"Superstition"
Written by James D. Parriott and Shonda Rhimes; directed by Tricia Brock

As Meredith voices over about a supposedly magic statue on her college campus and how rubbing its nose would bring good luck, various doctors go through their rituals to prepare for surgery. Addison takes off her rings and pins them to her scrubs, Burke looks for his scrub caps, Derek tells everyone it’s a beautiful day to save lives, and Bailey takes a few deep breaths before beginning. None of the rituals matter, though, as the four surgeons’ operations suddenly start to go wrong and all four of their patients die. In the locker room, George asks Cristina for a bite of her breakfast bar but she’s still mad that he’s living in her apartment and won’t share anything else. Izzie announces that according to a guy in the morgue, deaths at Seattle Grace happen in threes and sevens; that means there will be three more deaths before midnight. George drops something and Meredith tries to give it back to him, but he’s still ignoring her. Cristina thinks Meredith should just ignore him back, but Meredith says that Derek thinks she should apologize until George listens. Cristina is surprised to hear that Meredith and Derek are friends again and that he’s giving her advice. Alex pulls Izzie aside and asks if she sneaked out last night; she says she couldn’t sleep.

Bailey arrives and leads everyone to the ER to save lives since the attendings have already lost too many patients. On the way, they pass Addison, who hands out hot cocoa, explaining that as a ritual in New York, they would drink hot chocolate after bad surgeries in order to spread “good juju.” Addison includes Meredith in this ritual, as Derek notices; Addison says it was in the spirit of friendship, since Derek and Meredith are friends, which makes Addison friends with Meredith by proxy. Meredith, however, doesn’t want the juju and throws it out. Burke makes a phone call, trying to track down some scrub caps, and Webber approaches to say that he hopes Burke isn’t blaming his bad surgery on a superstition. He spots a nurse erasing elective surgeries from the board - they’ve been cancelled by superstitious surgeons - and announces that no one else is changing the board without his permission. In the ER, Cristina mentions that it’s quiet, which makes Bailey and the other interns chastise her for jinxing things. In quick succession, a woman is brought in coughing up blood, Alex and Izzie are paged to tend to Denny, and a man named Jesse is brought in from a car accident. He also has OCD and wants to wait outside until the ambulance siren sounds 33 times. Meredith gets a patient who was struck by lightning, but Cristina thinks all of the patients’ situations are just coincidences.

Inside, Meredith’s patient, Nikki, says that she should have listened to her horoscope, which told her to stay close to home. Meredith and Bailey examine her but don’t find any signs that she was struck by lightning. This is because, as Nikki explains, she wasn’t exactly struck - a tree was struck and fell on her. Well, a branch fell on her. George finds Webber and tells him that a woman named Ollie has been admitted and is looking for him. She’s the woman who came in coughing up blood, and she and Webber have known each other for about 20 years. Izzie and Alex check on Denny, who’s having pain when he breathes but wants to avoid the ER because he knows about the four deaths that have already occurred. Izzie worries that Denny has a pulmonary embolism, a complication from his LVAD surgery (see “Band Aid Covers the Bullet Hole”), and wants to talk to Burke about it. In an elevator with their patients, Meredith tells Cristina that “the she Shepherd” jujued her. This causes Jesse to repeat “juju” a number of times. Nikki doesn’t think that Meredith has to be friends with Addison just because she’s friends with Derek, but Cristina isn’t sure. Callie sets Nikki’s broken leg as Nikki says that she went to see her boyfriend (whose tree she fell out of) to surprise him because he was about to take a big test. George arrives and Callie chastises him for not calling her after she gave him her phone number.

