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Golden Hour
Season 7, episode 15

Meredith is running the ER.
Episode Information
Airdate	February 17, 2011
Written by	Stacy McKee
Directed by	Rob Corn
Episode Guide
Previous	P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)
Next	Not Responsible
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"How much can you actually accomplish in an hour? Run an errand maybe? Sit in traffic? Get an oil change? When you think about it, an hour isn't very long. 60 minutes. 3,600 seconds. That's it. In medicine, though, an hour is often everything. We call it the golden hour. That magical window of time that can determine whether a patient lives or dies. An hour. One hour can change everything forever. An hour can save your life. An hour can change your mind. Sometimes an hour is just a gift we give ourselves. For some, an hour can mean almost nothing. For others, an hour makes all the difference in the world. But in the end it's still just an hour. One of many. Many more to come. 60 minutes. 3,600 seconds. That's it. And it starts all over again. And who knows what the next hour might hold?"

—Meredith Grey

Golden Hour is the fifteenth episode of the seventh season and the 141st overall episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Short SummaryEdit

Meredith, looking to prove she is Chief Resident material, learns that anything and everything can happen in an hour's time when she steps up to run the ER for a night; meanwhile, Bailey sneaks off with Eli and gets into a little mischief, and everyone is surprised when the Chief's wife, Adele, shows up as one of the ER patients.

Full Summary Edit

Meredith starts the night by telling us "an hour is often everything" in medicine. She says the "golden hour" is the time in which it's determined whether a patient lives or dies.

Cristina is eating potato chips after having done four surgeries, refusing to help Meredith, who volunteered to run the ER like "any good chief resident candidate" would, she says. Cristina starts to tell Meredith about an "unexpected thing" Callie wanted. She's asked Cristina to be her baby's godmother. Meredith tells her she should have said no to that. Cristina doesn't answer.

Meredith visits a patient who is supposed to be taking his 9-year-old son to a basketball game for his birthday. He's had chest pains, which Meredith says she can't take lightly. She promises to try to make it as quick as possible to run some tests. Meredith shows Cristina the EKG, which she agrees looks normal.

Alex stops by on his way to the same game to sign some charts or risk losing his privileges, but is distracted when he sees a 4-year-old who broke his femur and will need two full casts on his leg after it's reset. Meredith tells the boy's father that an OR will be needed for the procedure. Meredith asks Alex if he can stay and help and he says he has floor seats to the game.

Bailey getting hit on by the nurse from a few weeks back, Eli.

Lexie is treating a guy with a glorified migraine who has a girlfriend from hell, as Lexie put it, who is angry that they're going to miss dinner reservations at a Seattle hotspot.

Meredith finds the chief's wife in an ER bed, saying she fell and landed on her wrist. Meredith tells her she's now her most important patient -- but that's when a drunk guy walks in with a knife sticking out of his head.

Meredith asks Derek to come check on knife guy, but he sends Avery down to get it started while he wraps up a surgery.

Meredith interrupts Bailey as she's about to head into the on-call room to take a nap, or so she claims. Eli soon arrives after Meredith heads off to find Teddy, who has a date waiting in the lobby. She goes to meet the guy and asks him to wait for 10 minutes when Henry walks in. She awkwardly introduces them.

Alex asks April to help him forge his own signature so he can get to the game. Dr. Fields hears about Alex's situation and sits down to help him because she agrees he can't miss this game.

Meredith tries to explain to Cristina why she has to tell Callie she can't be her godmother: She's supposed to be the godmother to her baby.

The chief is upset that Meredith didn't tell him Adele was in the ER. Adele backs Meredith and explains what happened.

Knife guy wants to drink more beer in his hospital room and everyone is in awe that his mental activity seems normal despite the knife.

Meredith finds something on the discharge papers for the migraine guy and runs out to get him back into the hospital. She runs him through a couple of quick field tests and figures out he's having a stroke. His girlfriend is annoyed when Meredith tells her that she should cancel their trip to Aspen in a week.

Avery suggests to Sloan that they pull the knife out of the guy's head. He wants to get to the game. Meredith finds Lexie and tells her about her migraine patient's stroke. Callie then shows up an yells at Meredith for not telling her the ortho consult was for the chief's wife. Meredith follows up with Adele and is suspicious that she might have some head damage.

Meredith gets some scans from the chest pain patient and runs them to Teddy. Meredith has to go tell him about needing a CT scan, and he gets worried he's going to miss the game.

Hunt and some other doctors look at knife guy's X-ray, and agree that if the knife stays in place until Derek can look at it, everything should be OK. In the background, we see that knife guy's drunk friend is pulling the knife out himself. He does it and things seem fine.

Derek comes to see knife guy and Meredith hears the 4-year-old boy with the broken leg crying. She goes over and promises his parents they'll get him in an OR as soon as possible.

