Meredith Grey

Meredith Grey
Grey's Anatomy character
The Season 7 Gallery Picture of Ellen Pompeo as Dr. Meredith Grey
First appearance	"A Hard Day's Night" 1x01, March 27, 2005
Created by	Shonda Rhimes
Portrayed by	Ellen Pompeo
In-universe information
Alias	Mer
Nicknames	Death (by Saddie)
Title	M.D.
Occupation	Surgical Resident at Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital
Family	Ellis Grey (mother) Thatcher Grey (father) Susan Grey (step-mother) Lexie Grey (paternal half-sister) Molly Grey-Thompson (paternal half-sister) Carolyn Shepherd (mother-in-law) Nancy Shepherd (sister-in-law) Kathleen Shepherd (sister-in-law) Amelia Shepherd (sister-in-law)
Spouse	Derek Shepherd
Children	Unnamed Child (miscarried; with Derek Shepherd)

Meredith Grey is a fictional surgeon and the series protagonist on the ABC television series Grey's Anatomy. The character is portrayed by actress Ellen Pompeo, and was created by Shonda Rhimes.

Background

Meredith Grey was born to the characters Ellis and Thatcher Grey. She spent the early part of her childhood in Seattle, where her mother was completing her surgical residency at Seattle Grace Hospital. Due to her mother's long-term affair with her colleague, Dr. Richard Webber, her father left when Meredith was five years old. Soon after, she and her mother relocated to Massachusetts and Thatcher lost all contact with his daughter.

Little is known about Meredith's high school years other than a few descriptions, and what she describes to Cristina: "I wore a lot of black. Had the whole angry pink hair thing going on. Wouldn't have been caught dead at prom."

Her college years were spent at Dartmouth College, where she graduated in spite of excessive partying and drinking. In the few years following her graduation, she had difficulty holding a job since she continued with this lifestyle. Meredith spent two months travelling in Europe with close friend Sadie Harris, returning home when her mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. This caused Meredith to take the decision to go to medical school, although her mother (at that point a renowned surgeon herself) had told her she didn't have what it took to be a surgeon. After completing medical school, Meredith secured a position in the surgical residency program at Seattle Grace Hospital.

Storylines

Season One

As the season begins, Meredith has secured a position in the surgical residency program at Seattle Grace and relocated from Boston to live in her mother's house in Seattle.

The first season sees her begin a relationship with Derek Shepherd. The night before her internship starts, she meets him in a bar and they have a one-night stand, discovering the next morning that he is the attending neurosurgeon at Seattle Grace, and they begin a relationship. At the end of the first season, Meredith and Derek decide to make their relationship more serious, but this is interrupted by the arrival of Derek’s wife, Addison Montgomery, someone Meredith didn't even know existed.

On her first day at work, she is recognized as Ellis Grey's daughter by Dr. Richard Webber, who tells her that she very much resembles her mother. Meredith hides the fact that her mother suffers from Alzheimer's disease from the other doctors, including Webber.

During the season Grey befriends her fellow surgical interns (George O'Malley, Izzie Stevens, Cristina Yang and Alex Karev), Cristina becoming her best friend.

Season Two

In the second season, Derek struggles to choose between Meredith and his estranged wife, but ultimately returns to Addison with the simple reasoning that 'she's [his] wife.' Meredith is devastated and turns to searching for her father, though their brief reunion fails to give her any closure regarding her childhood. Grey then has a series of one-night stands, trying to move on from Shepherd. She has sex with George, only to cry in the middle of the encounter, leading to George moving out and ending their friendship temporarily. Meredith and Derek begin a platonic friendship, and Meredith begins a relationship with her dog's veterinarian, Finn Dandridge. Derek's jealousy manifests itself as anger, and after a fight in which Derek criticizes Meredith’s promiscuity and calls her a whore, their friendship appears to be over. Derek and Meredith end up having sex at the faux Prom held at the hospital after a heated argument and are discovered by Callie Torres. Derek realises that he must leave his wife. In the season finale, Meredith is faced with the decision of whether to continue a relationship with Finn or Derek.