As Meredith returns to get Nikki, Callie notes that Nikki has bruises on her body that aren’t consistent with her story that a branch fell on her. Nikki comes clean that she was in the tree when it was struck, and she fell out. And after she went to all that trouble to surprise her boyfriend, he wasn’t even home. After talking to Derek about Jesse, Cristina encounters Burke, who’s still put out about not having his caps. He says it’s a comfort thing to have them because he prefers them, and Cristina shoots back that she would prefer not to have George living with them. She then admits that she has one of his caps in her locker, and she’ll only give it to him if he kicks George out. Burke doesn’t like that she’s giving him an ultimatum, so she tells him it’s more like a trade. After she leaves, George approaches and Burke tells him he needs him to get his cap back from Cristina. Ollie talks to Webber about Gretchen, one of her newest AA mentees, and he tells her that her liver cirrhosis is causing other problems in her body. They can help her for now, but she’ll need a liver transplant. Ollie notes that Webber hasn’t been to a meeting for a while. He tells her that Ellis’ daughter works at Seattle Grace and Webber has been visiting Ellis every once in a while. Ollie thinks it’s a bad idea for him to visit the woman who drove him to drink in the first place. Webber says they’re not having an affair, though she thinks he’s having an emotional one and is lying to Adele by omission. Webber has been sober for 17 years and promises to help his old sponsor through her medical problems.

Cristina catches George looking through her locker and tells him he’ll never find the cap. He tries to make a deal for it, but she’ll only accept him moving out. He tells her he’ll only leave when Burke tells him to. Meredith and Bailey study Nikki’s CT scans, which show that she has a huge laceration in her spleen. Meredith admits that Nikki seems to be a stalker, but not a dangerous one. She asks if Bailey believes in the idea that deaths come in threes and sevens, but Bailey is just focused on the fact that Nikki needs to have her spleen removed. In an OR, Denny and Izzie talk about horses while Burke tries to remove Denny’s clot. Alex ruins the mood by mentioning that one of his uncles was a rodeo cowboy. Cristina takes Jesse to get a CT scan as Jesse tells her that he got in his accident at a green light while he was waiting for the turn signal to click 333 times. Raj, the psych intern, talks to him about when Jesse’s OCD got so bad (three years ago - he happens to be 33 now). His mother also had OCD and killed herself when she was 38. Before getting on the table for the CT scan, Jesse needs Cristina to assure him that it’s “clean, clean, clean,” which she does reluctantly. He also needs to repeat, “Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck” over and over. While Cristina tries to put up with this, George tries to annoy her by making faces through the window. Meredith, Derek, and Addison all run into each other in a hallway and have a very awkward couple of minutes together.

Webber tells Ollie that a previous procedure she had failed, and now she can have another operation but she only has a 50 percent chance of surviving it. Ollie accepts this risk, as long as Webber is the doctor to operate on her. Bailey and Meredith tell Nikki that she needs surgery immediately, but she doesn’t want to have it today because of her horoscope and other signs she’s gotten throughout the day that surgery would be a bad idea. She’s sure that she’ll die if she has the operation today, so she’ll wait until midnight. She asks Meredith to call her boyfriend, Kevin, to let him know so he can come see her. Bailey tells Meredith she can call psych but she also needs to get Nikki to the ICU so she doesn’t die while trying not to die. Alex examines Denny while talking to him about Izzie and how hard she’ll take it when Denny dies. He warns that the surgery Denny needs is dangerous and Izzie won’t pull away from him before it. Outside, Meredith and Cristina discuss their crazy patients, whom Cristina thinks might make a good couple. George joins them, much to Cristina’s annoyance, and Meredith finds out about Burke’s “hat juju.” Izzie arrives and seems to be trying to convince herself that three more people won’t die before midnight. She claims to be worried about Denny just as a patient, since she’s still sleeping with Alex.

