Meredith Grey

"The most amazing thing about Meredith, though, is that she takes all that pain, all that loss, and she turns into drive. Drive to save lives, to make things better. And despite all that she's lost, she continues to find joy in her work as a surgeon, as a teacher, as a mother. And she managed to share that joy through her spirit of discovery and of possibility and of hope, right in the face of darkness."

- Jackson Avery

Meredith Grey is the head of general surgery at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. She is the daughter of the now-deceased Ellis Grey, a famed general surgeon, and the now-deceased Thatcher Grey. She was married to Derek Shepherd until his death; they have two daughters, Zola and Ellis, and a son, Bailey. She has won a Catherine Fox Award.

Early Life
When Meredith was young, her father, Thatcher, would bring her to Seattle Grace Hospital to visit her mother, Ellis, at work. As a small child, Meredith got to see her mother perform surgery. As a gift, Meredith was given an "Anatomy Jane" doll by her parents, which contained 24 parts/organs to take out, and extra parts to simulate pregnancy. Meredith would bring the doll with her to the hospital. Years later, an adult, and now a doctor, Meredith uncovered the doll while she and Derek were unpacking boxes in their house, which was previously owned and inhabited by her mother and father before their divorce, and by her mother after, until Meredith was forced to place her mother in Roseridge Home for Extended Care, due to Ellis suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's. The doll brought up old memories for Meredith, along with a renewed attachment to the doll that resulted in adult Meredith bringing it to work with her one day. Upon recognizing an Anatomy Jane doll and her own remembered fondness for her own as a child, Dr. Miranda Bailey allowed Meredith to scrub into surgery that day on a patient being treated for an inoperable tumor. During the surgery, it was obvious that Dr. Richard Webber was quite disturbed, and also feeling a little guilty, at the sight of the doll, as he had been reminded of a young Meredith craving her mother's attention and love, yet not getting it since Ellis was not only very focused on her surgical career but also because he and Ellis were having an affair when they were both interns and residents.

Meredith's parents had a troubled marriage, though part of this was due to Ellis spending too much time working and normal everyday problems. But a large part was due to the fact that for years, Ellis had been involved in an affair with one of her colleagues and best friends, Richard Webber. Their marital issues proved too great, and eventually, Thatcher left the home when Meredith was five years old. He tried to visit her on several occasions, but he got nowhere. Eventually, he stopped seeing his daughter and subsequently started a new family with his new wife, Susan Grey, and had two children.

When Thatcher left Ellis, she continued her relationship with Webber, although he still had a wife, Adele. Although Richard tried to conceal his relationship with Ellis, Adele always knew, so if she was in their company, she would just play with Meredith. Eventually, Richard broke off his relationship with Ellis, as he felt he was being the better man, by walking away from Ellis, with Meredith only meters away, riding on a carousel. Meredith vaguely remembered her mother's pregnancy with Webber's child after he broke it off. In the memory, Ellis made it clear that she did not want to even look at the child. Shortly thereafter, Ellis accepted a fellowship opportunity at Massachusetts General Hospital. She relocated to Massachusetts with Meredith, and Thatcher lost all contact with his daughter. As an adult, her only childhood memory of Thatcher was giving her cereal in the morning.

In the 8th grade, her English class had to read Romeo & Juliet. For extra credit, their teacher Mrs. Snyder made them act out all the parts. A boy named Sal Scafarillo was chosen for Romeo, and all the girls were jealous of Meredith, who was chosen for Juliet. But Meredith was not happy, and she complained to her teacher that Juliet was an idiot because she had fallen for the one man she knew she could never have. Then she blamed fate for her own bad decision. She told her that if Juliet was stupid enough to fall for the enemy, drink a bottle of poison and go to sleep in a mausoleum, then she deserved whatever she got. Therefore, at the age of 13, she was very clear that love, like life, was about making choices. Meredith later described her high school years to Cristina by saying, "I wore a lot of black. Had the whole angry pink hair thing going on. Wouldn't have been caught dead at prom."

She went to college at Dartmouth, and despite excessive drinking and partying, she graduated. Following her graduation, Ellis suggested that Meredith find another direction in her life, not being convinced that her daughter had what it took to survive medical school and make it in the surgical world. Following an argument about Meredith's future, Meredith spent two months traveling in Europe with her best friend Sadie Harris, who also hated Ellis. But during that time, Meredith's mother Ellis Grey was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease and placed into a nursing home in Seattle. Ellis's diagnosis gave Meredith the push she needed to go to medical school. After graduating from medical school, Meredith moved back to Seattle from Boston and into her childhood home in order to begin her internship at Seattle Grace. Meredith was the only one who knew about her mother's condition outside the nursing home staff, whose personnel were bound by contract to keep Ellis's condition confidential. Ellis also made Meredith promise not to tell anyone. Cristina later helped "diagnose" Meredith as having a case of "severe abandonment issues," as the cause of her relationship problems with Derek, due to the fact that Thatcher left her, when she was a child, that she had to suddenly leave her childhood home when she was five, and that Ellis was absent for most of her childhood, due to her work and the affair she was having with Richard.

Beginning Relationship with Derek Shepherd
After having a one-night stand with Derek without knowing that he was her boss, she and Derek began dating, initially discreetly. But soon Bailey, Meredith's resident, caught her and Derek together and made it her mission to make Meredith's life at work as miserable as possible, as she was involved with her boss, who was also Bailey's boss. Meredith soon learned that Derek was still married when his wife, Addison, came to Seattle to get Derek back. At first, Meredith was angry with Derek for not telling her, but she later admitted to still loving him and begged him to "pick me, choose me, love me." When Addison handed him the divorce papers to end their relationship officially, Derek remained hesitant and soon after decided to stay with Addison, much to Meredith's dismay. Although the two constantly flirted and Derek still hinted at having feelings for her, they both agreed to remain friends, and Addison, too, attempted to be friends with Meredith.

When Derek's best friend, Mark Sloan, visited Seattle, he was quick to realize that Meredith was "the one" for Derek and tried to persuade Addison to stop fighting for her marriage as Meredith was Derek's, true love. Meanwhile, Meredith rescued a dog, Doc, in an effort to move on, but after her housemates, Izzie Stevens and George, gave her an ultimatum to choose them or Doc, she gave the dog to Derek and Addison. Doc was taken to the vet and diagnosed with bone cancer. Meredith started to date Finn the vet, much to Derek's annoyance. Meredith dating Finn also caused Derek to end the friendship with Meredith and call her a whore.

On the night of the Seattle Grace Hospital Prom, Derek went with Addison, while Meredith went with Finn. The two soon after met with each other in an exam room where Derek confessed that he still loved her and they had sex. Addison discovered Meredith's underwear in Derek's pocket and the two finally agreed to divorce. Meredith, however, was still dating Finn and issued a contest between the two boys to see which she would settle with. She ultimately chose Derek and they reconciled.

Drowning in Elliot Bay
Meredith, Izzie, George, Alex, and Bailey went to the site of a massive ferry boat accident. After Meredith finished stabilizing a patient's badly wounded leg with the help of a little girl just by the water, the man panicked and pushed Meredith off the edge into the bay. Later, when Derek was shown Meredith's fate by the little girl, he jumped into the water and then retrieved a pale, seemingly lifeless Meredith. He tried to perform CPR in the ambulance, but she did not respond. The doctors all tried to revive her, but she flatlined. Then Meredith entered a state of limbo in her mind, where she interacted with deceased acquaintances like Denny, Dylan Young, Doc, Bonnie Crasnoff, Liz Fallon, and her own mother, Ellis Grey. Eventually, she left this state of limbo and came back to life slowly. Meredith recovered, but Derek remained concerned that Meredith was a good swimmer, and that perhaps she had not tried hard enough and had given up.

Derek's Proposal and Wedding
When one of Derek's patients, Jen Harmon, found out that Derek was going to propose to Meredith, the two started to become friends and she wanted to help with the proposal. When she died, Derek blamed himself for her death. He ended up quitting his job and he moved back into his trailer. Richard told Meredith later that day that Derek was going to propose to her. Later that night, Meredith went to the trailer to find Derek drunk and hitting empty beer cans into the woods with a baseball bat. They started to argue and Meredith said, "I know there's a ring!" Derek froze. Meredith then told him that the chief had told her about the ring and that she was not going to give up on them. Derek then hit the ring into the woods. The next time Meredith went to see Derek at the trailer, she told him Izzie had metastatic melanoma and that it spread to her liver, skin, and brain. And that he was the most qualified surgeon to remove the tumor. Derek later asked Meredith to marry him, but she rejected his proposal. Derek ended up going back to work and removed Izzie's brain tumor successfully. That night, Derek proposed to Meredith in the elevator, which was decorated with surgical scans from their past cases. This time, Meredith accepted. Izzie Stevens began to plan the wedding, but right before, Derek and Meredith decided to give the wedding to her and Alex Karev. Later, Derek and Meredith got married in the resident's lounge, on a blue Post-It note from Cristina Yang.

George's Death
When Meredith was treating a John Doe, who soon would be identified as George O'Malley, he attempted to write on a pad before surgery but wasn't successful. While recovering in the ICU, he attempted again to write on Meredith's hand, and she soon realized that it was George after he traced "007" on her hand multiple times. Meredith was alarmed and alerted the other doctors, who originally believed her when he was taken in for brain surgery. During George's brain surgery, his brain swelled and he was declared brain dead. Lexie thought it wasn't George because she didn't think he was tall enough, so Callie checked for a Texas-shaped birthmark on his hand, which she saw, confirming it was George.

Hospital Merger and Richard's Drinking
During the start of the merger with Mercy West Medical Center, Meredith was hospitalized from having donated a portion of her liver to her father, Thatcher Grey, since he was unable to be placed on the transplant list due to his alcoholism. Richard's drinking escalated again, causing him to make an error during surgery which almost killed a patient, until Dr. Bailey stepped in, fixing the problem and scheduling weekly followups with the patient to ensure he had no lasting effects. Richard's alcoholism led him to do one-on-one teaching sessions where he showed Meredith various surgical techniques and she discovered his drinking again. She kept this from Derek, but he became very angry with Meredith and made her tell him what was going on. When Derek found out about the drinking, he reported Richard to the board, forcing him to either step down from surgery and go to rehab or retire. When he chose rehab, Derek was named the interim Chief of Surgery.

Shooting at the Hospital
Near the end of their third year of residency, Meredith revealed to Cristina that she was pregnant. She also planned on telling Derek, but the mass shooting intervened. The husband of a deceased patient, Gary Clark, entered the hospital and shot many people, killing many, including Dr. Reed Adamson and Dr. Charles Percy. The hospital was placed in lockdown while the shooting occurred. Gary Clark also shot Derek in the chest while Meredith watched from afar. Cristina had to do his surgery herself after barring Meredith from the OR. When the shooter entered the OR, Meredith entered too and told him to shoot her. However, he ended up shooting Owen, though his injuries were comparatively minor. While tending to Owen's injury, Meredith suffered a miscarriage.

After the shooting, all involved were made to go through a psych consult to be cleared for surgery. Meredith was the last one to be cleared. She was cleared by Dr. Andrew Perkins only after she admitted her pregnancy and miscarriage.

Derek began speeding to cope with the trauma and was arrested several times for "reckless endangerment." The only people that knew about Meredith's miscarriage were Cristina, Owen, and April. Meredith ended up leaving him in jail on the night of Cristina and Owen's wedding. The next day, angered at having been left in jail overnight, Derek had an argument with Meredith in the hospital hallway. Derek tried to calm Meredith down and Meredith admitted that she had been worried about him since he started speeding and the only time she got relief was when he was in jail because she knew he was safe. She then told him about her miscarriage. Derek and Meredith kissed and hugged, and Derek agreed to drive more carefully from that point on.

Alzheimer's Trial and Adoption of Zola
The couple had recently been told that Meredith had a hostile uterus and conceiving a child would be difficult. Meredith and Derek met Zola when she was brought to the hospital for a spina bifida operation as part of Alex's program. Derek immediately bonded with Zola and suggested adoption. Meredith took a little longer to bond with Zola, but eventually, she was unable to avoid falling in love with the child. However, Derek found out that Meredith had tampered with his Alzheimer's trial just as the couple was granted temporary custody of Zola. When the social worker on their case, Janet, discovered that Meredith and Derek weren't living together and that Meredith had been fired, red flags were raised in the system. Fearing that she would lose Zola, Meredith hid with Zola in the basement of the hospital for 4 hours. Zola was taken away from them for a time, during which Meredith and Derek rekindled their relationship. They were given a date to see a judge about the adoption after Alex went to the judge directly. That date was subsequently canceled and Janet told them that it was unlikely that it would end in their favor and suggested that they move on. But the decision did end in their favor, and Janet brought Zola to them, finalizing the adoption.

Plane Crash
At the end of her residency, Meredith, along with Derek, Mark, Lexie, Cristina, and Arizona, was involved in a plane crash on the way to Boise to help in a conjoined twins case. Lexie died due to a part of the plane crushing her, and Meredith was horrified and mourned. The plane crash also led to Mark's death, Arizona's loss of her leg, and Derek's severely damaged nerves in his hand.

The group ended up spending four days out in the woods before they were found and airlifted to Boise Memorial Hospital, where they were treated before being sedated and flown back to Seattle.

Lawsuit, Pregnancy, and Buying the Hospital
All the survivors of the plane crash filed a lawsuit against the plane company. Their attorney informed the survivors that they would be pursuing action against the hospital instead of the plane company since the hospital put them on the plane. This alarmed the doctors. However, they decided to go ahead with the lawsuit, because Derek went to see the plane wreckage and believed if they settled, they wouldn't properly investigate what went wrong so it couldn't happen again to someone else.

The doctors went to trial and were awarded $15 million each. Callie decided that their win should be celebrated, and Meredith, Derek, Callie, Arizona, and Cristina all went to dinner to celebrate, where Meredith revealed that she was pregnant.

During Meredith's pregnancy, Dr. Alana Cahill was brought to the hospital to assess efficiency, as the plane crash verdict forced the hospital into bankruptcy after its insurance refused to pay the penalties after finding a loophole. The doctors learned that Dr. Cahill was planning to clean up the hospital so that it could be sold to a company called Pegasus Horizons. But Richard and Callie conducted additional research of the company and learned that it would be a terrible asset to the hospital. They brought the survivors together for a secret meeting and discussed purchasing the hospital so they could maintain the hospital in which all the doctors had been trained and which they still loved.

The doctors went to investors looking for a partner to come up with enough money to purchase the hospital. After exhausting all their other investment options, they eventually were given $175 million by the Harper Avery Foundation to purchase the hospital. The Harper Avery Foundation, led by Catherine Avery, made Jackson Avery their spokesperson on the board, which upset all the other doctors. They, however, all resolved the conflict when Jackson tried to bring the board together by proposing the hospital be renamed to reflect their beliefs and reasoning behind purchasing the hospital in the first place. This resulted in Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital being renamed to Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital in 2013, after Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan, the two fatalities of the plane crash.

Giving Birth and Richard's Accident
Despite Derek's warnings to slow down, a heavily pregnant Meredith couldn't keep from joining in on a surgery at the beginning of the superstorm. However, Meredith was forced to leave when there was a risk of explosions in the OR. She talked to Alex about beating up Jason Myers, only to find out that Jo was the one who had beaten up Jason. She followed Jo into a staircase, where Jo promised she would never let Alex take the fall for what happened to Jason. As Jo left, a construction worker told Meredith that they were done with the grinder in the OR. "Then why aren't I up there?" she angrily asked, and as she ran up the stairs, she slipped and rolled down the stairs. She sent Derek a message and got checked out by Connie Ryan, and she promised that everything was fine with the baby. While the surgeons were preparing the hospital and the storm hit Seattle, Meredith's water broke.

Meredith was admitted but had to wait for Connie, who was busy with other soon-to-be mothers. Cristina, who found it typical for Meredith to go in labor during a superstorm, stayed by her side while Derek went to look for Connie. He found her, but as she did a check-up on Meredith, she told them that there was face presentation. As she mentioned that a C-section was necessary to deliver the baby safely, the lights went out and the back-up generators failed to engage. Even though they were, at first, hesitant to perform surgery in the dark, they realized there were no other options. The surgery went well, and Derek took his newborn son to the NICU to make sure everything was fine. While closing up, Connie got called away for another mother in need, and she and Meredith trusted Shane to close up. However, Heather and Shane discovered heavy bleeding, and Meredith realized that she had suffered an internal bleed from her fall on the stairs. Before losing consciousness, Meredith instructed Shane, who had found out that her spleen was bleeding, how to stop the bleed. Meanwhile, Heather went to find Dr. Bailey to assist them. Bailey overcame her fear to operate and pulled Meredith through. Meredith was kept in the OR until she was stable and later moved to a room in the maternity ward, where Derek and Zola visited her and their new family member.

