The Chief introduces the residents and interns to “Stan” their robotic model to practice on.  Stan will tell you how he’s feeling and how you can help him.  When they turn to Miranda Bailey for their assignments she casually drops a bomb on them.  “When the Chief decides which one of you will get a solo surgery, you’re gonna want to be ready.”  A chaos of questioning ensues - solo surgery?  She calms them and explains that there is no knowing what the surgery will be or what it will entail so they need to be ready for anything.  They will get to choose only one intern to help.  

Lexie Grey finds her fellow interns hiding out in the basement.  “Are you guys shooting drugs?”  she asks very shocked.  It is soon revealed, however, that they are practicing I.V.s on one another because Cristina never lets them practice anything.  Lexie is freaked out by it and tells them  it’s “creepy basement crazy” before agreeing not to tell and leaving.  

In the E.R. Chief tells Owen Hunt that he will get to choose who gets the surgery because he has a “fresh eyes” on this all being a new doctor there.  Cristina Yang is working on a patient nearby and asks questions about how to win the solo surgery. Hunt looks at the patient and scolds her that she hasn’t gotten the central line in yet and takes over.  “If you were less worried about contests, you would’ve thought it through.”

George O’Malley and Alex Karev are working on the robot patient.  Alex is less than thrilled to say the least and somehow this robot is picking up on it and giving him trouble for it.  He gives up on it and leaves the room.  George is left with the robot thinking how cool that it gave Alex a hard time.  

Cristina is still working on the E.R. patient and sends Lexie to the morgue to run errands on things.  Lexie starts to ask to stay and is told, “With the solo surgery coming your job is to impress me.”  Lexie leaves and Hunt turns to Cristina, “With the solo surgery coming your job is to impress me.  You’re planning for his death when I’m fighting to keep him alive.”  She tries to explain that she is trying to be prepared, but he is not impressed.

In the morgue, Lexie is asking the worker about the bodies.  “What happens to them?”  He explains how they are either cremated or preserved for medical students.  She gets an idea.  He tells her, “you’re pretty,” and she smiles.  The next thing you see, she has all the cadavers lined up in a room and she is telling them how sorry she is that they are dead before she prepares to practice on them.  

Back in the E.R., Hunt is asking Callie Torres what she thinks of the residents.  Callie starts telling him about them, but can’t help interjecting some personal things about them as she does.  Things like Cristina being her roommate and Isobel sleeping with her husband.  He realizes she may not be the best source to get an impartial run down of the interns.

Cristina finds Meredith and pulls her aside. “I’m having a bad day.  Hunt hates me – he hates me!”  “He kissed you,” Meredith reminds her.  “Yah, but that was before.  Now he hates my guts.  This is worse than Hahn.  I don’t know what I did or what I said, but . . .” and she’s paged away before she can finish.

Lexie has gathered up the interns and announces her plan, “I got cadavers, cadavers we can practice on.”  The interns are suddenly very excited, but Alex Karev overhears the plan.    She finds him in the basement with her cadavers and says, “These are for interns!”  He yells, “Go play with the dummy,” and she frustratedly backs down and leaves.

George is back with the dummy.  Blood is everywhere, he’s frustrated and the patient keeps trying to give him advice about what he’s doing wrong.  The dummy says, “I’m surprised you even passed your intern exam,” and George is so mad.  Finally you see that the dummy is hooked up to monitors where Chief is laughing   with a microphone in hand – that obviously feeds to the dummy.  “I’m sorry I just couldn’t resist,” he chuckles.  Erica Hahn enters announcing that she needs to speak to him.  He tries to lighten her up and join in until she says, “It’s about Izzie Stevens and Denny Duquette.”  He turns somber and leaves with her.  