Derek and Cristina talk to Jesse about an operation he needs, after which he annoys Cristina by turning a light on and off. George appears and Jesse laments to him that Cristina is judging him. He thinks it’s because Cristina is a lot like him; she just turned her compulsions into something productive. Webber stops by Ollie’s room and finds her conducting an AA meeting, which Gretchen invites him to join. He does, reciting the serenity prayer with the others. Just before his operation, Denny tells Izzie that his will is in his nightstand and if anything happens to him, he wants her to make sure it gets into the right hands. Denny wants to be realistic, but Izzie would rather be optimistic. She doesn’t want him to go into the OR thinking he’s going to die. George follows Cristina into the ladies’ room, having determined that she has the cap on her, and he starts grabbing at her, trying to figure out where it is. Callie happens to be in the restroom as well and spots them together. George calls her ma’am, leading Cristina to comment that Callie will never sleep with him now. In the hall, George runs into Izzie and tells her that Cristina has one of Burke’s caps but he can’t get it back. Aware that Burke is about to operate on Denny without any of his lucky caps, Izzie makes a beeline for Cristina and orders her to give Burke his cap unless she wants to be beaten up. Cristina decides to take her seriously, returning the cap and telling Burke that she likes to look at it because it reminds her that a good surgeon doesn’t need clothing to get an edge. Burke says she’s right but puts on the cap anyway.

Meredith tries to convince Nikki that the signs are actually pointing for her to have surgery, but Nikki just wants to know where Kevin is. Meredith tells her that she called him and he told her that he and Nikki aren’t dating anymore. Nikki doesn’t seem to care. Izzie finds Alex in the scrub room outside Denny’s OR and asks him what he said to Denny to make him think he’s going to die. She proceeds to break up with Alex - Denny may be dying, but he’s still much more of a man than Alex. Burke hears them fighting and tells them they can’t scrub in; he doesn’t want their negative energy anywhere near the OR. It’s almost time for Jesse’s surgery, but first he has to chant some more. Derek does his pre-surgery ritual as Burke and George prepare for Denny’s surgery and Webber and Bailey prepare for Ollie’s. Meredith interrupts to tell Bailey that Nikki is getting worse - she’s bleeding out and needs surgery right away. Nikki still refuses, so Meredith tells her that Kevin called and said he doesn’t want her to die. Unfortunately, Nikki flatlines before she can get to the OR. As Meredith and Bailey work on reviving her, Webber, Derek, and Burke all have trouble with their respective surgeries. Downstairs, Izzie hears a couple of other interns talking about how patients are still dying. Alex places a bet that Denny is the one who won’t make it. They soon get some news - Nikki died, as did another unnamed patient, but Ollie survived.

Meredith voices over about superstition being between what we control and what we can’t. Derek and Cristina leave Jesse’s OR, where he’s become the sixth patient to die. Denny wakes up past midnight and Izzie gives him the good news that he broke the death pattern. She chastises herself for falling for a patient, but when they share a kiss, it’s way too late to go back. In the locker room, Alex takes out his frustration on George, telling Meredith that George isn’t talking to her because he’s still in love with her. Anyone else would move on after having bad sex, but George is still moping. Burke catches up with Cristina as she leaves the hospital and tells her that if she really wants George to move out, he’ll kick him out. Cristina decides that tonight isn’t the best time, since George was just embarrassed by Alex in front of everyone. Burke gives her back his scrub cap. George tries to talk to Callie in the ER but she ignores him, so he calls her phone and apologizes. He adds that he really likes her and would like to go out with her. “We rely on superstitions because we’re smart enough to know we don’t have all the answers,” Meredith voices over. Addison hands out cocoa juju again, and this time Meredith takes a sip.

THE TITLE IS A SONG BY…: Stevie Wonder

MEMORABLE QUOTES: George: “I’ll do your dishes for a month.”
Cristina: “I don’t do dishes.”
George: “I’ll do your laundry.”
Cristina: “I don’t do laundry.”
George: “Maybe that’s why Burke likes having me around.”
Cristina: “Interesting, interesting. Are you having sex with him?”
George: “No.”
Cristina: “Then he likes having me around more.”

Izzie: (re: Burke) “They still can’t find his scrub caps.”
George: “That’s what I got to tell him. Cristina won’t give hers back. Unless I’m ready to hit a woman. And even though it’s Cristina, I’m not ready to cross that line.”

“I swear to God, Cristina, I like you, I really do. But I grew up in a trailer park and I am not about kicking your pampered little Beverly Hills a%$. And I do mean physically kicking your a%$.” - Izzie


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