With just one day left until their very important intern exam, every one of the interns has studying on the brain unless, of course, they’re thinking about surgery, which they can now perform since all of their procedure logs are now complete. Lucas Adams, Mika Yasuda, and Jules Millin are even studying together, which Adams appears particularly happy about. When they reach the coffee cart, though, Taryn Helm barks at them that they need to get to rounds. Adams and Millin both blame Yasuda, who told Helm she needed space. “Yesterday, she yelled at me for going to the bathroom,” Adams tells Yasuda, and Millin says that she thinks Helm needs to get laid. All Yasuda can do is tell them that she isn’t getting any, either.
When the interns head back inside, they leave Amelia Shepherd and Winston Ndugu at the coffee cart, and Shepherd is having trouble finding her wallet. Monica Beltran offers to buy her coffee and breakfast if she wants, which Amelia accepts, though she’s certainly confused. When she tries to talk to Ndugu about it, he just walks away, telling her, “I don’t have time for whatever this is.”
Inside, Jo Wilson is handing off assignments to Levi Schmitt and is disappointed to learn that Teddy Altman is out for the day. Wilson plans to quit general surgery and focus on OB-GYN, a decision she made in Season 20, Episode 7, “She Used to Be Mine,” but she can’t if Altman isn’t there. Instead, she gives as much of her general surgery work as possible to Schmitt and spends the day checking on patients.
Miranda Bailey meets with the interns and Helm, confirming for them that they’re allowed back in the OR. As Helm sends the interns to their respective assignments for the day, Bailey tells them that they should take any time they have to study; otherwise, Joe’s is hiring. Simone Griffith and Adams join Bailey and Richard Webber to talk to Dorian, their patient who was shot in Season 20, Episode 2, “Keep the Family Close.” Dorian is headed in for surgery to fix the enterocutaneous fistula, which Adams and Webber discovered in “She Used to Be Mine.” Bailey tells Dorian that they’re also hoping to repair his ostomy, which thrills Dorian. He might actually be able to eat a cheeseburger one day!
On their day off, Teddy and Owen Hunt are enjoying a hike, sort of. They seem to be a little lost, and then they hear yelling. They find Joseph and his daughter, Rosie, who has fallen into a cave that’s along the hiking trail. Teddy runs back to the parking lot to call 9-1-1, and when Owen tries to call from his own phone, Joseph heads down into the cave in an attempt to help Rosie and instead injures himself. Unsure when Teddy will be back, Owen has to talk Rosie through how to stop the bleeding, first by putting pressure on the wound and then by packing it with her shirt. Rosie is scared, but she follows Owen’s instructions while also trying to make sure neither of them falls further over the ledge.
On the peds floor, Ndugu and Yasuda meet with their patient, Emmy, who has cystic fibrosis and a collapsed lung. She isn’t scheduled for surgery until the next day, but her roommate is scheduled for a procedure as soon as possible. Caroline and her mother, Diane, flew up from Texas to see Beltran. Caroline is trans, and Beltran is a doctor they know they can trust. While Emmy continues to add commentary from behind the dividing curtain, Beltran and Millin explain the procedure for Caroline’s lipoma. Beltran wants an additional MRI and a repeat ultrasound, where they discover that what Carolina actually has is a neurofibroma. They’ll need Shepherd for the procedure, but Caroline is worried about adding another doctor to the team.
In the OR, Adams and Griffith are scrubbing in together, but when she tries to ask him a study question, he blows her off. She tells him that it relaxes her, but he is too worried about Dorian to worry about the test. When Bailey and Webber discover that Dorian has a frozen abdomen, which is a complication from his many abdominal surgeries, Bailey gives both Adams and Griffith the opportunity to step out and study for their test instead of staying for the longer procedure. Neither of them wants to leave, so the team gets to work. Webber, unsure if they should keep going, asks Bailey if they should stop, and she tells him, “I see things through. I am seeing this through.”
Teddy arrives back at the cave to tell Owen, Joseph, and Rosie that the paramedics are on their way when Rosie tells Owen that the packing no longer seems to be working. Owen and Teddy talk her through tying a tourniquet using the strap from her fanny pack and a stick, and she’s able to stop the bleeding. Teddy tells her she just has to hold on to the stick until the ambulance arrives, and they can already hear the sirens.
While waiting for Caroline to decide what she wants to do about her surgery, Shepherd and Beltran talk about the work Beltran used to do in Texas for trans patients. Ndugu abruptly interrupts them to tell them that his patient, Emmy, is missing — oh, and so is Caroline. Shepherd and Beltran search for the girls together, and Beltran talks about how much she enjoys Emmy as a patient. “She’s a headache, but she’s my favorite headache,” she says before admitting that Emmy reminds her of herself at the same age. Shepherd says that Emmy reminds her of herself as well and wonders if she and Beltran would have been friends. Beltran doesn’t think they would have. They round the corner and find Emmy and Caroline raiding the vending machine for after surgery and get there just in time for Emmy to collapse.