Derek wants to take Meredith's one free minute for a "date." He says he just needs a minute for their "baby." After he opens the door to the on-call room and finds Eli and Bailey doing the deed (he asks Meredith to never ask him what he may or may not have seen in there), Derek and Meredith go into an elevator, which he stops and he tells her to drop her pants. Then he hits her in the rear with a hormone injection. Derek leaves the elevator and Alex and Fields walk in. She asks him for an invitation to the game, which he offers (even though he was supposed to take Avery). She says she can't go, but just wanted to see if she could get him to ask her out.

Alex sees the father of the 4-year-old pleading with a nurse to have someone get to his son's leg. The chief is upset with Meredith for ordering a CT scan on Adele, but a nurse tells Meredith the chest pains guy is coding in the scanner. Meredith gets paddles and tells the nurse to call Teddy. He needs surgery immediately and Meredith offers up the OR she had open. She and Teddy prep and sanitize their hands in the elevator, knowing they won't have time to scrub. (Teddy is wearing four-inch heels for her date).

They get into the OR and get started quickly. Teddy tells Meredith she's caught maybe 40 or 50 of these in time to operate and has managed to save just three. After some dramatic moments, Teddy tells Meredith there's nothing she they can do. She tells Meredith to call it. Meredith hesitates for a long moment, then calls it.

Cristina finds Meredith at the nursery, and Meredith tells Cristina that she isn't refusing to share her with Callie, she just feels like if Cristina agrees to by Callie's baby's godmother it's like saying Meredith won't have a baby of her own. Cristina heads off to talk to Callie and Meredith goes to contact Oliver's family.

Meredith talks to the chief about Adele and implies that she has concerns that Adele was confusing some details about what happened to her. The chief gets upset and tells Meredith she has "Alzheimer's on the brain" but that Adele is fine.

The 4-year-old's father tells Meredith his son was taken into surgery. Meredith then hears Oliver's cell phone ringing and answers it. It's Oliver's son and Meredith asks to talk to his mother.

Lexie tells her stroke patient that he should be fine and his girlfriend is relieved that they might not have to cancel their Aspen trip. He's upset that her main concern is Aspen when he just had a stroke. He breaks up with her and Lexie silently cheers along as she watches the whole scene unfold.

Henry gives Teddy the lowdown on the guy she was about to date, telling him he wears driving gloves and until recently lived above his mother's house. He also used the word "shan't," and he wasn't joking. Henry tells Teddy that, as her husband, he thinks they can do better. The guy comes back around and takes Teddy, who goes with him.

Bailey and Eli sneak out of the on-call room, and Bailey says it will never happen again at work. Eli agrees, then, as she walks away, adds, "until your next break."

Avery sends knife guy on his way to the basketball game. Avery asks Lexie if she wants to go to the game because Alex didn't want his floor seats. She agrees.

We next see Alex preparing 4-year-old Nathan for his leg surgery, and trying to comfort the frightened boy. He asks what his favorite color is and when the boy says "blue," Alex asks a nurse to prep the blue cast material.

Cast Edit

Main CastEdit

Guest StarsEdit

Loretta Devine as Adele Webber
Daniel Sunjata as Nurse Eli
Rachael Taylor as Dr. Lucy Fields
Jason Gray-Stanford as Josh Englander
Josh Randall as William
Dondré T. Whitfield as Oliver Richter
Elizabeth Bogush as Gia
John Henry Canavan as Stewart Tyler
Jeffrey Doornbos as Mitch Turner
Moe Irvin as Nurse Tyler
Scott Foley as Henry Burton

Co-StarringEdit

Payton Silver as Dr. Knox
Ariel Felix as C.T. Booth Tech
Nick Armstrong as Dave
Jacy King as Whitney
Cade Owens as Nathan
Billy Wood as Code Nurse

Medical Notes Edit

Music Edit

Song	Performer	Scene
"Love Like a Sunset Part 1"	Phoenix
"Bourgeois Shangri-La"	Miss Li
"Lose Control"	Back Ted N-Ted

Notes and Trivia Edit

This episode's title originated from the song Golden Hour, originally sung by Midlake.
This episode scored 10.24 million viewers.

GalleryEdit

Episode StillsEdit

Quotes Edit

Bailey: I'm taking a nap. Uh, I'm sorry. What I mean to say is that I'm going to use this room to take a nap. Because that's what people do in these rooms when they're tired. Cause I have a child and a full-time job and work long hours, so I'm just tired. Just very, very tired.

Cristina: I choose potato chips.


Grey's Anatomy Season 7
#01	"With You I'm Born Again"	#09	"Slow Night, So Long"	#17	"This is How We Do It"
#02	"Shock to the System"	#10	"Adrift and at Peace"	#18	"Song Beneath the Song"
#03	"Superfreak"	#11	"Disarm"	#19	"It's a Long Way Back"
#04	"Can't Fight Biology"	#12	"Start Me Up"	#20	"White Wedding"
#05	"Almost Grown"	#13	"Don't Deceive Me (Please Don't Go)"	#21	"I Will Survive"
#06	"These Arms of Mine"	#14	"P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)"	#22	"Unaccompanied Minor"
#07	"That's Me Trying”"	#15	"Golden Hour"
#08	"Something's Gotta Give"	#16	"Not Responsible"
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