White Wedding (Season 7, Episode 20)

Germs. Disease.  Toxins.  Our bodies encounter dangers all the time.  Just beneath the surface.  Hidden.  Whether you realize it or not, your body is constantly protecting itself.  The body knows when it's encountered something that doesn't belong.  The body detects the invader, it releases its white blood cells, and it attacks.

Just when we think we've figured things out, the universe throws us a curve ball.  So we have to improvise.  We find happiness in unexpected places.  We find our way back to the things that matter the most.  The universe is funny that way.  Sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong.

It's a Long Way Back (Season 2, Episode 19)

After a trauma, your body is at it's most vulnerable.  Response time is critical, so you're suddenly surrounded by people - doctors, nurses, specialists, technicians.  Surgery is a team sport - everyone pushing for the finish line, putting you back together again.  But surgery is a trauma in and of itself and once it's over, the real healing begins.  We call it recovery.  Recovery is not a team sport.  It's a solitary distance run.  It's long, it's exhausting, and it's lonely as hell.

The length of your recovery is determined by the extent of your injuries.  And it's not always successful.  No matter how hard we work at it, some wounds might never fully heal.  You might have to adjust to a whole new way of living.  Things may have changed too rapidly to ever go back to what they were.  You might not even recognize yourself.  It's like you haven't recovered anything at all.  You're a whole new person, with a whole new life.

Song Beneath the Song (Season 7, Episode 18)

(The Music Episode)

Callie speaking:

The brain is the human body's most mysterious organ.  It learns.  It changes.  It adapts.  It tells us what we see.  What we hear.  It lets us feel love.  I think it holds our soul.  But no matter how much research we do, no one can really say how all of that delicate grey matter inside our skull works.  And when it's hurt, when the human brain is traumatized, well, that's when it gets even more mysterious.

What Have I Done to Deserve This? (Season 2, Episode 19)

Ok, so sometimes, even the best of us make rash decisions.  Bad decisions.  Decisions we pretty much know we're going to regret the moment, the minute especially...the morning after.  I mean, maybe not "regret" regret because at least, you know, we put ourselves out there, but still, something inside us decides to do a crazy thing, a thing we know will probably turn around and bite us in the ass. Yet, we do it anyway.  What I'm saying is, we reap what we sow. What comes around, goes around.  It's karma.  And any way you slice it, karma sucks.

One way or another, our karma will always find us.   And the truth is, as surgeons, we have more chances than most to set the balance in our favor.  No matter how hard we try, we can't escape our karma.  It follows us home. I guess we can't really complain about karma.  It's not unfair.  It's not unexpected.  It just...evens the score.  And even when we're about to do something we know will tempt karma to bite us in the ass... well, it goes without saying... we do it anyway.

Yesterday (Season 2, Episode 18)

After careful consideration and many sleepless nights, here's what I've decided.  There's no such thing as a grown-up.  We move on.  We move out. We move away from our families and form our own.  But the basic insecurities, the basic fears and all those old wounds just grow up with us.  And just when we think that life and circumstance have forced to truly, once and for all, become an adult, your mother says something like that. Or worse, something like that.  We get bigger.  We get taller.  We get older.  But, for the most part, we're still a bunch of kids, running around the playground, trying desperately to fit in.

I've heard that it's possible to grow up.  I've just never met anyone who's actually done it.  Without parents to defy, we break the rules we make for ourselves.  We throw tantrums when things don't go our way.  We whisper secrets with our best friends in the dark.  We look for comfort where we can find it.  And we hope against all logic, against all experience. Like children, we never give up hope. 

This is How We Do It (Season 7, Episode 17)

Renegades. Rule-breakers. Gangsters with scalpels.  This is the way we like to think of ourselves.  It makes us feel bad-ass.  Sexy.

Problem is, it's not  exactly true.  At heart, we're rule followers.  Sheep.  We don't break protocol - we follow it to a "T".  Because if we don't follow protocol, our patients die, and then we're no longer bad-ass, we're just bad. 

It's every doctor's dilemma.  Do you play it safe and follow protocol? Or take a risk and invent a new one? There can be reward in risk.  There can also be fallout.

Still, you need to buck the system every once in a while.  Big.  And when you get the results you want, there's no better feeling in the world.  But when you don't....

As We Know It (Season 2, Episode 17)

In hospitals they say you know.  You know when you're going to die.  Some doctors say it's a look patients get in their eyes.  Some say there's a scent, the smell of death.  Some think there's just some kind of sixth sense.  When the great beyond is heading for you, you feel it coming.  Whatever it is, it's creepy.  Because if you know, what do you do about it?  Forget about the fact that you're scared out of your mind.  If you knew this was your last day on Earth, how would you want to spend it?

If you knew this was your last day on earth, how would you want to spend it?