and Jennings in no uncertain terms that Arizona is the reason that they'll still be giving the $25 million -- not because of them or their ass-kissing. Bravo.

In the end, Arizona pulls it together, coming home to the aftermath of a party, including hats, gifts, donuts, and a girlfriend in one heck of a nightgown. She tells Callie she loves her, pretty much blowing Torres right out of her socks. And Callie loves her back.

Some other notes:

• Derek and Mark's reactions to a shirtless Alex holding the baby were priceless. Derek: "Have you started to lactate yet?" Sloan: "Is this the room for the calendar shoot? I was told it was downstairs." Reed, unsurprisingly, practically drools. Hey, the guy was a Calvin Klein model -- he looks good.
• So proud of Cristina for not throwing things with Owen away when Avery planted one on her at Arizona's party, and for both acknowledging that he had reason to be upset and taking him home.
• Not nearly enough Bailey in this episode for my taste, but it was great to see how Hunt worked together with Callie and Arizona. It was also a practically Derek-free episode, but the bit about him not accepting his firing and being fine with the Chief ignoring him was pretty good.
• I miss Eric Dane's facial hair.
  
• It's kind of funny to see Callie and Cristina's apartment becoming the kind of gathering place that Meredith's house used to be.
• Married happy Meredith is kind of cute. I wouldn't necessarily have bought it before, but it seems to fit now.

AND, based on the promos: both Meredith and Izzie return next week!!

What did you think? Do you think Cristina should face more serious consequences after her OR performance? Are you feeling better about the slightly smaller role (except for Reed) of the Mercy West residents this week? Did you want to deck the Chief? Do you want to see more of shirtless Alex?

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