Benson Kwan, who was assigned to Atticus “Link” Lincoln’s service for the day, is in the skills lab trying to fix a bright red sock with a hole in the heel. Link catches him and, at first, chastises him for pretending to be studying until he realizes that the sock is lucky. Link shares stories about athletes he knows that have lucky socks or other clothing items and helps Kwan fix the sock with an elastic bandage. Then it’s back to work because Teddy and Owen have arrived in the ambulance bay with Joseph and Rosie. Rosie gets handed off to Link and Kwan while Teddy and Owen rush Joseph to surgery.
Emmy, now wearing an oxygen mask and on a gurney, begins to wake up as they start to take her back to her room. Beltran can tell she’s scared but wants her to keep the oxygen mask on, so she guesses as to why Emmy might be scared, comforting her as she goes. When Emmy is taken for some testing because of the collapse, Caroline asks if she can talk about what she’s scared of with Beltran and Shepherd, who share their own fears with her. She admits that she’s worried about being naked on the OR table because she’s scared that the people in the room won’t understand and they won’t see her. Beltran tells her that they see her, and then Shepherd jumps in. “You’re an amazing girl,” Shepherd says. “And we are going to make sure that everyone in that operation room knows that.” It’s exactly what Caroline needed to hear because she finally agrees to the surgery.
Schmitt, who tried to hand some of his work off to Yasuda but was thwarted by the search for Caroline and Emmy, finds Wilson to yell at her. He tells her that she’s already checked out of being a general surgeon but reminds her that she hasn’t quit yet. Later, Wilson apologizes and tells him that she’s actually been obsessively checking on patients all day and overnight because of nearly losing her patient in “She Used to Be Mine.”
In the OR, Bailey and Webber realize that the procedure isn’t going as well as they had hoped and that there might not be enough bowel left to reverse the ostomy. Adams starts to get frustrated, as it’s clear he has an emotional attachment to Dorian, and then Griffith asks one of their study questions about a procedure normally done on children. Webber starts to tell her that the OR isn’t the right place to study, but then Bailey figures out what she’s talking about and realizes they might be able to perform the same surgery on Dorian. It seems to be working, but then Dorian starts to code. Bailey performs CPR, then Adams, and when Griffith says that it’s a shockable rhythm, Bailey gets the paddles. When she yells, “Clear,” Adams continues to perform CPR, and it takes Griffith putting her hands on top of his to finally get him to stop.
Later, when Dorian is back in his room, Bailey tells Webber that she doesn’t think she has adequately prepared the interns for what happens when they have a patient like Dorian with so many problems. Webber tells her that she thinks she’s done a great job, but Bailey isn’t so sure.
Link and Kwan are with Rosie, and Link lets Kwan take the lead. He’s doing well, which Link shares with him later, telling him that he thinks Kwan will do just fine on the test. Kwan asks him if he should still wear the lucky socks, and Link tells him that he should.
Caroline’s surgery goes well, and when Shepherd and Beltran talk to Diane, Beltran says several nice things about Shepherd, including that they’re a great team. Shepherd, having had several nice conversations with Beltran throughout the day, asks her out when they’re in the attending locker room. Beltran hesitates, and Shepherd starts to backtrack, embarrassed. Beltran starts to explain that she’s going through a messy divorce but gets interrupted by Ndugu coming in to tell her that Emmy’s parents have arrived. She follows him out of the room, leaving Shepherd heartbroken and a little disappointed.
With Joseph out of surgery, Owen finds Rosie and tells her that her Dad is going to be okay. She thanked him for teaching her what to do, telling him that it wasn’t hard to learn, but she just had no idea what to do. Their conversation gives him an idea, and as he and Teddy leave the hospital, Owen shares his idea with her. He wants to create videos and other collateral to teach people how to stop a bleed, along with other basic procedures similar to how CPR is taught. She thinks it’s a great idea and tells him that she’ll check the discretionary fund, but she seems nervous. Has she spent too much of the discretionary fund on the research Meredith Grey and Shepherd are doing?
Though Bailey sent them both home, Griffith finds Adams in the on-call room. He tells her that he’s fine, but he’s obviously not. She tries to comfort him, but he wants her to stop. He couldn’t stop performing CPR, which is maybe his problem all along; he doesn’t know when to let go. Griffith asks him if he knows how she thought of the procedure they should do on Dorian, and he says that it’s because she’s an absolute genius. “I thought of you,” she tells him. “You’re fearless when you advocate for your patients, no matter who’s in the room. I’ve been afraid to take chances when I might be wrong, thinking that’s putting my patients at risk, but it’s riskier not to take the chance. And you taught me that. I’m a braver doctor because of you. I’m a better doctor because of you.”
In response, Adams crosses the room and kisses her, their feelings coming together once again. It’s the night before their intern exam and they spend it in the on-call room, together.