During a board meeting in her room, the others informed Meredith what had happened during the superstorm. She tried to help out as much as she could, but Derek and the others told her to rest after her major abdominal surgery. While the others left, Cristina stayed behind to chat a little until she got paged. Though it was said at the meeting that the ER had to close, Meredith got confused when she witnessed Stephanie and Jo exchanging supplies to use in the ER. When a stressed Alex entered her room, Meredith managed to calm him down by letting him hold her son. He told her about Richard and Heather, and he gave the baby back to her so she herself could recover her own calm. Meanwhile, Cristina and Bailey started arguing over the course of treatment for Richard, only to find out that Richard had listed Meredith as his medical proxy, which in turn had forced her to choose between Cristina and Bailey's plans. She decided to do so by relying on science and asked to rerun some tests. While waiting for the results, Callie sat down in her room to have a little chat about how she was doing. When Richard's results came back, Meredith decided to side with Bailey and allowed her to operate, which Cristina had advised not to be done. While Bailey operated on Richard, Meredith asked Cristina to admit that the decision was right, and Cristina did.

Meredith later talked with Cristina and Alex about Richard's decision to make her his medical proxy, wondering if she was in his will too. After Richard's surgery, Owen came to Meredith's room to tell her that Bailey had closed Richard back up once Catherine started yelling at them from the gallery. Meredith also consoled a sad Derek, who had lost Heather in surgery. After Meredith ordered Derek to go home with Zola, who had spent enough time in daycare now, Callie and Sofia came in to drop off some things. Callie told them that she had moved out of the apartment and that they would stay at a hotel for a while. Meredith decided to let Callie stay at their house, and she later told Arizona, who had no idea where Callie and Sofia were, that they were at her house. While trying to fall asleep, the interns bothered her to ask for help finding Heather stories to tell Heather's mother, and Meredith told them what she had told George's mother after he died. When the interns left, Jackson came in to tell her that his mother was planning on moving Richard to another hospital. Alex and April came in too to talk about their problems, and as they left one by one, they all refused to bring her a wheelchair. However, she somehow got herself a wheelchair and went to Richard's room in the ICU with Bailey. Bailey still thought that they should open him back up, and Meredith made the call to book an OR for Bailey. Later, back in her room, Cristina and Alex talked with Meredith about medical proxies, and it turned out that Cristina had actually disapproved of Meredith's decision for Richard. After Bailey's surgery, Catherine still wanted to have a second opinion. Meredith told her that Richard chose her to make his decisions, and not Catherine. They started arguing as Richard opened his eyes, and Meredith enthusiastically greeted him.

Derek Leaving for D.C.
Despite his promise to Meredith to take care of the kids so that she could have a year to focus on her work, Derek started to consult on a time-consuming brain mapping project for the White House. The presidential team asked him to become more involved in the project, but he initially refused the offer in an attempt to keep his promise to Meredith. While at April and Matthew's wedding, Derek received a call from the president himself and ended up accepting the offer to put his name on their federal research initiative.

This caused Meredith to become upset with him since she had wanted to continue with her own research work. Derek later learned that the federal team wanted him to run the project's advisory board. While on a trip to Washington, D.C., Derek was offered a full-time job at the National Institutes of Health, and he found a job for Meredith at James Madison Hospital.

However, Meredith later told Derek that she refused to leave Seattle after Cristina reminded her not to let what Derek wanted eclipse what she needed. Forced to choose between his family and the brain mapping job, Derek decided to stay in Seattle as well and rejected the offer.

However, there was excessive tension between Meredith and Derek. Derek was unsatisfied with his job at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, especially because his sister Amelia had taken over as head of the neurosurgery department.

Meredith was upset with Derek for being so attached to the federal initiative position and told him that she never wanted him to give it up for her. Deborah Curzon, a special assistant to the president, came to Seattle in a last attempt to recruit Derek for their team. Derek told her that he was unfortunately unable to accept the offer, but he took her card anyway. Later that day, he got into a fight with Meredith, who told him to take the job in D.C. and leave. Derek called the woman he had spoken to earlier and told her that he did want the job after all.

He packed some clothes and went to the airport while Meredith threw away the Post-it note that had signified their marriage. The next day, Meredith and Derek talked on the phone and decided that they can make their relationship work, even if Derek had to take the job with the president. She then took the Post-it note out of the garbage and hung it back up on the wall. After a couple of weeks of Derek in D.C., he came home to Meredith and said that he thought D.C. was everything, but he was wrong. Derek told her that her, Zola and Bailey were everything. Derek told her that he couldn’t live without her. Meredith replied that she could live without him but that she didn’t ever want to. The two then hugged and made up. Derek moved back home.

When Derek moved back home after being in D.C. the two were lying in bed and Derek told her that she was always the one. He told her that she truly did save him. He also told her that he wanted more with her. Meredith then went to work telling friends that she was happier than ever with her husband and children.

When Derek was leaving to hand in his resignation to the White House, he told Meredith to stay and wait for him, just like when he left her at the house of candles so he could break up with Rose. Meredith and Derek kissed and he left. A couple of hours later, Meredith got a call that Derek never showed up for the meeting in Washington D.C.. Meredith soon began to worry about what happened to him. Just as she picked up the phone to call the police, the police came to the house asking if it was the home of Derek Shepherd. She replied yes that’s my husband. Meredith then was told there was an accident.

Derek's Death
Derek was involved in a car accident with serious injuries. Ultimately, he was declared brain dead, and Meredith had his ventilators turned off. He had been on the way to the airport for a final trip to D.C. where he would wrap up his work and hand in his resignation. After Derek died, Meredith took Zola and Bailey and left Seattle in the middle of the night, much like her mother did with her when she was a child. All Meredith left was a note saying that she and the children were safe. Her friends tried to contact her repeatedly, but she didn't answer. It was later revealed that she moved to San Diego for one year. Finally, Meredith answered on Thanksgiving, telling Alex to stop calling her, that she and the kids were fine.

Building a New Life
Meredith put out feelers with a real estate agent to see whether anyone would be interested to buy her house. But she forgot to inform Amelia, which sparked a fight between the two. Amelia was mad at her for not having called her before pulling the plug on Derek, so she couldn't say goodbye. Meredith broke down after the confrontation. She later went to Alex and explained that her house didn't feel like her home without Derek, so she asked if she and the kids could stay with him and Jo for a while. He agreed to that, but Jo got mad at him for not consulting her first. Meredith felt guilty about forgetting that Amelia was also supposed to be her sister, and gave her her old phone with Derek's last voice mail message. Later that day, she intervened when Catherine and Richard were too angry to get married. Meredith played the dead husband card and got them to the altar after all. That evening, Meredith hosted a party for the newlyweds at her house. At the party, she told Maggie, who was upset about her own parents' divorce, that she could always come to talk to her, about anything. Amelia joined them as Meredith said that a house filled with happy people would be the perfect last memory, as that had been what Derek had wanted. She took Amelia and Maggie's hands and they went inside to dance it out together.

As Jo found a loft for the two of them, Alex moved out of the house and sold it back to Meredith, who moved in with her kids and sisters. The sister started carpooling to work, and Meredith started to teach an intern anatomy class at the hospital. Initially, there were some tensions among Meredith and Amelia, including an argument over whether or not they were going to tear down the wall between the kitchen and the living room, as a drunk Meredith had mused about. Maggie intervened to call a truce. Meredith and Amelia apologized to each other, and Meredith admitted she doesn't know how to talk to Amelia as she's a lot to handle sometimes, and Meredith doesn't totally like her. However, she considered Amelia family, so she didn't have to. She then decided it was okay to tear the wall down.

After a busy day where Bailey, the new Chief, dumped all her patients on Meredith, Bailey rewarded Meredith with a promotion to Head of General Surgery. However, Bailey made Meredith an offer with a low salary. After consulting with other department heads, Meredith stood up for herself and asked for the salary she deemed fit. It turned out that Bailey was actually testing her to see if she would stand up for herself and agreed to Meredith's request.

Growing Closer to Nathan and Supporting Alex
When Nathan Riggs arrived at the hospital, it did not take long for Meredith to discover the reasons regarding his feud with Owen. Out of loyalty, Meredith asked Owen if they hated Nathan, to which Owen said yes.

The day Owen sold Derek's trailer, Meredith witnessed Amelia being happy in her new life with Derek's job and a possible engagement to Cristina's former husband. This all resulted in a particularly bad day for Meredith, resulting in her snapping at everyone in the OR, including Nathan. Alex later told her not to crap on everyone's life just because she was choosing to be unhappy and pointed out she had choices. Later that night in the parking lot, Nathan brought up her behavior and that he understood the way she felt about living a life without Derek, comparing it to Megan's disappearance. Things got heated and resulted in her kissing him, which led to them hooking up in her car four times in one night.

On the day of Owen and Amelia's wedding, Meredith and Alex talked about possibly having only one true love in your life. At work, Meredith made it clear to Nathan that she didn't want him to get too attached, which he assured her he wasn't. She then went to the church to get Amelia down the aisle, which included a quick getaway and more debating about having one true love. Meredith concluded it would be better if you believed you can have more than one. This led her to open up to Nathan shortly before the ceremony when they discussed her wedding and his wedding plans with Megan. During the ceremony, Nathan gave Meredith a loving look. However, Maggie misinterpreted his look as being for her, and she confessed to Meredith that she had a crush on Nathan, leaving Meredith in an awkward situation.

At the wedding reception, Nathan invited her to dance but she declined. As he was suggesting they get out together, Maggie interrupted and ended up dancing with Nathan. Meredith continued to avoid Nathan after Maggie's confession and told him they had a problem. Before she could elaborate, Jo called her about Alex assaulting Andrew. She went to the hospital to check on Andrew's status and, knowing what really happened, kept Alex updated on Andrew while lying to Maggie about what had happened to Andrew. She and Ben both knew that Alex was the culprit, but she kept protecting Alex to make sure his good side would win. She learned the truth about DeLuca being with Jo through Stephanie and went to tell Alex, who had thought that DeLuca was raping a drunk Jo. She advised Alex to go and tell Bailey what happened, but he went to try and stop Andrew from pressing charges. Nathan found her sitting in a lounge and sat with her at her request as she decided to tell Bailey the truth. She did so, but Alex turned himself in before Bailey could have him arrested. Maggie was upset when she learned that Meredith had lied to her. Meredith said she just did so because they were still figuring things out and promised not to lie to her anymore, like a real sister. However, she immediately broke that promise when she hid the fact that Nathan came to see her that night, asking about the problem she had mentioned as he really felt something between them. She replied someone would get hurt and, since Nathan brushed it off, then lied and said she didn't feel the same way about him.

Maggie later told her about her recurring sexual dreams about Nathan and decided to ask him out like a grown woman ready for her big love. Meredith then accompanied Alex to the courthouse, where he was charged with felony assault in the second degree. This made Alex think of himself as just another piece of trash but Meredith reminded him of his career and remained confident that he wouldn't go to prison. In surgery with Maggie, Owen came in to invite Meredith for a housewarming, and Maggie volunteered to come after finding out Nathan would be there. Meredith later rode an elevator with Andrew and talked about how she was assaulted and forgave the man who did that to her. She added he should be focused on surgery instead of the case, which he interpreted as a threat. Meredith arrived at the dinner party and she made Owen give Maggie a tour so she could have a private talk with Nathan. She told him Maggie was going to ask him out and she asked Nathan to decline nicely, which Nathan took as a signal that Meredith herself felt something for him, which she denied. At the party, she also asked Jo to talk to Alex even though Jo was more concerned about Andrew. Later at the hospital, Bailey confronted Meredith about her threat to Andrew and warned Meredith not to go down with Alex, but Meredith insisted on standing by him. She and Bailey then had to operate on Alex's patient following a mistake he made, and Meredith invited Andrew to scrub in to clear the air between them. Back at home, Alex told Meredith about Bailey's decision to let him work in the clinic and that he supported that decision because his head wasn't in the game. Meredith then told him about her sleeping with Nathan, just before Maggie came in and told them Nathan turned her down. However, she didn't plan on giving up since he just told her he wasn't dating right now.

Standing Up for Richard
Bailey and Catherine brought Eliza Minnick to be the new Residency Program Director, effectively firing Richard from the job. When Meredith refused to allow Eliza into her OR to observe her teaching technique, Bailey suspended her. Bailey came to her house to get her to come back to her job. She agreed to come back if Richard could return to the Residency Program Director. Bailey declined and Meredith didn't come to work. Richard came over to Meredith's house to get her to come back and said she'd be fine.

Rekindled Romance with Nathan
Eventually, Meredith finally agreed to dinner with Nathan, but their plans were postponed when Maggie's mother died and Meredith had to take care of her. She found herself on an airplane with Nathan, as both were heading to a conference. They ended up hooking up in the airplane bathroom. Both had to tend to patients when the plane hit turbulence. The experience allowed them both to become closer and for Meredith to open up to Nathan about her history. She agreed to stay in a hotel room with Nathan, marking another step in their relationship.

Megan's Return and Harper Avery Award
As the relationship with Nathan progressed to him sleeping over a lot, Meredith finally found it time for him to meet the kids and invited him to dinner. After doing so, she started to panic a bit, but Amelia pointed out there was nothing or no one standing in her way. However, as she came home after work and told her kids about the upcoming guest, her plans were thwarted when Amelia told her that Megan had been found and was on her way to Seattle. Upon finding out that Nathan didn't know yet, Meredith immediately left to go and tell him. As she arrived at the hospital, she witnessed an explosion from the parking lot. Meredith rushed inside and started to help out with evacuating patients due to the spreading fire, all the while looking for Nathan. She also went looking for Erin Miller, a missing girl. While looking for Erin on the OR floor, she found that Nathan had refused to evacuate and was still working on his lobectomy patient. She quickly got gowned and gloved to help him so they'd be out faster. As soon as they could, they left and took the patient to the evac zone outside. He had inhaled some smoke and needed oxygen therapy. Meredith stayed with him and checked his breath sounds. In that quiet moment, she recalled their shared dream of their lost loved one returning to them and finally told him the news about Megan. He broke down and she confronted him, unable to answer his questions about Megan. She could only tell him that Megan would be brought to Madigan Medical Center. He decided to drive up there and could hardly contain his excitement and happiness, something she told him he did not need to apologize for as she understood how he felt. She then told him to get going and watched him drive off.

Meredith was at work when Owen and Nathan brought Megan to the hospital. She had a frozen abdomen and Meredith had an idea of how they could reverse her colostomy. While Bailey and Webber advised a conservative approach, but Megan opted for the more radical approach so she could return to her son in Iraq faster. Nathan had doubts about Meredith working on the case given their history, but Meredith assured him she could do it. Megan tried to find out from her who Nathan had been dating, but Meredith didn't answer. Teddy also urged her to tell Megan the full story. As she advised Alex to tell Jo that he had found her husband, she realized it was only right Megan also got the full story and went to tell her, only moments before Nathan came in to do so. As she prepped Megan for surgery, she shared that her one great love had died and that she'd do everything to get Megan back to her son, which was Megan's first priority. Meredith nervously scrubbed in for the surgery, which went well right up to the end, when she found out there wasn't enough tissue left to close the wound, angering her.

She took her anger out by destroying the attending's lounge and went home, where she was inspired to perform an abdominal wall transplant. She got Teddy on her side and they presented the plan to Megan, who accepted the opportunity to escape her hospital bed and didn't have a problem with Meredith doing the surgery. She had Richard's sub-interns set out to find a donor since UNOS had none available. When she received news they had found one, she went to tell Megan, accidentally interrupting Nathan's proposing to her. Meredith, Teddy, and Jo then performed the surgery without a hitch. Megan recovered well. On her way out, Meredith found Nathan sitting outside on a bench. He told her Megan was still convinced he was in love with Meredith, who was angered and walked off. Meredith did not want to be in another love triangle and believed that Nathan was betraying her by not seizing the miraculous opportunity to be with Megan again. Eventually, with all of Meredith's pushing, Nathan started a new life with Megan in Los Angeles with her son, Farouk.

Because of her groundbreaking procedure on Megan, Meredith landed the cover of the Journal of Surgical Advancement (JSA) and won a Catherine Fox Award. She also began a series of ALPPS procedures - a first for any doctor on the West Coast. For Jackson's surgery competition, she submitted a proposal for a mini-liver procedure but was unable to get the patent from her mother's former friend, Marie Cerone, who still held a grudge over her and Ellis' fight. Eventually, Meredith was able to develop the procedure with the help of Jo. She also later broke the hospital's record for the single longest surgery.

