Cristina Yang and Meredith Grey are not talking to each other, but when they get to Miranda Bailey for assignments she sends them to the ambulance bay where they will await an unknown patient.  They arrive and find Derek Shepard and Owen Hunt there.  Cristina asks Owen for an update, but he acts as if he doesn’t hear her.  Meredith reads up quickly on the patient to discover that the patient is coming to them from the prison.    “Watch your syringes, sharps and pens,” Chief warns, “I don’t want any accidents.”  Cristina finally gets a look at the info and sees PDR on the top of the paper.  <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->When she asks Chief what that means, he tells her, “Prisoner – Death Row.” <!--[endif]-->

The patient tries to be nice to the doctors, but it is clear that Derek and Cristina are not too thrilled to be working on him.  He complains of leg pain, but they can see no trauma to the legs.  The man had been beaten up at the prison by his inmates.  Meredith suggests films of his spine, but Cristina shrugs her off.  Derek is uncharacteristically cold toward the man, but the prisoner suggests, “We’re not that different, you and I.  <!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->People are alive when they need us, then it all changes somehow.” <!--[endif]-->

As the doctors await the results of some x-rays and scans, the patient is in a great deal of pain.  While he asks for more pain medication, Yang tells him she’s not going  to feed his drug habits.  Still, Meredith is concerned that he is still experiencing so much pain.  Meredith suggests that they just wait for the films to come back before making any hasty judgments. Yang says it’s a waste of time and Derek says, “I hate to agree with Yang, but I agree with Yang.”  Just then, the films come in.  Meredith pulls them out and calls Derek over to have a look.  There is clearly a stab wound in the man’s spine and whatever was used to stab him is still lodged in there.  Hunt keeps to himself the whole time.  The patient begins to laugh that he’s going to be paralyzed.  “My execution date is in a week.  I’ve exhausted all of my appeals but if I’m paralyzed my lawyer may have a case for staying my execution.  Do you think you could let me be a  gimp?”  Quickly, Derek refuses.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->

As they discuss his case outside his room, Derek makes it clear that they must do everything by the books so that his lawyer can’t have anything extra to use for his case.  Hunt asks if he is pro-death penalty, but Derek assures he’s just pro-punishment.  “Good people do bad things, people screw up,” Meredith adds, but Yang just rolls her eyes.  “He’s still a person.  We don’t know what crime he committed,” says Meredith. Cristina disagrees and knows it has to be something considerable for a jury to convict him and give him the death penalty.  Derek stops them, “I can’t believe we’re wasting time debating this,” and he orders them to continue with their plan.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->

Cristina is short with Meredith while they attend to the patient.  She leaves and the patient says that she seems like a “bitch.”  Meredith defends that she’s her friend, they are just in a fight.  When she asks if he knows what exactly is in his back, he says he thinks it’s a toothbrush that had been melted down to a knife.  He further says that it was a friend who did it to him because they, too, had a fight.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->

At the nurses station, Hunt drops off a coffee for Yang.  “Seems you’re short a friend today,” he tells her and though she’s a little cold to him, she still takes the coffee and throws him a smile as she drinks.  Shepard walks up and announces that their patient has brain contusions, in addition to the foreign body lodged in his spine.  He’ll have to perform a brain surgery.  Meredith also come up and asks if she can give the man some more morphine.  Derek tells her that he doesn’t need any more morphine.  Yang is smug with that answer, but Meredith follows him down the hallway.  She feels that it is inhumane to let this man be in so much pain.  “No, killing people is inhumane, denying pain killers is a judgement call.”  “I watch people die all the time and I go up to families and tell theme their family ahs been ripped apart all the time and I fight like a dog to make sure I don’t have to deliver that message and I lose that fight all the time.  Some guy like Dunn  comes a long and just throws it away, life.   He has the nerve to tell me we’re two sides of the same coin.”  You’re not” Meredith tells him and Derek storms away.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->

When Meredith tries to join the friends for lunch in the cafeteria, George gets up to let her sit with Cristina, Alex and Izzie.  Alex starts breaking the air with a story about how the guy giving the MRI was freaking out about the prisoner because he had to unhandcuff him to do the MRI. They had to Velcro him down and the guy was afraid he’d rip it up and start killing people.  “What did he do?” Izzie asks.  “I don’t know, did the MRI, I guess.”  Alex says.  Izzie clarifies that she meant, what did he do to get on death row.  Cristina and Meredith have no good answer.  Cristina suggests, Probably found his wife in bed with a hooker or a handyman.”  Izzie explains that that would be a crime of passion.  You don’t get the death penalty for crimes of passion, people understand that.  Meredith tells her.  “I think all crimes are crimes of passion.  People don’t just wake up one day and forget that it’s against the law.”  Cristina leaves and Sadie sits down, but Meredith won’t let her give her opinion on the fight that she and Cristina are having.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->

Cristina goes to talk to Hunt about her frustration with Meredith, but Hunt just says, “working” as he walks away from her.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->

Back in with their prisoner, he thanks Meredith for giving her more pain meds.  Cristina’s mouth gapes open.  Meredith starts to ask something and Cristina tells the patient, “What she meant to ask is what did you do to get on death row?”  Meredith quickly denies it as that was not her intention and he clearly doesn’t need to answer.  He tell them, “it’s alright.  It’s an obvious question.”  He goes on to paint a very dark picture of how he woke up on a Monday and slit a woman’s throat.  He had thought about it a lot and dreamed about it until one day he just did it.  He enjoyed it so much that he slit two throats the next day and two more the day after.  He would have gone for three next, but he got caught before he could.  So much for Meredith’s idea of it being a crime of passion.          

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->

As Hunt and Shepard prepare for their surgery, Hunt tells Derek that they should have a back-up plan in case it gets rough between the girls.  He suggests talking about football.  They go in and begin with a surgery that Derek doesn’t even want to do.  He comments that it’s no wonder that the patient had so much pain because the object he pulled out of his spine was very sharp.  Cristina is quick to turn Meredith, telling Derek that she gave the patient more pain medication against his wishes.  The tensions rise as Derek complains again that they have to save this terrible person.  “Why should we be worried,” Meredith says, “You’re the one holding the knife.” Hunt, unsure of how to break it up tries to turn things back to the surgery asking the two girls if either of them has done a certain procedure that one of them may get to try.  Meredith quickly says she hasn’t but would love to try. Cristina says she’s done dozens on cadavers and would be a more likely choice.  Meredith snidely says, “Well, to some of us, surgery comes naturally while others have to practice.”  If looks could kill, Cristina would have killed, but Hunt turns to Derek and asks about football before the conversation can go any further.  

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->

After it’s all said and done, Cristina waits for the elevator.  Hunt approaches and asks, “Do you want to go get a drink or something?”  Cristina looks at him, and tells him “Oh, oh well now we’re on again because it suits you- ‘cause I’m the sad little girl with no friend and I tripped your super complex into action? Usually I can deal with the hot and cold thing, but not today.”  She gets on the elevator and continues, “Just leave me the hell alone,” leaving Owen with nothing to say.

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->

“You and I had a fight like this – Amsterdam.  We used to me as close as you and Cristina but Amsterdam happened and. . . .it’s okay I’m a rolling stone and I bounce but your about to do the same thing to cristina and that girl needs you in her life. If you don’t make it right, she’ll never talk to you again.”  “I apologized to Cristina,” Meredith tells her.  “Like you meant it,” Sadie asks, “like you imagined she had a point?”  Meredith pauses before Sadie tells her, “I miss you, as a friend, I miss you.”

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->