#Grey Sloan Loses Another Doc (RECAP)

The Grim Reaper darkens the door of Grey Sloan Memorial once again in the Grey’s Anatomy March 11 midseason premiere—Season 17, Episode 7, a.k.a. “Helplessly Hoping”—and believe it or not, the death has nothing to do with COVID-19.

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Grey’s Anatomy Season 17, Episode 7, “Helplessly Hoping”]

In the Station 19 hour of this midseason crossover event, as the firefighters raged over the cops who ignored the case of the Black children victimized by child traffickers—the same cops who assaulted and arrested Dean and Robert and even one of the victims’ mothers—(Giacomo Gianniotti) and Carina (Stefania Spampinato) tracked trafficker Opal to a train station, where Opal was arrested but Andrew was stabbed by an accomplice. Carina found Andrew bleeding out and called for help, screaming for Andrew to stay alive.

And as Grey’s Anatomy starts, Andrew is transported to Grey Sloan in a tachycardic and hypotensive state, and Owen (Kevin McKidd) and Schmitt (Jake Borelli) are shocked to discover their 35-year-old abdominal stab wound patient is one of their own.

Meanwhile, Winston (Anthony Hill) and Maggie (Kelly McCreary) are staying in a hotel and ordering room service, but because her phone is dead, she’s missing Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) many calls about Meredith’s (Ellen Pompeo) worsening COVID-19 condition. (Worse, Zola, Mer’s daughter, overhears Amelia talking about how Mer may die.)

Back at the hospital, Helm tells Richard (James Pickens Jr.) about Andrew, and unconscious Mer must overhear their conversation, because all of a sudden, he’s with her on her dream beach. He wonders if he’s dead, but he also says he doesn’t regret his heroism: He took action in an era when so many people don’t.

In real life, Schmitt recognizes a photo of Opal on Ben (Jason George)’s phone, and he starts thinking all of this is his fault. He makes a “pep-talk page” to Nico (Alex Landi), but Nico tells him (with love) to sub out on Andrew’s surgery in favor of a surgeon who’s not a wreck. So Schmitt gets intern Khan (Nikhil Shukla) to take his place.

Teddy (Kim Raver) goes to see Koracick (Greg Germann) in the hospital room where he’s getting treated for COVID-19, and he tells her about seeing Meredith in what he calls “On COVID Pond.” Teddy is in no mood for jokes, though: She’s just there because she wants to be with someone who doesn’t hate her. But then it’s Koracick’s turn to get serious: He wants her to admit that she never really loved him. He already knows her answer, of course, because of “empirical evidence”: If Owen hates her, and she hasn’t returned to Koracick, then she must not love her. And she finally admits the same.

Owen wants to do an ex-lap and a sternotomy on Andrew, and Richard wants to help. “DeLuca saved my life, and it’s only right that I do the same,” he says.

But Owen only wants Teddy’s help, arguing that she’s used to working under intense stress and fatigue. Teddy and Owen save Andrew’s life, and they tell Carina the good news in the chapel. Teddy thanks Owen for bringing her on board on the case, and Owen—still feeling spurned by her affair—tells her not to read anything into it. It’s just business.

Jo’s (Camilla Luddington) patient, Val (Mackenzie Marsh), is still septic two days after her liver resection, but she just wants to see her newborn, Luna. Luna has a bronchogenic cyst and needs emergency surgery, but Jo gets Cormac to agree to give Val five minutes with Luna (but only by getting Cormac to imagine Val was Meredith asking for time with her kids).

Jackson (Jesse Williams) eventually finds Maggie at the hotel, and she and Winston go with him back to Mer’s house, where Maggie and Amelia tells Zola about Meredith being on a ventilator. Heartbreakingly, Zola remembers that her dad never came off the ventilator.

Back at Grey Sloan, Owen jokes around with the recuperating Andrew. But then Andrew goes “code blue” with a cardiac tamponade around the same time Val crashes. Owen and Teddy rush Andrew back into the O.R., while Jo tries to resuscitate Val.

Val dies in her hospital bed, and shortly thereafter, Andrew succumbs, too. On the beach, he tries in vain to save his sandcastle from a rising tide. (“I had plans,” he rues, metaphorically.) But he thanks Meredith for being an inspiration to him and making him a better man. And then he hears his late mother calling from farther down on the beach.

“I’ll miss you,” Meredith tells him. If you I go back and you don’t, I’ll miss you.”

His response: “It’ll be OK, Meredith. … I have to go.”

And with that, he runs to the loving arms of his mother as, back in reality, Richard breaks the news to Bailey (Chandra Wilson)—who slept the whole day at Mer’s bedside—and as Khan calls time of death on Andrew, while Owen and Teddy can only look on in shock.

Grey’s Anatomy, Thursdays, 9/8c, ABC