Hiring a Matchmaker and Thatcher's Illness
At Jo and Alex's wedding, Andrew kissed Meredith while drunk, which he immediately apologized for. While she dismissed at as no big deal, the kiss led to her having sex dreams about the majority of men in her life, such as Andrew, Jackson, and Tom. Soon after, she started treating Cece Colvin, a professional matchmaker, who picked up on Meredith's desire to be kissed, even though Meredith dismissed the observation. She threw her hat in the ring for the recent job opening for interim Chief to have extra work to distract her from her desires. Cece had to be put on dialysis awaiting her kidney transplant. Throughout the set-up, she pointed out that there's no cap on happiness and that love doesn't just come walking through the door. After the surgery, Meredith briefly met Atticus Lincoln but dismissed him at his attempt to introduce himself. At night in bed, a curious Meredith googled Cece's services but opted against using them.

While the sex dreams continued, Meredith found herself avoiding Cece due to her aggressive matchmaking attempts. Jackson advised her to tell Cece she was married to her work, which she heavily objected to, causing Link to overhear that she wasn't married. In another attempt to find more work, Meredith set out to convince Bailey to allow her to create a surgical innovation fellowship for Jo. Later, she ran into Link and he properly introduced himself. She defended her earlier comment and stated she just meant she had a life outside work. He proposed drinks after work, but she had to assist Maggie in inserting a pacemaker for Cece's heart. During the procedure, Maggie also encouraged her to hire Cece. They later had to inform her that her client, whom she had hit after passing out in her car, had died, Cece opposed being put on the transplant list. Bailey then found Meredith and told her she had stolen Meredith's idea and created the fellowship for Jo under her own leadership. She needed some joy and found that was the way to do it, so she told Meredith to go find joy herself. After finding out she had been passed over as interim Chief, which went to Alex instead, Meredith decided to hire Cece. She admitted to Cece that she was, in fact, married to her work but didn't want to be. Having found a new purpose, Cece accepted her as a client and they started talking.

Afterward, Meredith got tired of the flood of questions soon and did her best to avoid them. Cece tried to get answers through Taryn Helm, but Meredith only closed herself off even more. She confided in Alex, who told her that after everything she had been through, she had earned the right to close herself off and be selective of whom she wanted to let it. While Meredith found a new way to continue Cece's care, she and Cece agreed to diminish the number of questions and try a new approach as well. She instructed Meredith to go out and buy herself five new outfits and ready herself for something new, which she did.

Cece planned a blind date for Meredith, who briefly came into work beforehand wearing make-up, which was noticed by several men, including Andrew and Link. She met with the guy at a restaurant for lunch having low expectations, but they really hit it off and John completely understood her dedication to her work. Along the way, they discovered they were actually on the wrong date but decided to keep it going. They left the restaurant and took a stroll. While discussing traveling, John stated that he was happy not having kids that could restrict his travel plans. He even went on to say he hated how desperate single mothers are in the dating scene. Having lost all interest due to his comment, Meredith revealed she had three children of her own and left the date. At the hospital, she shared her experience with Andy Herrera, who made her see that she now knew there still were great men out there and that she managed to dodge this particular slow-moving bullet because he revealed his opinion on single mothers before the relationship could have dragged on for too long.

The blind dates continued. Before a date with Daniel, Meredith was told by Richard that her father was dying of acute myeloid leukemia. She didn't know what to do about the situation. Link approached her for dinner, but she turned him down as she viewed him as more of an emergency kind of person rather than serious dating potential. In surgery, she and Alex discussed her situation with her father. She opened the door by giving him a piece of her liver, but he never walked through. She wouldn't need to grieve him since he had been a ghost for years. On her date, Meredith rambled on about how it shouldn't be children's job to forgive their parents just because they are their parents. She decided not to reach out since the sole purpose would be making Thatcher feel better, which she didn't think weighed up against the pain it would cause her and her kids. She returned to the hospital, where Link put his number in her phone in case of an emergency. At the same time, Andrew came over to ask Meredith about her date. She said she scared him off. Both Link and Andrew then held the elevator doors for her, causing her to take the stairs. After work, she went to hang at Alex and Jo's with Link, whose hair she cut after he had cut off a piece to comfort a kid facing cancer treatment.

Meredith was flown out to Los Angeles with Tom Koracick by Catherine Fox, who needed their expertise. She revealed she had a spinal tumor. They did extra tests and found it was a grade III chondrosarcoma. Catherine struggled with how to tell Richard. Unbeknownst to her, Meredith received a call from Richard to tell her he had been arrested and was in jail.

After returning to Seattle, Meredith bailed out Richard as a windstorm hit Seattle. Back at the hospital, she and Andrew treated a deteriorating Cece, who had discovered Link and suggested him to Meredith. Concerned over Catherine's health, Meredith was dismissive of Maggie's relationship troubles with Jackson. Meredith eventually broke HIPAA and told Maggie about Catherine's cancer. At the same time, Taryn arrived with the news that they had finally found a donor for Cece. Andrew clarified to Cece that there was a very real chance she would not make it off the table alive, but Cece was willing to roll the dice. She did warn Meredith she would come back to haunt her if she didn't do her best to squeeze all possible joy out of her life. This convinced Meredith to say yes to drinks with Link, much to Andrew's dismay. He then sought out Meredith as she was preparing for the transplant and told her that he had fallen in love with her since their kiss and that he wanted her to know that he was an option. While she had some excuses to turn him away, such as her being his attending and his history with Maggie, he thought she felt the attraction between them, too. Overcome by desire, she removed herself from the situation and promised him she'd think about what he had said. Soon after, they got stuck together in an elevator on their way to the OR due to a power outage caused by the storm. With no cell phone connection, they tried to find a way out to no avail. She asked him to stop looking at her the way he did. He likened their situation to Doctor Who's TARDIS, where the rules don't apply, but she told him the rules still applied. While in there, Andrew confided in her about how his famous surgeon father killed four people while he operated in a manic episode but he got away with it because of his connections. Meredith then decided to try the trap door and he lifted her up but to no avail. As he lowered her down, she dropped into his arms and they almost shared a kiss until the power kicked back in. Finally free, they rushed to the OR. Unfortunately, Cece didn't make it. Meredith closed her up and told her about her interest in both Link and Andrew. Thanks to Cece, she had found happiness again. Afterward, Andrew showed some of his appealing cocky side and asked Meredith out on a date, with Link coming over at the exact moment with the same question. Unable to choose, she decided to go home to her children.

The attraction between Meredith and Andrew continued to grow with every surgery did they together. At the same time, she found herself irritated by Link's laid-back attitude. She questioned why Jo ever thought they would be good together and didn't try to hide her disdain from Link. A difference of opinion over a shared patient led to a confrontation in the OR. She wondered why he had kept his reasoning for his non-standard approach from her, to which he replied that convincing her that he belonged here was not a part of his job.

Later, he found out that The Hulk had canceled for Bailey's superhero birthday party. He offered to help out and they managed to get her house ready in time. He explained he offered to help out because she seemed stressed. He shared he does not believe in letting stress ruin your life after half of his hospital friends died from a cancer he survived and because his parents split up over it. Finally understanding the origins of his laid-back nature, she apologized for the way she behaved. He didn't mind as he liked the chase. The kids then arrived for the party and Link played along with Bailey. They sat down with cake and wine and he complimented her on running a three-kid household all the while winning surgical awards. As she admitted she had grown to like him more over the course of the day, they continued to talk over cake and wine while she ignored Andrew's text asking her to come over to celebrate his first solo surgery. Following Richard's urging, Meredith decided she did want to say goodbye to her father before it was too late. She went to visit him and discovered he had moved to Zimbabwe after Lexie's death. The realization he had yet again left her behind hurt her deeply, but he revealed he had actually come back for Derek's funeral. However, he saw how lost she was and decided not to bother her any further one of the most difficult days of her life. Conversation then came easier and Meredith told him about Maggie and her children and comforted him until he died with her by his side.

On Christmas Eve, Jo and Alex invited Meredith for their classy NYE party. Andrew came over to ask Meredith out for drinks. She declined as she had to go put her kids to bed, but she did invite him to come to the party with her. Link, dressed as Santa, came over to give Meredith cookies from his bag while on his way to the peds ward. Jo mocked Meredith's love triangle, but Meredith stated there was no love and thus no triangle. Afterward, Andrew asked Meredith when she was going to stop stringing Link along as he was growing tired of wasting time not being with her. She assured him NYE was an actual date between them. However, she stayed at the hospital, thus standing up both Link and Andrew at the party. Later at work, Andrew confronted Meredith over her standing him up and stated it was just rude of her. As time went on, he witnessed her convincing her patient's husband not to give up, he wondered how she could tell the man that if she herself kept running away from love. He thought she was so beyond him, but it turns out she was just a kid hiding behind excuses. To spite him, Meredith turned around and asked Link out to dinner. He was surprised since it was Valentine's Day but gladly accepted. Later that day, Meredith officiated a wedding between her patient and her fiancé shortly before the former's death. Afterward, Andrew took Meredith to the hospital roof for a spontaneous date with champagne. She stayed with him and they ended up sharing their first kiss while Link waited for her at the restaurant.

Meredith apologized to Link for standing him up. She also held off on going on a real date with Andrew because she wanted to make sure Maggie was okay with it. While awaiting the date, Andrew kept staring at her longingly so Meredith set a rule that he could not do that at work so at to not be distracted from her work. After successfully operating on a woman from Maggie's past together, Maggie was finally ready to hear her out. While surprised, she was fine with it, so Meredith then went to find Andrew and took him out on a date to a restaurant. He agreed but insisted it'd be his treat. Following their date, Andrew assisted her as she broke the hospital's longest surgery record with a 27 hour and 3-minute surgery. Afterward, an exhausted Meredith fell asleep on a gurney in a hallway, so Andrew moved her to a bed in an empty room and covered her with a blanket. On the day of Jackson's party to celebrate Catherine surviving her surgery, Meredith told Chief Karev about her relationship with Andrew. He mocked her and also told her to report it to HR. She took Andrew to the party with her as her plus one, though they did not plan on staying long as Meredith had the house to herself. However, their plans were disrupted when Amelia had a fight with Owen and planned on sleeping at the house. Andrew then took Meredith into a guest room at Jackson's and they started making out there, only to be caught by Richard. To calm herself and "act normal", Meredith took Andrew into the kitchen and took over preparing egg rolls from the catering staff, inadvertently putting a plastic tray in the oven, which led to the penthouse being evacuated right before the big celebratory speech. Andrew and Meredith then decided to go to his place, but their plans were once again disrupted, this time by the return of Carina DeLuca with Vincenzo DeLuca, Andrew's father. Vincenzo came to Seattle to pitch research on gestational sacks, while Meredith had a dream about her mother that steered her towards finding a specific new research project, though she had yet to figure out what exactly it was. While she spent the day in a lab trying to find an answer, Andrew visited and told her that his father seemed stable despite Carina's claims that he was bipolar. At the same time, Maggie publicly revealed her biological parentage to the medical community, which Meredith was fine with. Meredith talked about Vincenzo with Alex and advised him to dig deeper before agreeing to fund the research, but hid her knowledge about his mental illness so as to not break Andrew's trust. She later came across the arguing DeLuca siblings in a hallway. Carina wanted to shut the research down, but Andrew had signed on, insisting their father was stable. While Meredith herself remained on the fence, Andrew asked her to trust his judgment on this. At the end of the day, Meredith concluded her research had to be about non-invasive diagnostic tools.

Andrew spent all his time on his father's research while Meredith gave him the space to do so. While her bad feeling about the project persisted, she decided to just be supportive of Andrew. In the end, Vincenzo's display of reckless behavior led to Alex shutting the research down. Meredith found Andrew clearing out the lab and he requested some time alone, so she told him to let her know if he needed anything and left him be. Andrew continued to shut Meredith out, so she focused her time and energy on her ingestible diagnostic device research. He later sent her a text to come over, which she did. She told him she was past the point in her life where she would sit around at work wondering if her boyfriend was ignoring her. He knew that, but he just needed some time to be hurt over his father and he did not want to drag her down with him. To make up for his behavior, he made her an apology dinner.

While Meredith assisted Jackson, Catherine, Owen, and Megan Hunt on a complex surgery involving an abdominal wall transplant and a penis and scrotum transplant, Richard gave Andrew a solo lap appy under his supervision. Meredith spent the day worrying about Andrew, but he passed Richard's test with flying colors despite the surgery turning into a complicated procedure. Richard told her that Andrew was a good man and Andrew later talked her through his day over dinner at his place.

The relationship continued to evolve but Meredith never let him sleep over since she didn't want her kids to meet him before she had told them about him. However, one night, Andrew ran into Zola while sneaking out, thus disrupting Meredith's plan on how to tell her kids. At work, Meredith and Andrew's patient turned out to be in labor instead of having an obstruction. Meredith asked Bailey for advice on how to tell her kids. After watching Andrew take care of the newborn baby, Meredith decided to gather her kids that night. Over ice cream, she told them that Andrew was her boyfriend and that he would be visiting more, but that she was not going anywhere, following Bailey's advice.

Insurance Fraud and Community Service
Meredith's happy life continued for a short while until she joined Alex and Andrew on Gabriella Rivera's case. Gabby and her mother had been detained at the Mexican border. Gabby was reunited with her father after three months while her mother was still in the detention center. Since she was given little to no medical care, Luis had no clue what was going on with her. A scan revealed an obstruction that eventually led to her needing surgery. Unable to pay for it, Luis applied for state coverage but he earned too much cleaning office buildings to qualify. With Gabby's condition worsening, Meredith promised she had a plan. She secretly put her daughter Ellis's name on the paperwork, which alarmed Richard. He yelled at her for what she did, but she insisted that the system was broken and that they could debate her actions later. She then headed into surgery. Pathology revealed that the obstruction was caused by lymphoma, meaning they were looking at years of treatment and follow-up.

After the surgery, Richard pointed out that Meredith was risking losing her license and a prison sentence for committing a felony and that implicating Luis in insurance fraud wouldn't help his asylum. He then suggested that they make Gabby sicker on paper so they could keep her in the hospital for 30 days, after which a new state policy would automatically kick in regardless of Luis' income. They rolled with it and assured Luis he could sleep in Gabby's room every night so they would not have to be separated again. Meredith assumed that Andrew was judging her for her actions, but he revealed he was actually in awe of her and hadn't spoken out because he was afraid he would tell her that he loved her. Taken by surprise, Meredith barely responded to his confession and left.

Upon finding out that Jo still hadn't spoken to Alex after her return from Pittsburgh, Meredith went to stay with Jo while Alex took her place in her household. Jo shut her out and said Meredith was only there to hide from her own life. Meredith admitted that Andrew's "I love you" terrified her because it reminded her of Derek and all the pain she had been through. She then said she understood pain from deep experience and that her parents had messed with her head, like Alex's had, so they would both understand whatever had happened in Pittsburgh. Jo then revealed that her mother was raped by her father and that she looked like him. Jo then opened up about how all the terrible things in her life were just her birthright, but Meredith quipped with good things that Jo had been a part of. To get through to her, Meredith talked about how she stopped fighting when she was about to drown and asked if Jo wanted to stop fighting, too, or if she just needed a few more days under her covers. Jo replied the latter, after which Meredith insisted they go talk to Alex and Bailey to get her a proper leave of absence so she could get the help she needed. While Jo waited to talk to Bailey, she asked Meredith to go and tell Alex. Meredith joined him in the hyperbaric chamber with Gus Carter, while unbeknownst to her, her insurance fraud had come to light and Andrew was being questioned by Bailey, Catherine, and representatives from the insurance company. Soon after, Andrew came by with Catherine to say goodbye; he claimed that he had committed the fraud and apologized to her. Meredith wanted to stop him from taking the fall, but she couldn't stop him from taking the fall and turning himself in as she could not leave the chamber.

Unwilling to explain the whole situation to the technicians through the phone to stop Andrew, Meredith had no choice but to focus on Gus and Alex. She told him about Jo's depression and what had caused it. After finding out about what Andrew did, Richard dropped by. Meredith asked him to set the record straight as Andrew's career would not survive this. He pointed out her children wouldn't recover if she were locked up, but she planned on hiring a great lawyer and plead her case, confident that her track record and the fact that it was her first offense would help her win. As Gus coded, the decompression process was started. She and Alex pulled Gus through and she rushed off. She went to set the record straight with Bailey and Catherine. Alex and Richard came to her defense, but Bailey fired all three of them. Having made her mind up, Meredith went home to tell her kids that she would have to leave for a while to go take care of something. She then went to visit Andrew in jail and told him he needed to let her clean up her own messes and develop some self-preservation skills. She stood by her decision. She told him she loved him and left to set the record straight.

