Stairway to Heaven

Episode Guide

Mark. Has. A. Broken. Penis. Sorry, but it had to be said slowly in order to believe it. How will he react? Also, Izzie finally gets a clue about why Denny has come back and they say (the final?) goodbye. The Chief, Bailey, and Meredith all cross a line, and Cristina gives things another chance.

On to the recap. Mark and Lexie sneak into the On-Call room for a booty call. The interns are outside the room listening to the fun and getting pissed because they can never get in there to catch some sleep.

Inside, Lexie gets up off the floor and notes that “it’s all bent.” Mark sends her to find Callie, who tries to blow Lexie off until Little Grey conveys that she "broke" Mark.

Callie calls in Owen for a consult.The interns speculate loudly on the ID of the woman who broke the legend Mark Sloan and almost figure out that it was Lexie before Sadie jumps in and says that she did it to cover for Lexie.

Mark is too embarassed to look at Lexie until she insists on laying next to him and stroking his hair because that’s what she likes when she’s hurt.

William Dunn, the PDR patient, is where we left him - smashing his head into the bed. Eventually, his brain takes enough damage and he goes into a seizure.

Oustide the room, Meredith is calmly charting. Sadie runs up and asks if they should do anything. Meredith tells her a nurse will get them if it’s serious.

On cue, a nurse rushes out to tell the doctors that he is seizing.

They eventually bring him out of the seizure. The plan is obviously to let him die in the hospital so that he doesn’t have to go through with an execution and Jefferson can have his organs.

Meredith brings Bailey into the plan, but Bailey scoffs at the ethical implications and tells Meredith that she needs to page Shepherd.

Meredith, of course, knows what will happen if she pages Derek, so she decides to just keep William tucked away for now.

Derek has been running around showing off his mom’s ring that he is planning on giving Meredith. He even asks Cristina whether she thinks he should give it to Meredith as/is or upgrade the setting.

She's still pissed at Meredith, though, and tells Derek that he should ask someone else, even after he encourages her to bury the hatchet.

Speaking of freaking out, Owen tracks down Yang to apologize for the night before and ask for one more chance. She’s leery but agrees.

Meredith’s plan falls apart when Cristina comes by to check on the patient. Meredith tries to tell her that she has it covered, but Yang’s not feeling terribly trusting and checks it out herself.

Yang, of course, instantly pages Derek.

Shepherd is predictably angry with Meredith and makes her scrub in to watch him try to fix her mess. Because he’s Derek, he pulls it off.

Later, back in the recovery room, the patient tries to tell Meredith that he played her and was trying to ruin her career as one last kick.

As one last request, he asks her to be the one friendly face in a sea of strangers at his execution.

For some crazy reason, she agrees.

The execution has a rough effect on her and she runs out of the prison right into the arms of Derek, who came to support her.

He next shows up at Cristina’s door saying that Meredith can’t stop crying. She initially thinks that it’s because Derek proposed, but he tells her that Meredith went to the execution.

Cristina goes down and gets into the car to talk to Meredith. As they begin to talk, we hear exactly what Derek hears from the bench outside Cristina’s apartment - absolutely nothing. But presumably they are patching things up.

Denny basically follows Izzie around like a nuisance, yelling at her and the like. Izzie keeps asking for an explanation as to why she's there, but all Denny says is that she’s a doctor and should be able to figure it out.

Izzy finally figures out that she’s sick and dying. She’s pissed that Denny didn't tell her and tells him to just go away. He kisses her and disappears.

Bailey’s little patient is fading fast after his body rejected that last set of organs. He’s now at the top of the waiting list.

Everyone is running around like crazy trying to find a donor and/or a way to prolong Jefferson’s life long enough to find those new donor organs.

Bailey’s resolve weakens and she barges into the operating room where Derek is operating on William to ask Derek to let the serial killer die.

In mid-surgery, Derek eventually talks her out of the idea when he points out that they’d essentially be executing him.

The Chief finds a man about to be disconnected from life support and tries to convince his wife to donate his organs to the boy.

The wife initially tells the Chief to get out of the man’s room, that she can’t take anymore after having to make the decision to let him die.

The Chief leaves, but keeps coming back, pushing her to donate the organs. He later tells Bailey that he crossed a line, but he went way further.

Eventually, the woman relents and the Chief rushes into Jefferson’s room to tell the others just as they have given up. They perform the transplant and he doesn’t reject the organs,

Bailey still worries that they waited too long and he may never wake up or have brain damage. But he does wake up and everyone’s happy.

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Vitals

Season: 5, Episode: 13
Air Date: 1/22/2009

Rating: 9.5 / 10

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Pictures

Videos

Quotes

Denny (narrating): Heaven. Hell. Limbo. No-one even knows where we're going. Or what's waiting for us when we get there. But the one thing we can say, with absolute certainty, is that there are moments that take us to another place. Moments of Heaven on Earth. And maybe for now, that's all we need to know.

Music

Emiliana Torrini - "Birds"
Bon Iver - "Blindsided"