Meredith also learns she has a half-sister when Molly Thompson is admitted to the hospital. She discovers her father remarried after his divorce to Ellis and had two more daughters.

Season Three

In this season Derek divorces Addison, and Meredith is forced to choose between Derek and Finn. She decides to date both of them while she chooses, but eventually she chooses Derek. Following an accident involving a ferryboat, Meredith is knocked into the water at the scene by a patient, but her mother's words cause her to stop swimming and attempt to drown herself. She is rescued by Derek and nearly dies at the hospital, but is eventually resuscitated. Derek questions the accidental nature of Meredith's drowning throughout the season, knowing that she is a 'strong swimmer'.

Meredith's mother experiences a completely lucid day, and expresses her great disappointment at how 'ordinary' Meredith has turned out to be. Ellis declines to undergo heart surgery to correct her arrhythmias, but her wishes are in conflict with Meredith's power of attorney. Before Meredith can attempt reconciliation, her mother’s lucidity fades once more.

Meredith's half-sister Molly is readmitted to the hospital for a c-section. With their father at the hospital, Meredith is forced to face him, and their relationship softens a little when Meredith realizes she has inherited a snoring problem from him. Thatcher and his wife Susan reach out to Meredith after Ellis' death. However, shortly after Susan also dies following a rare complication of a surgical procedure performed at Seattle Grace. In his grief, Thatcher blames Meredith and forbids her to attend the funeral. Derek tries to reach out to Meredith during this time, but she avoids him.

Meredith goes on to freeze up during her intern exams. The other interns plead her case to the Chief, who arranges for Meredith to do the test privately.

At the end of the season, Shepherd confronts Meredith over her level of commitment to their relationship. After Cristina Yang's wedding falls apart, she announces to the guests that 'It's over... so over,' and it is left unknown whether she is referring solely to the wedding or also to her relationship with Shepherd.

Season Four

After accompanying Cristina on her would-be honeymoon, Meredith returns to Seattle Grace and learns that her half-sister, Lexie Grey, is one of the new interns. She initially rejects Lexie’s attempts to get to know her, as she finds it difficult to accept that her father chose her, stating that Lexie is 'not a girl [she] ever wanted to have to know.' However, Meredith slowly softens towards her, going through the case notes from Susan’s death with her, and allowing her to stay at her home overnight to recoup after Lexie lost a patient she had become close to.

Derek begins to push Meredith to make a greater commitment to their relationship than she feels able to, and the pair break up once more. However, the two continue having 'break-up sex' for several weeks. When Meredith finally decides that she wants to commit to Derek, she finds out that Derek kissed his scrub nurse and ends their relationship once more. While Derek begins dating Rose, Meredith begins seeing a therapist, Dr Wyatt. Meredith admits to her therapist that her Mother attempted suicide in front of Meredith as a child, and is finally able to realize that Ellis did not truly want to die, but committed the act as a cry for attention.

She also initiates a neurosurgical clinical trial, enlisting Derek as a consulting neurosurgeon, but the trial fails repeatedly. The Medical Board informs the hospital that they will shut down their trial unless at least one patient survives by the end of the day. The final clinical trial patient does survive. This leads Meredith and Derek to resume their relationship, Derek telling her that he has to go and break up with Rose.

Season Five

The season begins after Derek has broken up with Rose, who becomes angry and behaves erratically towards him. However, she soon leaves for another position, leaving Meredith and Derek free to go about their relationship. When Derek moves in, Meredith confides her hesitations to Cristina, who becomes irritated and tells her that her relationship with Derek will never work. Later, though, Cristina says: 'I'm your person, I'm on your side.' Meredith and Derek finally move in together, with Meredith asserting more control over the relationship, not allowing Derek to kick her roommates out. While looking for places to store his things, Derek discovers all of Ellis Grey's old diaries which Meredith begins to read with Cristina in order to get to know her Mother better.