She immediately went to her attorney. Much to her surprise, she was told that she could go home. The lawyer would schedule a hearing, where she suspected Meredith would be ordered to a few hours of community service in a clinic if she was repentant. Additionally, she deemed it highly unlikely that the medical board would pursue action her license. A week later, the hearing took place and Meredith explained to the judge that Gabriela's cancer meant too many procedures and money to pay for herself or cover it pro bono. She stated the system should have supported the Riveras and that it was broken. She honestly said she only regretted her decisions to the extent she could knowing that they led to Gabriela doing well now. The judge got angry and the lawyer blurted out her three kids as a reason to keep her out of jail. She was then ordered to community service but picking up trash on the streets instead of at a clinic.

While picking up trash, she started to give out medical advice when other people in her group found out she was a doctor. After a few weeks, Suzie Wilson, Zola's classroom mom, passed by and recognized her. Thinking she was volunteering, Suzie said she finally understood why Meredith never volunteered at school. Meredith explained working mothers don't have time for that, after which her supervisor shouted at her, revealing that she was actually there per court order. Suzie spread the word at school, which was overheard by Zola, who come home to ask her how to spell criminal. While enjoying some ice cream with Andrew, Meredith told him she was happy both she and the kids were healthy and that she actually found some sense of accomplishment in picking up trash. She then received a letter from the medical board to inform her they were, in fact, pursuing action against her license.

She started disguising herself better to avoid getting recognized again. One morning, she found out her hearing about her license was scheduled three months later. Taking advantage of still having her license, she continued to give out medical advice to people on her crew, referring them to Pac-North for further care. She also had Levi bring her supplies from Grey Sloan, which she thought of as hers since she still owned the hospital. Her supervisor Robin started to object to her street clinic since it was keeping people from doing their work but Meredith brought up she had noticed a nodule in Robin's neck that warranted a closer look. Robin had seen her primary care physician about it, who referred her to an ENT, but her appointment was still months away. After convincing her that detecting possible cancer was more important than staying at work for two more hours, Meredith took her to the Grey Sloan parking lot for an ultrasound. Given the features shown on there, she convinced Jackson to take the time to perform a biopsy, which revealed papillary thyroid cancer, which could be treated. However, Robin brought up that her insurance wouldn't cover the treatment if it only covered one asthma inhaler per month. Jackson said they would look into options for her, which Robin said would boil down to bankruptcy or death. Meredith was then discovered in the hospital by Bailey but she stated she was just visiting a friend. That night at home, Meredith shared that continuously seeing people being let down by the medical system had made her decide to write about what she was seeing despite her lawyer advising her to lay low.

She got in touch with a website that would publish her story and shared some titles she had thought of with Andrew, all of them insulting to the medical system. She didn't care about her standing with the medical community since they were in a fight already anyway. Meanwhile, at the hospital, Meredith's patient Shirley Gregory was refusing to let Jo operate on her despite her being a student of Meredith's. Jo then had Bailey agree to have Meredith supervise the procedure remotely through video chat, which convinced Shirley to consent. Meredith used Robin owing her to follow the entire procedure through but Bailey hung up on her as soon as the procedure was over, leaving Meredith to go take care of a beehive in a discarded toilet. Link and Amelia came over to hang out with her and Andrew at the house. Amelia shared she was pregnant. Meredith congratulated her, excited about becoming an aunt.

Without her knowledge, the website combined all her suggested topics into one article entitled "Hospital Hell at Grey Sloan Memorial: Fired Surgeon Speaks Out." Including sharp comments about insurance companies, Big Pharma, and institutionalized discrimination, the article started trending online. She realized the article would terrify people and keep patients away from Grey Sloan. She also figured Bailey would hate her even more, which Andrew confirmed as soon as he got to work. Meredith attempted to set the record straight with the website but they refused to delete the article or even change the headline because of the popularity it had gained. Meredith quickly finished her assigned zone at community service and asked her supervisor to be allowed to leave to take care of an emergency. Her supervisor told her that she would inform the judge of all her extracurriculars if she left before putting in the required hours. After Meredith learned even Cristina had learned about the article, she promised Lisa she would make up the hours and begged her not to call the judge, after which she took off. At the hospital, after Jo confirmed that Bailey was furious at her, Meredith went to see her and told her that she had nothing to do with the article as all the things she had written herself were not directed at the hospital. She offered to write a retraction but Bailey said they never get read. Meredith stressed she loved the hospital and how sorry she was but Bailey said the damage had been done and asked her to leave. On her way out, she ran into Andrew and told him what had gone down and that she had gotten a summons to go back to court because she had walked out on community service. Andrew hated that she made a choice that could land her in jail and added to the possibility of her losing her license. He wished she would have done the community service and come back to work to change the system from within, but she said nothing she had written was untrue and that she wasn't going to sit on her mountain of privilege leaving others to fight for themselves in the broken system that was hurting and killing them. She added that if he really expected her to sit back and nothing, he didn't know her at all, and walked away from him.

Her skipping out on community service gave her nightmares. On the day of her court hearing, she woke up to Zola telling her she wasn't feeling well. When Zola vomited during breakfast, a worried Meredith took her to the hospital and asked Tom for a head CT given Zola's history of spina bifida. While waiting for the CT, her lawyer reminded her she needed to be in court but the scans revealed Zola's shunt needed to be revised. Andrew tried to convince her to go to court while he'd look out for Zola but Meredith made it clear there was no way she would leave her daughter. Tom made Meredith wait in the waiting area so she made Taryn promise to text her updates. Andrew offered to sit with her but she didn't like him offering to skip a surgery to be her human tissue. Maggie and Amelia came to sit with her and Meredith vented her frustration about Andrew, who just didn't get her because he wasn't a parent himself. She said Andrew was sexy and fun but she wasn't sure if he was more than that or if she even wanted him to be. She then asked Maggie and Amelia to talk about their lives to distract her. Meredith grew increasingly worried despite Taryn's reassuring texts. As she was about to head to the OR, Zola's surgical team came by to tell everything had gone fine. Meredith ordered Andrew to stay by Zola's side in post-op. Later that night, Meredith headed out to get Zola some Jello. She ran into Andrew, who had anticipated the request and had found her a cup. Her lawyer then appeared and Meredith explained why she hadn't shown up for the hearing. Nancy told her she squeezed a drop of humanity out of the judge, which meant she'd have to make up the lost hours in jail.

Meredith went to jail. On Halloween, she woke up with her roommate Paula hovering over her face because Meredith had been snoring. Since she was supposed to be let out that day and was eager to spend the holiday with her kids, Meredith watched the clock closely. When the time came, she addressed a guard, who told her that, as per usual, a crucial document for her release hadn't arrived one time but that it would show up soon. Meredith tried to bribe the guard by offering medical advice to any sick family members but it didn't work. Paula then learned she was a doctor and wondered what she did to end up in jail. Meredith told her about her crime, which was still threatening her medical license. Paula wasn't impressed with her small problems and told her how she had landed there. She was still waiting for her hearing but couldn't post bail so she was stuck in jail until the hearing, which would most likely be another month. Meanwhile, her kids were placed in the foster system. Meredith helped her out with a puzzle and commented that she was strong for not letting herself go crazy with worry over her kids. The guard came to let Meredith out and they wished each other good luck. The officer told Meredith to keep fighting the good fight without landing herself in jail. Meredith then asked the man for a favor. She went home and greeted her kids. She told her sisters she had come to realize she had a lot to work with even if she were to lose her license. She then called her lawyer and made arrangements to pay Paula's bail so she could be reunited with her kids.

Having made up for the hours, Meredith went back to doing community service. She ran into Amelia on her way out one day and advised her to tell Owen about the pregnancy. Meredith was working near Pac-North and decided to have coffee with Alex during her break. While in line at the coffee cart, she ran into Amelia and Maggie who told her about their problems.

On the day of her hearing, Meredith drove to the hotel with her sisters, Alex, and Andrew. While waiting to enter the room of the hearing, Meredith waited with most of Grey Sloan's attendings, including Bailey. Upon entering the room, Nancy asked Meredith to keep quiet for once given the vicious prosecutor and let her do her job. Meredith promised she would. The hearing began and the judge introduced the doctors on the panel. Paul Castello came in late and Meredith immediately recognized him as the doctor who had killed Derek, while he didn't seem to remember her at all. Meredith quietly explained the situation to Nancy but upon learning that the hearing would have to be rescheduled, which could take six months, Meredith decided to power through with Paul on the panel. Bailey took the stand first and denied Nancy's suggestions of her and Meredith being close. She stated Meredith no longer held the qualities that had prompted Bailey to appoint her Head of General Surgery. Afterward, the prosecutor presented her with a list of questionable events Meredith had been involved in, all of which Bailey confirmed to be true. Afterward, Luis Rivera testified that Meredith had saved his daughter and that there should be more doctors like her. Andrew was mostly questioned about their relationship, which he assured them was completely consensual and that Meredith had not pressured him to keep the fraud quiet when he discovered it. He was also confronted with his request for a transfer, which detailed Meredith's and other attendings' abuse of him after he pressed charges against Alex for assaulting him. Andrew assured the panel that that had been cleared up and left in the past. He apologized to Meredith, who said it was okay. Levi began testifying about Meredith being an amazing teacher but he was soon forced to confess that he had been the one who had reported the fraud to Bailey. He broke down and ran out after his testimony. During the recess that followed, Meredith told Andrew that their relationship wouldn't survive if her license were taken away.

After the recess, Owen testified to her surgical skills, specifically on Megan's case, but the prosecutor had dug up Bailey's post-op notes, which mentioned Owen voicing serious doubts about Meredith's approach at the time. Richard was questioned about the Alzheimer trial but he maintained that he was the only one who had played a role in that. The prosecutor commented on the pattern of his bending the rules for Meredith and called Patricia Murphy to the stand. She shared that Meredith hadn't been matched to Seattle Grace at first until Richard reached out to the NRMP to make a personal recommendation, which landed Meredith her spot. Meredith was shocked upon hearing this. Alex testified about Meredith making him a better person and surgeon. He was asked about the delay in Zola's adoption. He kept her kidnapping of Zola quiet and said delays happen all the time. The prosecutor suspected it had something to do with Meredith's being fired. Alex hesitated to answer. Paul then began pressing him to answer, asking if Meredith's insubordinate behavior had almost cost her her daughter. Meredith shot up and told him that he had no right to talk about her daughter as he had been the one to kill her father as he neglected to do even basic burr holes, let alone a head CT. Meredith yelled that he didn't deserve to judge her or anyone for that matter, after which he had a sudden seizure. She was among the doctors who rushed to his aid. She briefed the paramedics when they arrived and stressed that they should get him a head CT. After another recess, the judge announced that the hearing would be postponed given the situation. Alex, however, objected and let in a large group of people, all of whom had been treated by Meredith. Ray Ford, Shirley Gregory, Robin, and Katie Bryce all testified that Meredith had saved their lives. Alex then read a letter from Cristina, which stated that taking Meredith's license meant signing death certificates of countless future patients and that Meredith was an unstoppable light in a broken system. Alex wanted to proceed with letters from Callie, Arizona, April, and even Addison, but the judge had heard enough. He asked to clear the room but Bailey had something more to say. She stated Meredith had in fact broken the law to save a life, so she deserved to pick up trash, but she did not deserve to have her license taken over it. Bailey stated Meredith was too good of a surgeon for that and that everything she had survived made her better instead of cold or hard. Everyone then had to clear the room. Meredith waited outside until Nancy came to deliver the news that the majority of the panel had voted to drop the entire thing, meaning she got to keep her license. Meredith briefly hugged Andrew and was then flooded with hugs from her other friends. As they all left the hotel, Bailey told Meredith she could return to work at Grey Sloan. Meredith accepted the offer and hugged her.

At home, she ran into Jackson as Maggie was throwing him out. Shortly after, Andrew arrived. He wanted to talk. She apologized for what she had said about their relationship. He knew she had meant it. He pointed out everything he had done for her with the whole insurance fraud situation, which he said was what you do for your partner. However, he had come to realize that unlike him, she did not truly see him as her partner. While she was talking about Derek in that hearing, he realized that she didn't respect him like she did Derek. Meredith told him she respected him, too, but he insisted some part of her was wondering if he would ever be her equal. He told her to take some time to think about her future and if she wanted him to be a part of that.

Returning to Work, Andrew's Mania and Losing Alex
On her first day back, Meredith snuck into work to do two lap appies before breakfast to ease back in. Cristina also had sent her a package to congratulate her but it was nowhere to be found. The resident presented her with a welcome back cake. Andrew didn't know she was coming back. She said she had wanted to tell him but he was too busy dumping her. He said he hadn't dumped her but it was all the same to her. While rounding on Jamie Caldwell, Dr. Cormac Hayes abruptly interrupted and introduced himself as the new head of peds. He sidelined Meredith and had Andrew present the case again. Scans revealed a mass. Cormac suspected a tumor but Meredith suggested it may be leftover gallstones from the gallbladder removal she had performed a few years back. She didn't want to worry Jamie and her mother about cancer until a biopsy had confirmed it. Cormac went behind her back and told them anyway. Meredith stepped in and assured them nothing was certain yet. During surgery, the biopsy results came in, revealing the mass was not malignant. She went to take it out. Cormac objected but Meredith shut him down by saying he was a guest in her house. It turned out Meredith had been right with her guess. In post-op, Jamie didn't care about the successful surgery as her crush still hadn't texted her back. Cormac stepped in and said that raising boys himself had taught him that boys are just terrified of talking to girls, so it didn't mean that he wasn't interested in her at all. While leaving work, Meredith ended up on an elevator with Cormac and asked him if it was his thing to scare people at first and then bask in the relief with them later. He told her he just preferred to give people all the information and let them figure out what to do with it, a courtesy that his wife's doctors hadn't shown him before she did. He told her they would have to learn how to live together in her house. As he stepped off, Cristina finally informed Meredith her package wasn't a thing but a person: Cormac, whom she had nicknamed McWidow. Meredith then stared after him, not noticing Andrew who had been planning to set the record straight.

Meredith went to complain about Cormac to Alex and Jo, only to find that Alex was in Iowa and that Jo had brought home a baby from her Safe Haven volunteer work. Link pointed out Jo had kidnapped a baby but Meredith understood why she had taken the baby for the night. They barely had time to catch up before the three of them were paged to the hospital for multiple traumas after a car crashed into Joe's bar. Meredith called in Owen and Richard to help out. After checking that Andrew was okay, Meredith began treating Taryn Helm. While she implanted an IVC filter, an inebriated Taryn confessed that she was in love with Meredith. Meredith didn't really react to save her from further embarrassment. She wanted to return to the ER with Levi, who collapses. Meredith did a full workup and diagnosed cardiomyopathy. She paged Teddy, who did an angio while Meredith sat by his head. Meredith assured Levi that she had forgiven him for reporting the insurance fraud. Afterward, Meredith briefly talked with Cormac. Jo saw them and commented she could see something between them. Richard then asked her to come. He told her Bailey had had a miscarriage and needed some comforting. They got a box of doughnuts and sat down with her in her office so she wouldn't feel lonely.

Meredith texted Cristina to get more info on Cormac but Cristina stayed mum. Cormac came into the lounge to get coffee and after he was gone, Amelia commented on his being hot. Meredith then went to find Andrew and told him that she didn't like his telling her to take time to think. He told her about his patient who was inexplicably having fevers three days after a routine appendectomy. Meredith said she'd think on it but advised him to also tell Bailey. Before leaving, she told him she was missing him. He reminded her that he hadn't dumped her so she didn't have to miss him. En route to the ER, Meredith asked Cormac about Cristina, though he didn't realize whom she was talking about. While waiting on the scans of their shared patients, he asked her not to hold their first meeting against him as it was around the time he had lost his wife two years earlier. She understood and assured him it would get better over time, though not all the way better. They disagreed over approaches and had to convert to his when hers failed. He didn't hold it against her as he had had the same disagreement with Cristina once, though he was on Meredith's side back then. He then realized Meredith had brought up Cristina earlier but she made an excuse and left without divulging any further information about their connection. She went to Andrew, who still hadn't figured out what was wrong with his patient, and asked him to talk her through the entire case.

