There are so many things about this week’s Grey’s Anatomy episode, “Hold Back the River,” that deserve a proper discussion: Webber’s sobriety was put at risk when he discovered his sponsor was dying, internet rumors are flying about a possible pregnancy for Amelia, Meredith and Jo discovered another way to create their mini-livers and one-up Dr. Serrone, and April made amends to everyone affected by her breakdown period. But after a few weeks worth of Arizona-less episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, where all I could focus on was April, it’s definitely Arizona’s time to shine.
One of Arizona’s patients and her family were brought into the ER after a car accident. Peggy, her patient, swerved into a tree when her wife, Dana, threw up—an unfortunate after-effect of chemo. During the exam, Dana bragged about her oncologist, Dr. Hanson, and his amazing success rate, including curing her friend’s cancer without surgery. While waiting on Dr. Hanson’s office to send over Dana’s records, they took her up for a CT, finding no indications of breast cancer while evaluating her for potential injuries. Suddenly, Hanson’s downed computer system seemed a lot more suspicious. Owen immediately knew that something wasn’t right, but Arizona was hesitant to immediately place blame. After all, even good doctors can misdiagnose. But when Owen uncovered the fact that Hanson was not a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Arizona hatched a badass plan.
She made an appointment with Hanson’s office, arriving with “husband” Owen in tow. Owen steadily and suspiciously ignored Arizona as Hanson performed her exam. He told them that her right breast was perfectly healthy, adding that more often than not, inconclusive mammograms turn out to be nothing. “Better to be safe than sorry,” he trailed off, looking concerned by something on the screen before revealing a solid lesion in her left breast, but the two nodded to each other behind Hanson’s back—nailed him!
Most unfortunately for me, I missed the first half of the episode the first time around and just happened to tune in as Owen took a closer look, sadly noting what was on the screen, and Arizona, very convincingly, began to tear up. I felt Shonda herself punching me in the chest and knocking my heart into my stomach as I thought that that was how we were going to lose Arizona.
But the two quite literally swept back into their own ER, coat tails billowing dramatically as the automatic doors slid around them, and headed to an exam room to have April confirm that Arizona was clean. The ultrasounds were faked—Dr. Hanson was poisoning healthy women so he could charge them for chemo, and Arizona was ready to destroy him.
While Arizona revealed Dana’s clean scans to her and her wife, Owen went to pay Dr. Hanson a visit. For a hot second, I really thought Owen was going to kill him. He roughed Hanson up, shoving him around and demanding Dr. Hanson walk him through his chemo process, pulling out a pouch and hooking it up to an IV and looking like he was going to inject it, but he had called the police and was only using scare tactics as a distraction.
Thank God that that exit shocker existed only in my mind for five minutes max, but we’re still just as in the dark as we were weeks ago about Arizona’s leaving. Part of me wants the torture of not knowing to end, but when we do find out we’ll just be that much closer to never seeing her again, and in the famous words of Leslie Knope, I sad.