In surgery on the E.R. patient, Callie apologizes to Hunt about before – telling him about the personal lives of the residents.  “Everyone’s up in everyone’s business around here, you know.”  “Better to keep things professional,” Hunt says, but he’s looking at Cristina.   Callie starts rambling on, but no one is really listening.  Soon Mark Sloan joins them.  “How’s our mystery man.”  Hunt explains that he’s a fighter.  “I’d hate to be the other guy, Callie.  Dr. Yang I know that cracking chests is more your thing, but you’d be surprised how exciting it can be when I manipulate a little skin.”  And with that Hunt tells Cristina that she can leave being that there are plenty of hands working on the patient already.

Cristina leaves and Lexie is eagerly awaiting her turn.  Cristina crashes her hopes saying that she’s not in the surgery anymore.  Cristina notices that Lexie smells terrible – like formaldehyde, like death.  She’s up to something, “Why do you smell like death,” Cristina asks.  Lexie is a bad liar.  It’s written all over her face.  They burst through the doors to find the cadavers, “Ah dead people!”  Cristina suddenly feels better.  Alex isn’t going to give them up without a fight.  He makes a deal with Cristina for three cadavers in exchange for her surgery with Hunt.

They get word from Lexie that the patient is coding.  Cristina runs to help with Alex on her tail.  She made a deal with him, it’s his patient now.  Getting in to the room, Cristina scolds Lexie for not putting in a chest tube.  When she says she doesn’t know how, Cristina belittles her.  Lexie finally speaks up “Yes, you  learned, you know, but I will never know because you not only won’t let me try one, you hog all our robots and steal all our corpses.”  Cristina is speechless and Alex says, “Dude, you broke her.”  Alex then notices blood in the urine and the two begin bickering over who’s patient it is.  Hunt walks up and seeing the two of them fighting over it gets him upset.  “Get away from that man right now.”  They try to explain but he’s not buying it.  “No what you did was pick over him like vultures, like a bunch of children fighting over toys, what you did was treated a man who is fighting to live like he’s already dead.  You’ve no sense, no decency and no self-respect. Just get out.”  They all have no choice but to bow out quietly.

When the Chief asks Hunt if he’s made his decision, he calmly tries to blame it on the fact that it’s only been a day before blurting out,  “They’re undisciplined, inarticulate and they have a lot to learn about respect.  More interested in their personal crap than anything else and I’m not sure they’re being taught anything differently.  Honestly sir, I’m not sure I’ll be staying on,” and he excuses himself.  

In the basement, Alex and Lexie walk in to find Bailey.  “Tell me I’m not seeing what I’m seeing.  Tell me I’m not seeing a room full of human bodies, half-opened, scattered and forgotten about.”  “They’re unclaimed bodies,” Lexie tries.  “Unclaimed?  Each one of these people was loved.  Each one of these people was somebody somewhere to somebody.  As such, we claim them and treat them with respect!  Close them up, cover them up and put them back where they belong,” she says as she gives them a look like no other, “Now!”

Cristina finds Dr. Hunt in an on-call room alone to tell him the victim’s wife is here to claim him.  “What’s his name?” he asks her.  “I wondered if you asked her his name so that he could become a person to you.  They’re all people, Yang, this is not a game or a contest; a competition to see who gets the surgery and who doesn’t.  They’re people and we get to save them.”  He continues to say that she is an excellent surgeon and she could win all the contests, but if the reason she does this is to win then she doesn’t deserve it.  “Do you know his name?” he asks again.  She quietly closes the door and sits down next to him and explains why she became a surgeon.  “My dad died when I was 9. In a car accident and I was with him in the car.  While we waited for the ambulance, I tried to keep his chest closed so he didn’t bleed so much.  When he died, my hands felt his heart stop beating.  That’s why I do this. It’s also why I win all the contests.  The patient’s name is Tom.”  She gets up and walked out.  He says, “single malt scotch,” as she leaves.

Back in with the dummy, George announces “Yes, you don’t get to die!” and  raises his arms victoriously. Hunt walks in and talks to the dummy.  He apologizes and takes back what he said before about leaving.  The dummy says, “Get some sleep, Doctor Hunt. See you tomorrow.” Finally George realizes  and says, “Chief?”  “Good job O’Malley,” he says.                

more from this episode . . .