That led them to reconcile to some degree. They spent the night together. In the morning, he received word that his patient Suzanne Britland was being moved to the CCU. While getting dressed, he said they should talk about their relationship soon and revealed he had lured diagnostician Lauren Riley from UCSF to the hospital using Meredith's name before rushing out. At work, Meredith encountered Cormac as he was giving his boys a tour of the hospital. She ran into Amelia, who had seen Andrew leave the house and wondered if they were back together. Meredith said it was just sex at this point. Later, Lauren approached her, and Meredith wrongly addressed her as the consult from UCLA, making Lauren realize that Andrew had lied. On her way to consult on Levi's patient, she ran into Cormac, whose boys had ditched him in an attempt to make them late for the parent-teacher conferences. He was in awe of her staying sane while combining her job and raising her three kids, though she admitted to dropping some balls here and there. Meredith had to tell Levi's patient that her cancer had metastasized beyond the point of treatment. She came to see how Levi set up a dance floor in the cafeteria for the patient and her husband, which made her reflect on how she used to be the kind of person who did romantic things like that. Now, she broke up with Andrew after her trial and just woke up happy to get to practice medicine the next day without giving the break-up much thought. Bailey told her that it was part of growing up. Jackson then came in to inform them that Richard was refusing to work at Grey Sloan on Catherine's terms. The three of them threatened to quit if Tom didn't rehire Richard and Owen on their terms. Tom complied. Meredith started to put together a pro bono surgery day. As she was recruiting Cormac to operate, Andrew interrupted the conversation to inquire about a past patient of hers who had developed a post-op rash similar to Suzanne's, whom they had taken off all her meds so more indicative symptoms could manifest. Meredith talked him through the case and noticed that he was speaking fast and apparently had not slept for days. She confronted Lauren's about her treating Andrew like a machine but Lauren pointed out she was counting on it, with Suzanne's life hanging in the balance. Carina had overheard her concerns and shared that she had been worried about Andrew for a while, having noticed signs of high highs and low lows in recent years. Meredith was on the fence if his dedication was mania or healthy obsession but Carina pointed out she wouldn't ask that question about a resident she didn't love. Meredith then took her concerns to Bailey, who put Meredith on Suzanne's case to approve every step.

Out of nowhere, as Meredith was checking on Suzanne, Andrew and Lauren rushed in with the diagnosis of Still's disease and Andrew injected her with high-dose steroids without any explanation. Meredith pointed out he could have taken a minute to explain his actions before administrating steroids, which could kill her if they were wrong about the diagnosis. Fortunately, they were right and Suzanne quickly recovered. Meredith sought out Andrew to inform him about her status but he lashed out. She said that move could have ended his career had it gone wrong and she pointed out he was not in the right state of mind to make life-and-death decisions. He blamed her for being a hypocrite. Cormac tried to intervene but Meredith had it covered. Andrew went on praising himself for saving Suzanne's life against all odds, which led Meredith to point out he was sounding like his father. She suggested he get some sleep, but he said he didn't need any of this nor her. He told her they were done and left. Cormac suggested the write him up but Meredith declined. She sat down to text Alex, who started typing up a reply but stopped, which worried her.

Alex continued to dodge her even though she knew he was not in Iowa. As a blizzard hit Seattle and blocked off all roads, Cormac was unable to get a donor liver from Seattle Pres to Grey Sloan. Andrew overheard and offered to go get it himself, being used to the cold due to growing up in Wisconsin. Meredith tried to talk him out of it but he brushed off her concerns and took off. While he was off, Meredith and Cormac worked to stabilize the girl, who developed a hemorrhage. As they waited, she told him about how she got fired and he talked about him and Cristina treating a kid with a similar condition in Switzerland, bringing up a story Cristina had told him about Alex saving a kid with that condition as well. He said Cristina talked about Alex a lot but Meredith was surprised to hear she had never mentioned her to Cormac. An hour after they got word Andrew had left Seattle Pres with the liver, Meredith got anxious. Cormac told her about moving to Switzerland after his wife's death, which she likened to her fleeing to San Diego. They talked about lives without their spouses and agreed the firsts without them are especially tough. Andrew then came in with the liver and frostbitten fingers, as he had forgotten to wear gloves. Meredith and Cormac saved the girl. She went to inform Andrew, whose fingers had been treated by Jackson. Together with Carina, she again voiced her concerns over his mental state but he ordered her to leave the room. She and Cormac left the hospital to go spoil their kids. He asked her who Andrew was to her. She replied he was a first, the first man she told "I love you" to after Derek. He told her it was nice to meet someone widowed young like him. She agreed. As she walked off, Cormac told her Cristina mentioned her "twisted sister" a lot, whom he now suspected was Meredith. She just shrugged and walked off.

On her day off, she received a letter from Alex. He wrote that he had left Seattle, admitting he had chosen the easy way out as he didn't want her to give him crap for his decision to set him straight. He revealed he was with Izzie and explained that he reached out to get a letter of support for Meredith's trial, which finally gave him a good excuse to reach out to her. He wrote that during his call with Izzie, he heard children in the background, and Izzie told him they were his. She had used the frozen embryos, which he had given her permission to do way back when. He had secretly taken off to meet his twins right after the trial. He went on to describe his kids and his life with Izzie and said he needed to be a father to his kids, which Meredith had taught him how to be through being a mother to her kids. He wrote that he'd miss the hell out of her but assured her that she was perfectly capable of being her own person with him and Cristina gone. He also asked her not to show up to his house to talk him into returning to Seattle because, for the first time in his life, he felt that he was exactly where he needed to be. He concluded by saying she was always welcome to visit once she had accepted his decision so that his kids could meet their Auntie Mer, adding that he hoped she wouldn't hate him too much. Meredith was emotional but decided to respect his wish. Later, she explained to Zola that Uncle Alex had left.

At work, Amelia inquired about Alex's departure but Meredith said she didn't want to talk about it. She and Levi treated Noelle, a woman who had had an accident working jobs through an app that she needed to make ends meet. The patient revealed she had been rationing her insulin. At that moment, Meredith was paged by Tom and found that he had cleared an entire floor for Griffin Ford, a VIP billionaire patient, which explained the problem with admissions that Noelle had had. Tom had her examine Griffin, who came to the hospital looking for a medical reason as to why he had made a grave error that had caused a rocket to explode above Seattle. She reluctantly did the exam but took off as soon as Noelle's CT results got back, leaving Griffin in Jackson's care. Noelle coded and went into DIC. They were unable to save her. She ran into Tom, who asked her what she would do with Griffin's money. She had a whole list ready on how to improve the world. He then asked her how she decided which rules to break. She told him she just followed her gut to make the world better. At the end of the day, Meredith reflected on the inequity she had witnessed and told Bailey she missed Alex to cheer her up. She finally told someone she wasn't sure she could do this on her own. Bailey recognized the feeling, being the last one standing from her residency class, and then told Meredith that Richard was stepping down from surgery. On her pro bono surgery day, she had 25 surgeries to divide among four surgeons, all before Tom would shut down the project at 7 PM. She tried to recruit Richard but he still refused to operate. Patients and their family members grew upset as Meredith had to solve multiple issues, like Andrew going behind her back and messing up her OR schedule to get a patient into an OR and away from her supposed aunt as he suspected the patient was a human trafficking victim. She ended up asking Tom for more time. He complied and spontaneously agreed to pay for the overtime, explaining that Griffin Ford paid them a lot of money. She pieced together that Tom had made a fake diagnosis to fit Griffin's agenda in exchange for a large amount of money, which Tom was planning on using to fix the world like she had advised him too. Suddenly, a code violet was called and she found Andrew making a scene in the OR waiting room, where he tried to keep his patient's aunt away from her niece. As he was yelling accusations, Meredith and other attendings formed a human circle around him, indicating he was the dangerous person rather than the aunt and convinced him to go to Bailey's office. She later found out he had quit as he felt people were obstructing him in accomplishing the impossible and changing lives. She told him she loved him and begged him not to quit and instead take the suspension Bailey had proposed so that he wouldn't ruin his career. He agreed to that only if Meredith called the national trafficking hotline, which she agreed to. Later, Amelia came to ask for a spot for her veteran patient and when Meredith agreed, an uproar ensued among the other scheduled patients, who feared they'd be sent home without their promised surgery. Meredith then decided that everyone would get their surgery and that the hospital would host a monthly pro bono surgery day from here on out, for which she credited their generous donor. They managed to perform all the surgeries. Bailey later informed her that the aunt and her niece had disappeared, making them fear that Andrew had been right. Cormac complimented her on her work today but she was too concerned about the human trafficking situation to accept the praise. He then said he could finally see the twisted-ness Cristina had been talking about.

Meredith was supposed to accompany Richard to Los Angeles for his speech on his PathPen at the Surgical Innovation Conference but she had to stay home as her sitter got the flu. Zola set up a live feed for them to watch his talk, which went disastrously as he dismissed his Pen and started rambling nonsense about having found a cure for cancer. A worried Meredith watched in horror as Maggie and Cormac dragged Richard off the stage and called for an ambulance.

Meredith and Bailey set up a war room at the hospital and gathered the attendings to figure out what was going on with Richard. Unlike the others, Meredith was convinced it was not Alzheimer's. Together with Maggie, she ran some cognitive tests, which he failed miserably. When Richard disappeared from his room, she found him hallucinating in an OR, about to slice open his abdomen. She told him she could fix him as he was the one who taught her everything about surgery, life, and being a parent. She said she wasn't ready to lose him yet. Her talk brought him back to reality and he handed over the scalpel. As he slowly realized something was wrong with him, he addressed her as Ellis. She took him back to his room. Still convinced it was something other than rapidly progressing Alzheimer's, she sought out Andrew, who secretly had been working on the case, and had him show her what he had come up with so far. She told him they wouldn't leave until they figured it out and got to work.

The two of them spent days at the hospital trying to find the diagnosis with other doctors coming and going to help out. After a week of Meredith ignoring her home life, Maggie reminded her of how she herself had pushed her mother while refusing to accept the reality of her impending death. She thought Meredith was doing the same to Richard, refusing to believe it was Alzheimer's. Since Tom and Amelia agreed it was Alzheimer's, Catherine decided to take him home. Meredith found Andrew disrespectfully yelling at Catherine for her decision. She sent him for a walk and apologized for his behavior. Meredith then joined Catherine, Maggie, and Bailey to go discharge Richard, who brought up that his feet and hands were numb. Meredith then convinced Catherine to let her run an EMG, which showed impaired function. Tom and Amelia then changed their opinion and agreed to a nerve biopsy. Right before the procedure, Andrew barged in and knocked over the tray with instruments to stop them from performing the biopsy. He said Richard had received a hip replacement with cobalt, which could be deteriorating and leaking into his blood. Meredith drew blood for a test, which came back positive. She advocated with Bailey to let Andrew scrub in to watch up close despite his inappropriate behavior before, though Bailey stressed that he was on the thin ice. Link successfully removed the hip, which would solve the problems. After work, Cormac complimented Meredith on her diagnosis and asked her for a drink. She asked for a rain check and walked off. She then found a broken down Andrew sitting at the nurses' station. He had completely fallen apart. She pulled him up and took him home.

She didn't feel comfortable leaving him at home by himself so she took him back to work with her the next day, leaving him to rest in an on-call room. She informed Carina, who hated that she and Bailey had pushed him to this point in spite of her warnings about his condition. However, they yet again had to push him past his limits when Erin Banks, the human trafficking victim, showed up at the hospital again asking for him specifically. They had Andrew accompany her during the pre-op exams. Meredith and Bailey operated on her and they discussed Andrew during the surgery. As Bailey remembered her own struggle to accept her mental illness, Meredith advocated for Bailey not to give up on Andrew either. They staged an intervention with Carina, Richard, and his psychiatrist. Meredith told him that caring so much and fighting as hard for his patients as he did was a strength. He broke down as he had failed to attain the most important goal in his life, which was not to end up like his father. Meredith convinced him to fight as hard for himself as he had done for his patients, at which point he accepted to get treatment for his bipolar disorder. Afterward, Meredith and Bailey walked Abby Banks to the ICU to be reunited with her long-lost sister. At some point during the day, she also met her new nephew and left the new parents to fight about the baby's name.

COVID-19
As COVID-19 first hit the United States, Seattle was amongst the country's cities to be hit the hardest, forcing Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital to quickly adapt to the new reality. With all non-emergent surgeries cancelled, Meredith was one of the doctors doing shifts in the special COVID-19 ICU, where she had to run codes all the time and where most of her patients kept dying suddenly and unexpectedly. Since visitors were no longer routinely allowed, she had to witness how these patients died without their loved ones, who had to be informed either by a phone call or by another doctor who was assigned to the visitors' tent outside. She developed a habit of reciting surgical steps in her head to deal with her claustrophobia in the PPE. While working shifts, she also tried to contact Andrew, who had disappeared without a word. With yet another death imminent, she called the patient's daughter to rush to the hospital to be able to say goodbye. Her frustration finally hit a boiling point and she destroyed a supply room. She was surprised when Andrew arrived, now an attending. He informed her he was doing well and had spent his time asleep at home to keep the mania from creeping back in. While she was glad he was doing okay, she told him to inform people on his whereabouts.

On one of her breaks, she went outside to catch some fresh air. She ran into Cormac and Jackson, whom she was jealous of for having operated earlier that day. Having overheard her talk with Jackson, Cormac paged her to scrub in with him when Frankie Morris was admitted with a tree branch perforating his recently transplanted kidney. She was delighted to get to do what she is best at again. While operating, Cormac inquired about her kids. She hadn't seen them in two weeks since she was quarantining away from home. Cormac hoped his boys wouldn't go out and break the rules like Frankie had done, though Meredith understood Frankie, remembering how she was as a teenager. They successfully removed the injured pole of the kidney and had Frankie admitted to the ICU. An exhausted Meredith then returned to the COVID ICU. She received a text from Cormac inviting her for a whiskey in his office, but didn't see the text because she had fallen asleep. She woke up when Andrew showed up to take over from her. She put up some resistance, stating she could keep going after the high of the surgery, but Andrew reminded her that a certain friend had once stressed the importance of getting rest. She asked if she was his friend now. He said that she had saved him, so she could be whatever she wanted to be to him. She then agreed to let him take over. However, she collapsed in the parking lot, where Cormac found her unconscious. Meredith herself was dreaming of a beach, which she had dreamt about before while taking short naps in the COVID ICU. However, this time, she was greeted by Derek from a distance.

She was rushed inside and a COVID test came back positive. She was admitted to a regular room on a COVID ward, where she used her connections to get her a tablet to be able to stay on top of the situation at the hospital. After four days, Meredith found that the hospital was nearly at capacity for COVID patients so she requested to be allowed to go quarantine in a hotel as she felt fit enough. However, as Teddy and Andrew were debating her request, she passed out again, yet again finding herself at the beach with Derek. She tried to reach him but woke up as Andrew and Maggie got her back into bed and rushed her to radiology for a chest CT. After the scan showed a dire situation, Meredith suggested they start her on triple antiviral therapy on which she had found an article. Meredith once again awoke from a beach dream when Amelia video chatted with little Ellis. Maggie tried to talk to her about her healthcare directive but Meredith brushed it off so she could talk to her daughter. Back on the beach, she tried to reach Derek but somehow always ended up back at the starting point far away from him. He yelled that she was worried about the kids and that the sand wasn't real. She yelled back that she missed him, which he knew. Bailey later came in to talk about the healthcare directive, pointing out that Alex would have to make rough decisions over the phone if things went south. Meredith insisted Alex would know when to pull the plug and asked Bailey to distract her instead. Later, she explained to Cormac that it was tough to pick a new POA as everyone was like family to her. He advised her to write down exactly what she wanted and then pick someone who would defend her choices, like his late wife had chosen her sister instead of him. Meredith then admitted she was scared she wouldn't wake up if she were to fall asleep, though Cormac was confident she was tough enough to beat the virus. Meredith ended up picking Richard as her POA. She explained she didn't want a ventilator as there was a shortage. Richard pointed out that she might end up as one of the people needing it and stressed that everyone at the hospital needed her. Meredith once again fell asleep as labs showed a worsening condition. She tried to reach Derek again, making a run for it, but she tripped and fell. From a distance, Derek laughed and told her he would be right there for her when she was ready.

Personality
She is intelligent, compassionate, hard-working, has good medical instincts, and a natural flair for medicine.

Meredith and Derek have been described as polar opposites. She described herself as "dark and twisty" due to her negativity, in contrast to Derek's charismatic optimism. And unlike Derek, who viewed the world in distinct shades of black and white, Meredith tends to see things in shades of gray, which Carolyn Shepherd remarked to her son that was what he needed, while she was visiting Seattle.

