"I am a rock.  I am an island.  It's the mantra of a surgeon," says Meredith Grey.  She comes down stairs in the morning ready to rush out the door.  Derek Shepard has been waiting for her and tells her before she can leave she should see that they made the cover of a major medical journal.  "The Shepard Method" it reads and it features a headshot of none other than her McDreamy. Obviously her concern is that there is no mention of her, but Derek doesn't see anything wrong with it.  She rushes out the door with a half-hearted excitement.

Waiting for the elevator, Derek walks up to her and pushes the already lit button.  She comments it is already on the way and his clever retorts fall on deaf ears for the moment.  She is still upset about the article in her name and decides to take the stairs instead.  She complains to Cristina Yang about the whole thing, but Cristina is distracted.  She's checking out the interns wondering if she could coerce a cute one into sleeping with her.  She's needing to "scratch the itch."

Derek later confronts Meredith that he's not doing this whole thing.  "I'm not going to have this silent fight.  I'll write the editors to make a change."  That's not what Meredith wants.  She doesn't want him to do it because she's mad about it, she wants him to do it because she deserves it.  "You're a baby," he tells her," you have the potential, but haven't even scratched the surface on what you need to learn."  "It was my idea!" she tells him, "and I hate that picture."  She gets a page from Bailey and leaves.

At the end of the day, Miranda Bailey compliments Shepard on his achievements.  He explains that he appreciates it, but wishes Meredith wasn't being so "silly" about the whole thing.  Bailey spells it out for her, "That girl worked her ass off for you and you got all the credit."   "Had we failed," he explains, "I would've gotten all the blame."  "But it didn't fail."  He further defends, "It's simple.  I am an attending, she is a second year resident."  Bailey finishes, ". . who you're living with.  It's not simple.  It's messy.  If it were me, I'd start with 'thank you.'  You'd be surprised how far that would go with us 'silly' women."

Meanwhile, at Joe's Meredith and Cristina are having a drink.  Meredith is beginning to convince herself that maybe Derek is right.  Cristina writes it off and says she's just desperate.  Suddenly she begins remembering, "Burke was a man. . . he was a man."  Meredith orders another round.  Soon Derek walks up with a gift for her.  "Thank you.  I couldn't have done it without you. . . not one patient. . . thank you!"  She opens the gift to find a kidney in a jar.  She's excited - it's the item that all the residents had been coveting all day and she got one.  Pleased about the whole thing, the two leave together.  Cristina is left alone thinking about how there are "no real men left in the world."  She turns to leave and sees . . . there in the very same bar as her. . . none other than Major Hunt.         

more from this episode . . .