Grey's Anatomy Episode 6.06 I Saw What I Saw

After a terrible hotel fire, we bite our nails as the staff is interrogated about their part in caring for a woman who died, although she was admitted with only minor burns. Everyone was to blame, in some way, as we see that Mrs. Becker was handed off from doctor to doctor, each one busy with more critical patients.

We watch in horror knowing that poor Mrs. Becker will be dead at the end of the hour. She tells the doctors she feels fine, and her injuries certainly can't compete with a teen who is screaming in pain from third-degree burns or a firefighter with an ax stuck in his chest!

As if the fire isn't enough, all the doctors are having the worst day ever: Alex has been desperately trying to reach Izzie, who won't return his calls; Lexie is reduced to tears by the teenager's screams and is ordered from the room by Arizona; and Charles passes out from having given blood earlier in the day. So Mrs. Becker continues to take a backseat, until her little boy tells Lexie his mommy can't breathe!

Lexie intubates her and moves on, and the next thing we know Alex is dramatically cutting into Mrs. Becker's throat to create an airway! We groan as this is the moment Izzie chooses to call him back! And then not clarify if she's coming back "later" or not at all!

Alex seems to have saved her, but Mrs. Becker ends up bleeding out on the table. Everyone is frantically trying to save her when Derek enters the room and announces, "You've lost her." We feel the chill when he asks, "Whose patient is this?" and no one answers.

The blame is finally laid on April, the nicest of the Mercy Westers (we were actually starting to like her!), who realizes far too late that, in the chaos, she forgot to check Mrs. Becker's airway. If she had, she would have seen soot, and known to intubate right away. Richard fires her on the spot. As the other doctors wonder how April could have made such an obvious mistake, Cristina snaps, "It could have happened to any one of us," and demands to know which one of them didn't make mistakes today.

In the post-mortem, we nod in agreement as Derek tells Richard, "Maybe it's not one doctor. Maybe it's too many doctors who don't know each other and don't trust each other." He tells the chief the room was chaos, because that's what the hospital has become. "You should look again at who's responsible," he tells Richard.

Actually, given the state of things since the merger, we're surprised that they haven't lost more patients!