However, this difference in viewpoints culminated in what was a breach of their marriage, when she messed up Derek's Alzheimer drug trial. She secretly accessed the pharmacy, where the trial drugs were stored, and subsequently swapped the placebo for the actual drug, for Patient #122, aka Adele. And when busted by a drunk Alex, who had seen her behaving suspiciously, she much later confided in Cristina that she felt that her actions were justified, as Adele was Richard's wife, and she should do something since Adele was about to have saline injected into her brain, and the trial drug sample could help her from becoming a 'gorked out lump', in her own words.The couple subsequently got into an argument in the changing room, where Derek argued that it was Alzheimer's, a disease that she could potentially have, and one whose progression he was trying to stop or cure, while at the same time espousing that everything was black and white, a right and a wrong. Meredith responded that the situation was much more complicated than that, as it was Richard and Adele.

Derek Shepherd
Meredith and Derek first met at Joe's Bar the night before her first day at Seattle Grace Hospital. Derek approached her, they got drunk, before ending up at her place, sleeping with each other. When she went to work, she discovered, much to her shock, that Derek too worked at Seattle Grace, as an attending, so she staunchly refused to date him, although they did manage to sneak by a few stolen sexually charged moments. However, it was eventually at the unexpected house party that went out of control that she finally gave in and the two got intimate in the car. Despite Miranda Bailey, who felt that Derek was beginning to show signs of favoritism towards Meredith the following day, catching them in the act, the pair began to date secretly, something which her roommates would eventually discover, and thus were mostly not too pleased about as they thought she was trying to win favors and felt uncomfortable sharing living space with their "boss's boss." They became public quickly, although Richard Webber discovered and disapproved of the relationship, knowing that Derek was still married to Addison. Their relationship temporarily ended when Addison Shepherd arrived at the hospital for a medical case and claimed to be Derek's wife, thereby surprising her.

Meredith stayed away from Derek but later asked him to make a choice between her or Addison. Derek tried to make a decision, but it was a hard one, as he had been married to Addison for eleven years. He eventually chose Addison and Meredith was left heartbroken. Addison stayed at Seattle Grace and Meredith was left alone and when news of the scandal leaked out, she became much of the hospital's talking points and gossip. After avoiding each other, they attempted friendship, but on the night of the Seattle Grace prom, they had sex in an exam room despite the fact that Meredith was dating Finn Dandridge and Derek was married to Addison. An unexpected event of the secret rendezvous was Meredith losing her panties when Derek had pocketed them. The next day, Addison found Meredith's panties in Derek's pocket and realized her marriage was over. After Derek caught Addison and Mark Sloan together again, they both admitted their relationship was finished. He told Meredith that if she wanted, they could date and that he loved her. Meredith tried to choose between Derek and Finn, but when she was unable to decide between the two men, she decided to date both of them until she decided. After Derek decided to be a better person and let her go and be with Finn, she realized she wanted Derek and broke up with Finn. She didn't tell Derek immediately because he was going through his divorce with Addison but when she finally did, he no longer cared, as he was suffering from Addison's secret about her and Mark living together for months, after he had left her.



They started dating again, but Derek later complained that she was constantly leaving him and that she should be worried that the highlight of his week was meeting another girl at Joe's. When Cristina and Burke called off their wedding, she broke up with Derek, not convinced that relationships could work. They tried to stay apart but began having break-up sex, and mockery. Later, Derek kissed a nurse named Rose in the scrub room; when Meredith found out, she severed all ties with him. Derek and Meredith started a clinical trial but Derek began dating Rose and her feelings for him started to come back as the clinical trial continued. After their last clinical trial patient survived the surgery, Meredith and Derek celebrated and she showed him a house of candles she had made. He kissed her and they got back together. Trying to take steps forward, Meredith asked him to move in and he accepted. They stayed together and after his mother's visit, Derek decided to propose with his mother's engagement ring. Meredith originally thought he was avoiding her because of a conversation they had about babies, but he insisted that he wanted to have all her babies. Derek planned to propose to her, with a ring from his mother but remarked to Mark that the timing had to be right, otherwise she would bolt. Derek's plans to propose left his mind after he accidentally killed a patient. Richard told Meredith about the ring, but the despondent Derek hit the ring into the woods, with a baseball bat. He apologized and she forgave him and he proposed properly to her later. They planned a wedding, but when they realized that Izzie had stage 4 cancer, they eventually gave their wedding to Izzie and Alex. With very little time to get married themselves, they went to the locker room, wrote down their vows on a Post-it note, and married each other. After their Post-it marriage, they referred to each other as husband and wife and in the days immediately after their wedding, they had sex frequently, while often getting caught in the act, in different places in the house, by those living there. Later, she found out she was pregnant. The shooting that happened after the death of a patient of Derek's, when the patient's husband shot numerous people, also shooting Derek was traumatizing for both of them, especially as Meredith miscarried because of the events of that day. She waited to tell him about this long after his recovery wondering how he would react. Then they proceeded to try to conceive, but they learned Meredith had a hostile uterus, which made it unlikely she would conceive naturally.

Eventually, the two did formally marry, as it would make it easier for them to legally adopt Zola, an African girl Derek got to know while treating her spina bifida. Derek engaged Meredith in his Alzheimer's clinical trial, trying to find a cure for her mother's disease. When Adele Webber became part of their trial, however, Meredith's emotions started to cloud her judgment, and as a result, she switched the placebo with the active medication, so Adele would get better. This caused Alex to become suspicious when he saw her acting weird. When Alex was drunk, he told Owen Hunt about this incident, who continued to alarm Derek and Richard. Derek then continued to become really angry at Meredith, accusing her of not knowing the difference between right or wrong and saying it wasn't any way to raise a child. It took them a long time to resolve these differences in their marriage and their separation caused trouble with Zola's adoption, for which each blamed the other. However, in times of crisis, they made up and all of them lived happily as a family after Alex, feeling guilty, managed to get them Zola back. Even after enduring the horrible plane crash, in which both her sister and his best friend died, and Derek's hand was severely injured, their bond only grew stronger and they helped each other. Meredith discovered she was pregnant with Derek's child. Though both of them were really happy, Meredith was very concerned due to her hostile uterus, but Derek remained optimistic, and she was still pregnant. During the "superstorm," Meredith gave birth, via c-section, to a baby boy whom she named Derek Bailey Shepherd after both Derek and Miranda Bailey.

After the birth of Bailey, Meredith and Derek enjoyed their time with their children. Eventually, Derek was offered a job with the president. At first, Meredith was upset as Derek promised her that she could kickstart her career but eventually grew not to mind. They were going to move to DC. but Meredith decided she wanted to stay, so Derek resigned from Grey Sloan.

The couple argued on and off over his new job and he moved to DC in the heat of the moment. He flew back and forth between Seattle and DC, putting a strain on their marriage. He eventually grew to realize that he was miserable without his family and wanted to be with them more than "saving the world." Meredith also realized that she could live without him, but she didn't want to. They both became very happy once Derek moved back to Seattle. Meredith even told her friends that she had never been happier with her husband and kids. The two were lying in bed together the day before his death and Derek said that she was the one that saved him. On his way back to DC to resign, he got into a car accident and died. When Derek died, Meredith was pregnant with their third child, Ellis.

After losing 3 patients to COVID-19, Meredith had been more stressed out than ever, causing a breakdown and a trashed supply closet. Soon after, she was found in the middle of the hospital's parking lot, having collapsed. Suddenly waking up on a beach, Meredith tried to recollect what had just happened, but then a faint voice calls out to her in the distance. After staring long enough at the figure far away, she realizes that it's Derek, waving his arms and smiling. A shocked Meredith catches her breath in realization.

Finn Dandridge
Finn Dandridge was a veterinarian to Doc, Meredith and Derek's dog. He met Meredith when Doc got sick and Meredith brought him in. He asked her out and she agreed, despite her and Izzie being celibate. They started a serious relationship and often had sleepovers. At the Seattle Grace prom, Finn said he had plans for his and Meredith's future. Meredith was happy and tried to make the relationship work. However, after an argument with Derek, Meredith ended up cheating on Finn with Derek. Finn found out, and albeit annoyed, he wanted to work past it. Meredith was glad, but she realized she couldn't choose between Finn and Derek, so she started dating them both at the same time until she chose. After a fierce competition, Derek decided to let Meredith go, but as soon as he let her go, Meredith realized she wanted to be with him. She broke up with Finn, who told her Derek was no good for her before he walked out for the last time. His nickname was "McVet," as opposed to Derek's "McDreamy."

William Thorpe
When William Thorpe and Meredith worked together on a patient, Brian Carson, he flirted with her and asked to follow up with her. She initially didn't realize he was flirting, but once she figured it out, she went back and gave him her personal number. He then called her several times, but she didn't answer the phone. Still wanting to pursue her, Will came to the hospital and asked Meredith on a date in person.

Meredith agreed to go get drinks, but panicked and canceled. However, he showed up at the hospital after she got out of surgery and offered to take her home. They got food and ate in the car, talking.

On their third date, Will and Meredith had sex. However, the morning after, Meredith yelled at Will, asking him to leave immediately. He later came to the house and she told him about Derek and said she thought she was ready, but she wasn't. He said he'd back off for a while and wait, but he'd call and then come back. He believed she was worth waiting for.

Nathan Riggs
Nathan and Meredith were initially at odds, with her disliking him out of loyalty for Owen. Due to Owen's stories, she began to notice he was prone to making rash medical decisions, and their opinions quite often differed. However, she has shown to be able to put her dislike aside so it wouldn't affect patients, or when Nathan told her his side of the story. When Meredith had a bad day, he confronted her about it in the parking lot. They started arguing and ended up having sex in her car. It happened four times, but Meredith didn't want him to get too attached to her. He claimed he knew they were just friends who had sex, but during Owen and Amelia's wedding, he smilingly looked at her, indicating he had started to feel more for her. Later at the wedding, Nathan and Meredith flirted and he asked her to dance, only for Maggie to interrupt and dance with him, leaving Meredith to watch the two. Nathan continued to try to get closer to Meredith, and although she liked him, she kept brushing him off as she knew Maggie liked him too. Finally, Nathan showed up at Meredith's house, verbally confirming his feelings for her. Meredith lied to him, saying she didn't return the feelings, out of consideration for Maggie. Meredith also warned Nathan that Maggie was going to ask him out, which Nathan believed to be the reason Meredith rejected his pursuits.

When Alex later noticed the way Meredith looked at Nathan, he encouraged her to go after him, but soon changed his mind when he and Nathan disagreed over a case. Meredith told Nathan that butting heads with Alex was not the way to pursue her. Later that day, Nathan told Meredith to stop listening to what people were telling her about him and listen to her own feelings for a change. He admitted he kept thinking about her and that he'd be all in if she wanted it to happen. He left her to think about it, and she decided that she wanted him to give her a reason to go for it. He spent an entire day trying to come up with her but instead told her about how he fell for her the first time he saw her. Meredith then told him to ask her out to dinner, which he did, and she said yes.

However, their dinner plans were canceled when Maggie's mother's health took a turn for the worst and Meredith had to support Maggie throughout her mother's treatment. After Diane eventually passed away, Nathan and Meredith agreed that their timing wasn't right to start something between them and indefinitely postponed their dinner plans, since Maggie would heavily rely on Meredith in the near future. Meredith and Nathan found themselves sitting next to each other on a plane, both heading to a conference. Meredith went to the bathroom, but Nathan followed her, intent on talking to her about their situation. They ended up having sex. After the plane landed and passengers were tended to, Nathan proposed that they get a hotel room and Meredith accepted.

Nathan and Meredith began a relationship, which involved them telling Maggie that they were a couple, and Meredith began to open herself up more to Nathan. He slept over frequently, and Meredith even considered introducing Nathan to her kids over dinner. However, upon the discovery of Nathan's long-lost fiancée, Megan, who had been abducted 10 years ago when they were both in Iraq, Nathan and Meredith abruptly ended their relationship. Although Nathan tried to convince Meredith that he was still in love with her and that Megan didn't want to be with him, Meredith continued to send Nathan back to Megan because she didn't want Nathan to blow his opportunity to rekindle his romance with Megan. Eventually, Nathan moved to Los Angeles to start a new life with Megan. They ended on friendly terms with both of them thanking the other one for what they had meant in each other's lives.

Andrew DeLuca
At Jo and Alex's wedding, Andrew drunkenly kissed Meredith, and she rejected his advances, though she told him she was flattered. The next morning, Meredith found herself dreaming about Andrew and was reminded of her thoughts when he apologized at the hospital for kissing her. Meredith continued to dream about Andrew as she began going on dates with the help of her matchmaker patient, Cece. Most of Meredith's dates did not end well while, unbeknownst to her, Andrew realized his feelings for her.

With the encouragement of Jo, Meredith asked out Atticus Lincoln for drinks, prompting Andrew to finally confess his feelings for Meredith. She told him she had to think about it, but that same day, they got trapped in an elevator during the wind storm. In the elevator, Andrew opened up to Meredith about his difficult childhood back in Italy under his famous surgeon father. Meredith revealed to Andrew that she speaks some Italian, and they grew closer, almost sharing a kiss before the elevator started working again. After working on a surgery together, Andrew proposed that he and Meredith go out on a date before they got interrupted by Link, who reminded Meredith that she had asked him out for drinks. Meredith realized that she was in another love triangle between Andrew and Link.

Sometime later, Meredith still hadn't made a decision, but she made a date with Andrew for Alex and Jo's New Year's Eve party. When she stood him up to monitor a patient, he began getting impatient over her indecisiveness. On Valentine's Day, Meredith asked Link out to dinner, but that night, Andrew took her up to the hospital roof for a drink, and the two shared their first kiss.

Because Maggie had dated Andrew years ago, Meredith wanted to get her approval before starting to date Andrew. When Maggie said she was fine with the relationship, Meredith allowed Andrew to take her out on a date, officially beginning their relationship. At Catherine Avery's party, Meredith and Andrew went off to make out in Jackson's guest room and were caught by Richard, exposing their relationship. Meredith also told Alex that she was dating Andrew, and Alex said that she should report their relationship to HR and that he hoped Andrew makes her happy. After Zola caught Andrew trying to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night, Meredith decided to tell her kids about her relationship with Andrew, which was received well.

While working on a case together that involved Meredith committing insurance fraud so that a young immigrant girl could get a surgery she needed, Meredith spent the whole day thinking Andrew disapproved of her breaking the rules. However, he revealed that he was actually in awe of her bravery and that he was afraid of accidentally blurting out that he loves her. With this declaration, Meredith walked out without returning the sentiment and spent some time avoiding Andrew. She told Jo that the 'I love you' scared her because the last person she said it to was Derek. However, after Andrew took the fall for Meredith's insurance fraud and was put in prison, Meredith told him that, as much as it terrified her, she loves him too.

During Meredith's trial, she lost her temper at one of the doctors on the panel, the one who'd killed Derek. This led Andrew to realize how much she had respected Derek, and although Meredith warned him not to compare, he didn't feel equal to her. He told her to take some time.

Carina was concerned that Andrew might have the mania that their father had, explaining that that was why he went to jail for Meredith and why he was obsessing over Suzanne Britland's case. Meredith listened, as she already had concerns about Andrew's health, since he wasn't sleeping or eating. She went to Bailey who handed Suzanne's case to her. Meredith completely changed the treatment, which upset Andrew, but after receiving bone marrow test results, he and Lauren realized that Suzanne might have Still's disease. He administered steroids to her, which angered Meredith because if he was wrong, Suzanne would be killed. In the end, Andrew was right. Meredith confronted him about his reckless actions, which Andrew defended, and she brought up the point that he was acting like his father. He told her that he didn't need "this" and he didn't need her, breaking up with her for good.

Zola Grey Shepherd
Meredith and Derek met Zola when she was brought to the hospital for an operation as part of Alex's program. The couple had recently been told that Meredith had a hostile uterus and conceiving a child would be hard. Derek immediately bonded with Zola and suggested adoption. Meredith took a little longer to bond but eventually couldn't help falling in love with the child. However, Derek found out that Meredith tampered with his Alzheimer's trial just as the couple was granted temporary custody of Zola. When the social worker on their case, Janet, discovered that Meredith and Derek weren't living together, Zola was taken away from them for a time, during which Meredith and Derek rekindled their relationship. They were given a date to see a judge about the adoption after Alex went to the judge directly. That date was subsequently canceled and Janet told them that it was unlikely that it would end in their favor and suggested that they move on. Then, one night after a long day of work, Janet showed up at their door with Zola and told the couple that she was theirs.

Derek Bailey Shepherd
Meredith and Derek's son was a surprise to both because an OB/GYN had described Meredith's uterus as hostile. Meredith went into labor during the superstorm and had to have a C-section after injuring herself earlier from a fall on the stairs. With the lights out, Bailey performed the surgery, and to thank her, Derek and Meredith decided to name their son after her.

Ellis Shepherd
Ellis was conceived before Derek's death. During her birth, Meredith was bleeding heavily. Zola called an ambulance, saving her.

Lexie Grey
Although Meredith originally hated Lexie, she quickly realized that although she had reason to hate the idea of her, she had no reason to hate Lexie herself. Initially, she didn't like the way Lexie followed her around and seemed envious of her rapport with Derek. She claimed that Lexie was someone she never wanted to know, even denying that Lexie was her sister. However, after Bailey explained that Lexie probably thought she hated her, because of their family links, and after a traumatic day when Cristina brought Lexie home with her, Meredith made an effort to bond with her and they danced and drank tequila. The next morning, Meredith even tried to make breakfast for her and Lexie was so enthusiastic that she ate it, despite knowing she would have an allergic reaction. Lexie and Meredith didn't get too close, both having two different sets of friends, but they did eventually become friends which was made easier with the presence of George O'Malley who was good friends with both of them. Lexie gave up the apartment that she and George had rented, and moved into the attic of Meredith's house, where she occasionally bemoaned the fact that she didn’t have a proper room instead. They later become so close, that Meredith gave Thatcher a piece of her liver because Lexie asked her to and she doesn’t want her sister to feel the loss of her father, something of which she had experienced herself. She also sat with Lexie for 36 hours, after she has a PTS breakdown and had to be committed to the psychiatric ward, against her will. And when Lexie got jealous over how April was all chummy with Meredith, she told her the reasons for that, and the fact that "you're not crazy, you're a Grey and you're my sister, Lexie." At the end of Meredith's residency, Lexie died after the plane crash because she was stuck under the debris. Upon hearing of her death, Meredith cried hysterically.

Later, Meredith obsessed over saving a patient's life when she had the same injuries as Lexie after being crushed by a car. At the end of the day, Meredith was talking to Cristina and simply said that "Lexie's dead." From that, it appeared that Meredith had accepted the fact that Lexie was gone and was at peace.

Ellis Grey


Ellis Grey was the mother of Meredith Grey. Their relationship was strained due to Ellis's devotion to Richard Webber and her work, often forgetting about Meredith. Meredith was a rebellious teenager and she drank excessively and partied during college. However, while traveling in Europe, she received a call and was told that her mother had Alzheimer's. Meredith was made look after Ellis and keep her secret from the rest who knew her. Ellis would rarely recognize Meredith but one day she woke up and was lucid, but it wouldn't last long, she found herself very disappointed in her daughter who was no longer driven, just "happy." However, before she died, Meredith saw Ellis in a vision and Ellis hugged her and told her she was extraordinary and to continue being extraordinary. Later, Meredith found her mother's old diaries and used them to get to know who her mother was and she realized that she liked her and her mother was quite similar to her best friend, Cristina Yang.

Thatcher Grey
Due to Ellis and Richard's affair, Thatcher left Ellis and Meredith when Meredith was very young. Ellis asked him not to visit and Meredith did not see him again until she was in her thirties and she discovered he had another family. His wife Susan persisted in trying to get them to bond and they began to but when Susan died in surgery, Thatcher blamed Meredith, even going so far as to slap her across the face and asked her not to attend the funeral. Weeks later he arrived back at Seattle Grace and told her he was sorry and so proud of her but Lexie later informed her that he only said it because he was drunk and he did it all the time. Thatcher went into a program and he started making amends. He asked Meredith and Lexie to forgive him, Lexie hugged him and Meredith congratulated him and said good luck and then left the office they were in. Several months later, Thatcher came into Seattle Grace vomiting blood. He was found to have cirrhosis of the liver. He was told that to be put on the transplant list, he had to be sober for at least a year, but he had only been sober for 90 days. Lexie was not to be a match for her father's liver, but Meredith was. Willingly, she offers up her liver, not for Thatcher, but for Lexie's sake. Meredith then spent several weeks at home in bed, recovering from the transplant operation. When Thatcher quietly returned to the hospital, with bouts of pain, neither Grey knew, until Miranda Bailey informed them of his check-in. When he revealed that he had a young girlfriend, Meredith was actually happy for him and had to talk to Lexie, who was not too pleased with that discovery. She later visited him in his house upon finding out he had less than a few days to live, and they talked until he passed away.

Susan Grey
Susan Grey was the second wife of Meredith's father, Thatcher. After Ellis Grey died, Susan reached out to Meredith and after a rough start, Susan and Meredith bonded. Susan would wash her clothes and make dinner for her and was like a surrogate mother to her. However, she came to Seattle Grace with the hiccups and she died during a relatively easy procedure, due to complications.

Doc
Doc was Derek, Addison, and Meredith's dog. She and Izzie rescued him from a shelter and brought him back to their home. Doc was very playful, but he became too much for Izzie and George who quickly demanded that he leave. Due to Meredith's friendship with Derek, Derek and Addison agreed to take him in. After taken to a vet, Doc was diagnosed with bone cancer. When his cancer spread, he was put down and Meredith and Derek agreed to bury him in his favorite spot on Derek's land. During her near-death experience, the very first being she wanted to meet was Doc.

Maggie Pierce
Maggie is Meredith's half-sister, daughter of Ellis Grey and Richard Webber. She was adopted as a newborn and moved to Seattle and got a job at GSMH to know more about her biological mother, whom she only knew by name. Meredith and Maggie were immediately in conflict at work. Eventually, it came out that Maggie was Ellis' daughter. Initially, Meredith didn't believe it. The next day, Meredith, helped by Alex, matched the information about Maggie's birth with what she remembered and was able to access about Ellis' hospitalization, and she had to admit that Ellis Grey was actually Maggie's birth mother. After that, Meredith and Maggie ignored each other, but Derek pushed Meredith to make the first move with Maggie (like he had done for Lexie), so Meredith showed Maggie the old diaries of her mother that correspond to the period in which Maggie was conceived.

Amelia Shepherd
Amelia is Meredith's sister through her marriage with Derek. Their relationship has been rocky since Derek's death. Meredith finds Amelia annoying and doesn't really like her, but they both care for each other as a real family does. Amelia moved with Meredith to her old house after Meredith sold her and Derek's house. Despite a fall-out that resulted in Meredith kicking Amelia out of the house, Amelia continued to watch over her when Meredith was attacked. Meredith, in turn, was there for her wedding and supported her running away before the ceremony. When Amelia was diagnosed with a tumor, Meredith supported her and sat by her side in recovery, as Amelia had refused to call any of her family members.

Cristina Yang


Cristina bonded with Meredith instantly and their relationship grew, resulting in Cristina and Meredith becoming best friends and each other's person. They were known around the hospital as the 'Twisted Sisters.' As such, there is very little that the two of them do not know, about the other, since day one of their internships. Meredith frequently talks about her problems with Derek, to her, and all the talk about her and Derek, have been a sore point with Cristina, at least a couple of times. She became Cristina's maid of honor during both weddings to Preston Burke and Owen Hunt. Meredith and Cristina also have several sleepovers at each other's houses, sometimes in Meredith's bed with Derek in it. As well as being one of Cristina's pillars of support, during when she suffered from PTSD, as a result of the shooting.

They bonded over a complex case on their first day, but the relationship was put to the test after Meredith was chosen for a surgery, instead of Cristina. However, they overcame the obstacle and their friendship grew. After Meredith and Derek's break-up, Cristina protected Meredith by asking Derek to stay away. Outside the hospital, they would hang out at Joe's bar, and in the hospital, they would help each other, wherever possible. Cristina was often there for Meredith during her worst times and vice versa. Meredith was the only person who knew about Cristina's pregnancy, and Cristina about Meredith's. When Addison came to Seattle Grace, Izzie and Cristina stole a patient from psych to make her feel better and when Meredith was put on Erica Hahn's service, Cristina selflessly gave Meredith lots of advice on how to impress Hahn.



They had their first big fight after Richard Webber blamed Cristina for knowing of the interns' secret meetings and Meredith did not defend her. Although Meredith at first refused to believe Cristina was ignoring her, she eventually accepted it. The two spoke to each other as little as possible, and when they did, they would argue with each other, Meredith even insulted Cristina by saying that to some people things came naturally, but Cristina was one of the people that had to practice. However, after Meredith broke down after attending the execution of a murderer, Derek brought her to Cristina and they made up. They began to bond over Meredith's mother's old diaries and Meredith found herself comparing Cristina to her mother. When Meredith announced her own wedding, she chose Cristina as her maid of honor.

After a fight with Owen, Cristina showed up at Meredith's house. They laid on the floor and talked about her problems. When Owen came to Meredith's house looking for Cristina, Meredith said, "I already fixed her." And Cristina went home with Owen. Also, when both of their husbands were angry with them, Derek at Meredith for tampering with his clinical trial and Owen at Cristina for wanting an abortion, they leaned on each other. Cristina stayed at Meredith's house, both of the men away, and helped take care of baby Zola. They would sleep in the same bed and have routines in the morning.

George O'Malley


From the moment George O'Malley met Meredith, he fell in love with her. Meredith however, was in love with Derek Shepherd so she never really thought about George as more than a friend. Only a patient and George's best friend Izzie knew how he felt about Meredith. After a small push from Izzie, George decided to tell Meredith how he felt. Meredith had had a very bad day at work so when George confessed his feelings for her, she thought that maybe George was her guy and she had just overlooked him. They proceeded to kiss but during sex, knowing it wasn't right, Meredith burst into tears. George was humiliated and furious and for weeks, he refused to speak to her. Eventually, he accepted her apology, but admitted that he was partly to blame too, he had known how she felt about Derek and knew that she didn't love George. Their friendship continued and he moved back to her house. When George discovered that he had to repeat his intern year, he drew away from his group of friends, but things soon went back to normal. Meredith and George's friendship continued and was strengthened, as she was his resident. On George's last day at Seattle Grace, he was hit by a bus after pushing Amanda out of its path. When he was admitted, nobody could recognize him. Meredith was his doctor and she defended him in front of some of the other doctors. After he traced "007" on her hand, she realized it was him and had him rushed into the O.R. George later died, and she and the other doctors at Seattle Grace attended his funeral. As the janitor cleaned out George's cubby, as they "need(ed) space," Meredith realized that what had happened was real and broke down in Derek's arms.

Izzie Stevens
Meredith formed a close bond with Izzie on their first day and her relationship with Izzie grew more so when Izzie and George moved in with her. Initially, Izzie was not pleased to know that Meredith was in a relationship with Derek, as she felt that Derek would be favoring her over the other interns, and thus giving her a much better career prospect. She finally learned that Meredith actually loved Derek, and it was not a fling. When George and Meredith were fighting, Izzie told Meredith she would be siding with George if they had to choose sides but fortunately, Meredith and George's issues were soon resolved. Izzie felt close enough to talk to Meredith about her relationship with George and how he pecked her like a chicken and when she discovered that Izzie and George were dating, she supported them. After Izzie was diagnosed with cancer, and when the condition relapsed and Meredith was informed, she and Derek gave their wedding to Alex and Izzie. However, after Izzie left Seattle Grace when she was fired prior to the merger with Mercy West, Izzie refused to answer calls from any of her friends and only returned when a former teacher of hers was sick and sought Derek's help at Seattle Grace. She returned later on after Meredith called her and told her Alex might be moving on, the same night that Alex slept with Lexie. Meredith decided that they should keep it between the three of them. Later that night, Meredith found Izzie cleaning out her old room, ready to leave for good after Alex dumped her. Meredith begged her to stay because this was her home, but Izzie told her that it wasn't. It was just a place she worked at and she could find a new workplace. Meredith was left speechless and walked away.

Alex Karev
Initially, Meredith disliked Alex, after he insulted her on the first day of her internship, by calling her a nurse. But when he became Bailey's intern and Izzie made friends with him, Meredith gradually lessened her dislike of Alex. After discovering that Alex failed his board exams, Meredith helped him to study and they occasionally have heartfelt and meaningful conversations. When Izzie was revealed to be quite sick, Meredith offered her wedding to Izzie and Alex and Alex made her his best man for the wedding. When Izzie left the hospital after being fired, Meredith became a source of support. She rang Izzie to tell her to come back because Alex might be moving on, after witnessing Alex and Reed flirting and the next morning she found Lexie and Alex in bed together but advised them to keep it secret. There is no sexual attraction between the two, as shown when Meredith sits in the bathroom and has a girl talk with Alex. while he is in the shower. When Derek walks in and looks at the two of them, she explains by saying he's being a girl for her right now.

However, that friendship may have run its course, seeing as how he had sold her out, while in a drunken stupor, to Owen Hunt, while the residents were all in the race for Chief Resident. Meredith subsequently confronted him, in a fit of anger, telling him that she probably will get fired and that she wanted him out of the house by the end of the day. And while he was actually updating the adoption agent, on the medical status of Zola, Meredith had the misconception that Alex was trying to ruin her chances of adopting the child.

However, it appeared that with Alex's apology, they mended their fences and went back to their former relationship, as he was there to provide some physical support after Meredith learned that Zola had to be surrendered to Social Services for the time being. Cristina told Alex to help Meredith with trying to keep Zola from being taken from her because Meredith was the only one who "gave a rat's ass" about Alex. Alex also spilled to Cristina that she and Meredith were all he had and that they were his family, and that realization made him help Meredith and attempt to get Social Services to let Meredith keep Zola. With the departure of Cristina, Alex became Meredith's new "person" and the closest thing to a brother she had.

After the death of Derek, Meredith left Seattle without telling anyone where she was going. Despite numerous calls from Alex, she refused to answer. She eventually FaceTimed him, saying that she and the kids were fine and she wished he would stop calling. When she later gave birth to Ellis, there was a problem and he was her emergency contact person, so the hospital called him and he came to San Diego to see her.

Mark Sloan
Meredith and Mark first met when Mark came to Seattle Grace to work on a patient. Mark didn't know that Meredith was Meredith and flirted with her and and soon as Derek saw, he punched him in the face. Mark and Meredith started talking about their problems as their common factors were that they were the Dirty Mistresses of Derek and Addison.

Sadie Harris
Sadie Harris was Meredith's best friend and she too hated Ellis. Following her graduation from college, when Meredith was in her twenties, she left to go traveling around Europe for two months with Sadie where they partied and drank frequently and experienced some of the adventures of "Death and Die." They had a big fight in Amsterdam, and though they made up and stayed friends, their friendship never truly recovered and they were never as close again. When Meredith received a call about her mother, she left Europe and went back to Seattle. Years later, Sadie made a surprise visit to Meredith's house and became an intern at Seattle Grace. Sadie and Meredith picked up their friendship as though no time had passed, causing Cristina to be extremely jealous. However, when George alerted the chief that Sadie did not seem to have much medical knowledge, she quit and asked Meredith to leave with her. But Meredith said she had a life now and could no longer be sleeping her way through Europe. Sadie told Meredith that the hospital had changed her, but the latter replies that wasn't true: it simply changed what she wanted, and now she wanted to stay in Seattle Grace. Then Sadie left.

Jackson Avery
Jackson moved to Seattle Grace through the merger with Mercy West. At first, Meredith did not like Jackson very much. Later, when she found out he was related to Harper Avery, she felt empathy for him. They became friends because she knows what it feels like to have a famous relative. Jackson and Meredith have developed a nice friendship and they are usually nice and happy around each other.

April Kepner
When April first came to Seattle Grace, Meredith did not approve of her. When April came back after being fired, Meredith liked her even less, because she was way too friendly to Derek. Later, when Derek got shot, Meredith said that April didn't have the right to cry because of Derek, but she told Meredith that Reed, her best friend died. Meredith ended up comforting April, creating a bond. Later, Meredith let April and Jackson move into her house, and she admitted to liking April more and more, after she went off on a tirade, after being continually teased for being a virgin the whole day. Meredith and April appeared to have a relatively friendly relationship, with April often turning to Meredith for advice, and Meredith genuinely being kind to her.

Callie Torres
Although Callie and Meredith were friends, they were never great friends. Meredith allowed Callie to move into her house for a while and Callie saved her from embarrassment at work and gave her advice about her dog, but Meredith was better friends with Izzie, who disliked Callie, so she often sided with Izzie in arguments. After George and Callie divorced, Callie moved in with Meredith's best friend, Cristina, so she and Callie bonded a bit more and both of them protected her from Owen Hunt when they thought he might hurt Cristina, after he choked her, while he was asleep. Callie played a big part of Meredith's career at the end of her residency, helping her study for the surgical boards that all 5th years take, helping Meredith pass. Callie and Meredith also have the common bond of being mothers, which has helped their friendship a great deal. Meredith also helped Callie with her separation from Arizona, the custody hearing, and even comforted her after she lost sole custody of Sofia to Arizona.

Richard Webber
Meredith Grey and Richard Webber had a very strained relationship for a very long time. He was the main cause of her parents' divorce and because of him, she was always cast aside. Upon coming to Seattle Grace, they acted civilly, but there were issues under the surface. Because he had been so close to Ellis, he felt close to Meredith, and he was close to her as a child and she thought that he thought he was her father. After she started disregarding his authority, Richard realized that although he was not a bad man, he was the bad man in her story. Richard started becoming frustrated with Meredith and even more so when he looked at her and was frustrated to see Ellis Grey inside her, the woman whom he loved but had almost ruined his marriage. He never looked Meredith in the eye and eventually, Derek Shepherd spoke to them both. He told Richard that he was the most professional man except for when it came to Meredith Grey, who he didn't always treat as a colleague. Richard apologized to Meredith for his actions in the past, he had been aware that she had grown up alone but never tried to stop it. The two forgave each other and it was proven by his fatherly behavior towards her during her solo surgery and her offering him the diaries of her mother. Meredith later tells a shooter that he should kill her because she is the closest thing Richard has to a daughter. Most of the doctors in the hospital acknowledge Richard and Meredith's relationship, often getting her to use her dead mommy connections to get something.

Meredith also helped get Richard and Catherine back together after their fight.

Owen Hunt
Meredith and Owen have had a turbulent relationship, as they have often clashed over Cristina, whom they both care about very much. In the beginning, Meredith was supportive of Owen and Cristina's relationship, but after he strangled Cristina during a PTSD nightmare, she gave him the cold shoulder and kept him away from Cristina. After they got back together, she was civil to Owen for Cristina's sake, although the two shared a few arguments over how to handle Cristina, as Meredith claimed to know her better than Owen did. The cold peace between them finally came to a stop when Meredith learned that he had cheated on Cristina, which resulted in her despising him for a long time. However, Cristina made her accept that she would decide her fate with Owen herself, and Meredith would just have to deal with it. Afterward, her relationship with Owen got better, and upon Cristina's departure, she considered Owen as her friend and promised to be his person for Cristina. That promise soon came to use, as Nathan Riggs' arrival to the hospital caused Owen to become moody and isolated, prompting a worried Meredith to turn to his mother, who revealed her the truth behind Owen's mood.

Jo Wilson
When Meredith was publishing her abdominal wall transplant, she wanted to put Jo's name on the paper, but she also needed a picture, and Jo couldn't give a picture because then Paul would find her, so she asked Meredith to take her name off of the article. From that point on, Meredith was very protective of Jo and was even nice to her when Alex asked. Then when Paul surprised Jo at the hospital, Meredith was there to comfort her and to keep her safe from Paul. She comforted her by saying "You're Jo Wilson. I know exactly who you are." Meredith kept Alex from Paul, so Alex didn't kill him, and Meredith sat with Jo while she was signing the divorce papers. She also protected her when Paul came back and was threatening Jo for talking to Jenny, Meredith "called security" even though the phones weren't working. After that, when Meredith was dealing with the mini spleens in Judy Kemp, Jo wished that a mini-spleen situation would happen for a useful organ, which gave Meredith the idea for her contest entry: mini livers. Since Jo helped find an important piece, she put Jo as her partner for the contest, and they created their mini livers together. After Jo's return to the hospital, Meredith has taken on a sisterly role to Jo, helping her out whenever she needs help.

Miranda Bailey
Bailey was Meredith's resident and had earned the nicknamed "The Nazi" before Meredith had started at Seattle Grace. She rarely got involved with people and their problems, unless it affected their work. When Bailey found out about Derek and Meredith's relationship, she didn't speak to Meredith and would punish her, by sending her nonsurgical tasks, to even up the playing field when she felt that Derek was favoring her. However, after their break-up, when Derek tried to talk to Meredith, Bailey grew protective and told him not to, that Meredith was hurt and he would just make it worse. Bailey taught Meredith and the interns with a tough-love method. And as the interns became residents, Bailey became friendlier to them, often dispensing advice and chastisement when needed, while still managing to maintain her fearsome professional reputation as a doctor and general surgeon. She attends Derek and Meredith's Christmas dinner to impress her father, and shows a motherly protection over Meredith.

However, upon learning of Meredith's tampering with Derek's trial, she voices her strong disapproval of her, as evidenced from her interactions with Meredith, when she got fired, and the Chief, when asked to write a recommendation letter for her.

When a storm hit the city, Meredith went into labor and had started bleeding internally after giving birth. All of the surgeons were busy except for Bailey, who at the time was not operating because of her recent MRSA scare, but ultimately decided to save Meredith. Meredith's baby was named after Bailey.

Addison Forbes Montgomery
When Addison came to Seattle Grace although she wanted Derek back, she was civil to Meredith and even defended her in front of a mislead patient. In a scrub room, Addison told Meredith that if there was even a chance that Derek still loved her then she wasn't leaving Seattle but she would if he didn't. Derek chose Addison over Meredith, but when Derek and Meredith decided to be friends, Addison tried to be friends with her, too. The three stayed friends, even taking in Meredith's dog, but Addison sometimes felt a tension between the two and realized that everybody knew Derek loved Meredith, except for Derek and Meredith. She and Derek eventually divorced but after a short while, she managed to have a friendship with both of them. The relationship was proven when she came back to Seattle for a visit and hugged Meredith, although she was quite annoyed, and quite tempted to kick her ass physically, after learning that Meredith was letting Derek go off with Rose.

Mark Sloan
When Mark first met Meredith, he flirted with her and was punched in the face by Derek. Privately, she labeled him as “McSteamy”, and Mark called her "My Favorite Dirty Mistress," while she was high on morphine for pain management. But when he asked her out, she said no because she loved Derek. When Derek forgave Mark for breaking up his marriage and they resumed their friendship with him, Meredith too became friendly towards him, although Mark still threatened her, only half-jokingly, on her wedding day. He later dated her little sister against her wishes, which caused a fight between him and Derek. When the plane crashed and killed Lexie, both she and Mark were left shocked and distraught with Meredith crying hysterically and a depressed Mark had a heart complication.

Preston Burke
Because Burke was dating Cristina, Meredith and Derek were often invited over to their house for dinner and vice versa. She tried to mediate and fix things between Cristina and Burke, after Cristina went to Chief Webber about the tremor in Burke's hand, but to no avail. However, Burke left Cristina on the day of their wedding and there was never any contact between them again.

Erica Hahn
When Erica Hahn was hired at Seattle Grace, she almost immediately assigned Meredith to her service in order to see if Meredith had any of her mother's skill. She was impressed by Meredith but when Meredith lied and said she had performed a certain surgery when she hadn't, Hahn told her that if she did it again, she'd never let her operate in her OR again.

Career
After attending medical school, Meredith secured a spot at Seattle Grace Hospital as a surgical intern and moved from Boston to her mother's house in Seattle. She attended Dartmouth College.

Because of her mother's reputation, Meredith was often treated differently from other doctors, sometimes favored and sometimes disliked. Meredith showed promise as an intern, she made a difficult diagnosis on her first day and during the rest of her internship, she assisted in several advanced procedures, particularly neurosurgical cases.

After correctly diagnosing a patient with a brain tumor, she approached Derek Shepherd with the idea of a clinical trial. On their thirteenth patient, they had a success and the clinical trial was published in a medical journal and named The Shepherd Method. But she was not too pleased, to find that she was not mentioned in the article and was somewhat upset to hear from Derek that he was the one taking the risk, despite her doing all the work.

Soon after, Meredith discovered numerous journals belonging to her mother, while she learned more about her and also picked up some surgical skills and even a doll from her past, Anatomy Jane, which helped her save a young girl.

On her wedding day, she was given a colon removal operation, from Derek, as her first solo surgery, as a wedding present. Without any intervention from other doctors, she successfully completed the surgery, despite Richard and Mark observing in the background. Richard Webber informed her that her mother would have been proud, while Meredith said that her mother was likely to have been glad that she didn't kill anyone instead.

She later also performed a solo neurological surgery by herself, as Derek, the attending doctor, was occupied by another patient in another OR. When Derek was setting up the Alzheimer's trial, Meredith was there to assist him. But she was not entirely pleased to find out that he chose Alex, over her, to help him. It was only later, that Alex explained that Meredith was more suited to be his assistant, as she had personal experience, in dealing with the patients and family. But when she tampered with the sample that Adele was supposed to get, Alex suspected that something was amiss. That culminated in him outing her, while he was drunk, and her being suspended, before being fired by the board. Richard took the fall for her, but she and Derek agreed that they shouldn't be close at work too, so Meredith decided to leave neurosurgery.

Electing general surgery as her specialty, Meredith passed the boards and is now the Head of General Surgery at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.

She is also one of the Board Directors at Grey Sloan Memorial.

Notes and Trivia

 * Meredith's Catch Phrases/Running Gags:
 * 1. Commonly using well-known phrases, but trails off at the end and replaces the last word with "whatever" e.g. "You're my knight in shining whatever"
 * 2. "Mc" Labeling: "McDreamy, McSteamy, McGuilty, McVet, McAss"
 * Meredith loves tequila.
 * Meredith states that Duran Duran, The Go Go's, and The Eurythmics are right answers to "What's your favorite 80s band?", suggesting that she enjoys their music.
 * Meredith does not like big weddings.
 * Her favorite ice cream is strawberry ice cream.
 * Her first patient was Katie Bryce.
 * She has the same blood type as her father, Thatcher - AB.
 * Meredith hates it when people change channels during the commercials.
 * She's had both her appendix and spleen removed. She also donated part of her liver to her father, but a liver regenerates.
 * She was the "angry pink hair kid" in high school.
 * She knows how to swim.
 * Meredith used an iPhone with the password 1515 until she bought a new phone after Derek's death. Her current phone password is "1008", which she revealed to Jo during a surgery.
 * She does not play video games.
 * According to Miranda Bailey, she is a bad liar.
 * Meredith is happy and cheerful when she is hopped up on morphine or drunk.
 * In Season 11, Meredith Grey is confirmed to be born in 1978. This means she was 29 when she was started her internship and 30 as a second year resident.
 * In "Before and After", which takes place in early 2009, a second year resident Meredith told Sadie that they were no longer 25, sleeping their way through Europe, implying they are the around same age. In the late 2008 episode "In the Midnight Hour", Lexie confirms Sadie is 30 years old, seemingly corroborating the age confirmed in Season 11.
 * In the original pilot script, Meredith was mentioned to be 32 when she started her internship, although it was never mentioned in the TV series.
 * Because a medical school application cycle takes at least a year in the US, and the medical school takes 4 years to complete, Meredith would have realistically been at least 31 when she started her internship, although it is unknown if she skipped grades at school, like Maggie.
 * When her dad left home, Meredith was 5, making the year 1983. While Thatcher was said to be only eventually remarried, Lexie was born the next year in 1984.
 * In the episode "I Want You With Me", she is wearing a hospital band which shows that she was born in August 1981, which would have made her 32 at the time, inconsistent with other references to her age.
 * Meredith is W.A.S.P.
 * She lost her virginity to Paul Waxman when she was 16 in her sophomore year of high school. She says he had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
 * She is Richard Webber's and Cristina Yang's medical proxy, though it's likely that has changed as Richard has since married and Cristina no longer lives in the United States.
 * She had 4 letters of recommendation for her internship at Seattle Grace Hospital.
 * Meredith requested that her roommates be non-smokers, have no pets, and absolutely no Bush supporters.
 * Meredith hates Chinese food.
 * She snores loudly, a trait which she inherited from her father, Thatcher.
 * Meredith is one of the "Grey Sloan Seven".
 * Meredith is one of the "Seattle Grace Five".
 * Meredith cares about the environment, which is the reason she initiated carpooling.
 * She used to drive a Mercedes-Benz GL350 with license plate MRH 273. She currently drives a Lexus LX 570 with a license plate NYL 360.
 * Amelia has referred to herself, Meredith, and Maggie as "Lady Chief Trifecta", "The House of Lady Chiefs", and "Sister Lady Chiefs".
 * When Meredith became an attending, she chose a plain purple scrub cap. After her husband's death, she wore his favorite ferry boat scrub cap in his honor. At a later date, she "retired" his ferry boat scrub cap and switched to a different variation of her original purple scrub cap.
 * Her favorite Christmas gift was a suture kit.
 * Her emergency contact is Richard Webber]]
 * Her pager extension is 2120.
 * Her glove size is 7.
 * As a kid, chocolate-covered donuts were her favorite.
 * She speaks Italian after taking it for three years in undergrad.
 * According to Derek Shepherd, Meredith's Dartmouth shirt has a hole in the back of the neck.
 * Meredith's conditioner is lavender-scented.
 * She and Cristina have special ringtones for each other.
 * Meredith has appeared in more episodes of Grey's than any other character.
 * She is claustrophobic.
 * Her room number when she had COVID was 4878.

Notable Episodes
These episodes are Meredith-centric or are otherwise very informative about her life.

Memorable Quotes

 * Meredith: The Game. They say a person either has what it takes to play, or they don't. My mother was one of the greats. Me on the other hand... I'm kinda screwed. I can't think of any one reason why I'd want to be a surgeon. But I can think of a thousand reasons why I should quit. They make it hard on purpose. There are lives in our hands. There comes a moment when it's more than just a game. And you either take that step forward or turn around and walk away. I could quit, but here's the thing … I love the playing field.


 * Meredith: Okay, here it is, your choice … it's simple. Her or me, and I'm sure she is really great. But Derek, I love you, in a really, really big pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window, unfortunate way that makes me hate you, love you. So pick me, choose me, love me.


 * Derek: Ok. What do we wanna promise each other?
 * Meredith: That you'll love me... even when you hate me.
 * Derek: To love each other, even when we hate each other. No running. Ever! Nobody walks out. No matter what happens.
 * Meredith: No running.
 * Derek: What else?
 * Meredith: That we'll take care of each other, even when we're old, and smelly, and senile. And... if I get Alzheimer's and forget you...
 * Derek: I will remind you who I am, every day. To take care when old, senile, and smelly. This is forever. Sign.
 * Meredith: This is our wedding. A post it?
 * Derek: Mhmmm. If you sign it.
 * Meredith: Now what?
 * Derek: Now I kiss the bride. [they kiss]
 * Meredith: Married.
 * Derek: Married.


 * Meredith: At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. So, you can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines … that are way too dangerous to cross.


 * Meredith (to Cristina): You don't feel finished because this isn't the end for you. There is no finish line. There is no end point. You've just got to go.


 * Meredith (to Cristina): Derek is the love of my life, but you're my soulmate.


 * Lexie: I forgive you.
 * Meredith: Lexie-
 * Lexie: No. I forgive you. I forgive you for treating me like crap, and I forgive you for letting your friend treat me like crap.
 * Meredith: Lexie...
 * Lexie: I don't know how you get up in the morning, I honestly don't. Our dad abandoned you. And your mom by all accounts was the meanest person ever and you can't let Derek love you, and it all really, really sucks. But ever since I knew you existed, I had this fantasy about my big sister, and you have failed on every occasion to live up to that fantasy. But I still love you whether you are capable of letting me or not. So, I forgive you.

[storms out of bathroom]
 * Dr Wyatt: [comes out of bathroom stall] Two o'clock work for you?
 * Meredith:  Yeah... okay.


 * Paul: Ma'am? I thought that if this was a good time, I might take a moment to explain how this all works.
 * Meredith: Where are the papers?
 * Paul: Mrs. Shepherd, there's some things you need to know... some things we need to discuss. Difficult things.
 * Meredith: I'm a doctor. Dr. Grey. I'm a surgeon, just like my husband was. I know how this works. You've waited the requisite number of hours, and now you can officially declare him dead. Normally, you'd talk to me about organ donation. But by the looks of his chart, there's not much left that works to donate. So, the ICU needs a bed. Those must be the papers... the papers you want me to sign to decide what to do with my husband... Now that he's dead, but not really dead. Do we ship him off to a long-term-care facility and cross our fingers and hope for fairy tales and magic? Or do I pull the plug? And stop all curative intervention? Discontinue all routine monitoring, remove all the catheters, drains, and tubes, end any and all treatments that might provide comfort to the patient. Terminate all life-sustaining measures... and behave as any sane doctor would behave. Does that about cover it, doctor? Is that what you want to talk to me about... while I sit here with my sleeping children? You want to talk about killing my husband? Give me the papers.
 * Paul: Ma'am...
 * Meredith: Give me the papers!


 * Meredith: Perfect Penny killed my husband.


 * Meredith The past is written. There's no changing it. What's done is done. But the future is ours to choose. For better, or for worse.

Appearances
Meredith Grey Meredith Grey Meredith Grey