An old friend of Meredith's, Sadie Harris, shows up in Seattle as an intern and begins to cause trouble. Cristina disapproves of Meredith's relationship with Sadie, feeling threatened by her closeness to Meredith. Their friendship becomes more strained ultimately leading to a fight because Meredith, according to Cristina, did not stand up for her when the Chief was berating her for knowing about the underground learning club the interns started. They get into further arguments over a death row patient. After Meredith decides to attend his execution, Cristina comforts her, ending their fighting.

The fifth season, for the most part, focused very little on the Meredith-Derek relationship - at least in comparison to seasons past. Many believe this was done to give a 'healthy, normal' appearance to the couple. Only in later episodes did their relationship come to the forefront of the storyline once more, in the form of Derek's planned proposal. After Derek's Mother Carolyn visits the hospital, she gives Derek her engagement ring so that he can propose to Meredith. Derek can't decide how to propose, though, and never follows through. Before he has another chance, Derek makes mistakes while operating on a pregnant woman, leading to her death and Derek's depression. The Chief, however, convinces her that Derek intends to propose, but a grief-stricken Derek rejects her and bats the ring into the woods. Meredith, meanwhile, has learned that Izzie has Stage 4 metastatic melanoma that has spread to her liver and brain. Meredith drives out to see Derek, and tells him that she wouldn't be able to love him if he refused to perform life-saving surgery on Izzie. Derek agrees to perform the surgery, and later proposes to her in the hospital elevator. Izzie begins to plan the perfect wedding for a reluctant Meredith, but when, on their wedding day, Derek discovers that Izzie has a second brain tumour, the couple let Alex and Izzie marry instead. In the season finale, Meredith and Derek get married by writing their wedding vows on a post-it note. In the same episode, Meredith has the realisation that a horrifically injured 'John Doe' being treated at the hospital is in fact George, who later dies in surgery.

Season Six

The season opens up where the last one left off, with both Izzie and George flatlining. Izzie eventually regains consciousness, but George is brain dead, and the decision must be made whether or not to donate his still healthy organs. When Mark and Lexie hear that George is the disfigured John Doe, they run to the OR where he is. Lexie is convinced that the patient is not George, due to his height. Everyone asks Meredith why she thinks it's George, and she tells them about how he wrote "007" in her hand, and squeezed it. Bailey then walks up and writes something in her hand and asks her to identify the message. When Meredith can't, the team becomes less convinced that the John Doe is George. However, Callie concludes that it is in fact George due to a freckle shaped like Texas on his right hand. During the rest of the season premiere, all the residents deal with George's passing differently, one way being all the residents (Meredith, Izzie, Alex, and Cristina) burst out laughing at the ridiculous thought of their friend actually being dead. Meredith also covers up her grief by going on a rampage with Derek, having sex all over their house constantly. Later, after about 40 days of not seeing George, Meredith finally breaks down in tears after a janitor cleans out George's locker, saying "they need the space". Derek then comforts her as she cries in his arms.

Later in the season, during a merger that is beginning between Seattle Grace and Mercy West Hospital, Meredith and Lexie's father, Thatcher, has liver failure and needs a donation. Lexie is not a match, but she looks up records and discovers that Meredith is, and Lexie begs her to donate part of her liver for Thatcher. Meredith reluctantly agrees to, but Thatcher refuses her help knowing that he doesn't deserve it after his years of not being there for her. Meredith convinces him otherwise by letting him know that she is doing this for Lexie, and not him. After the surgery, Meredith has to recover for weeks, and eventually gets sent home and has to stay there for a while. (In reality, it was written in order to hide Ellen Pompeo's pregnancy, and to give the actress a maternity leave.)

Upon her return, Meredith discovers that because of the recent merger with Mercy West, surgeries are at a premium so she logs time in the skills lab. During this time, the Chief also makes it a point of making himself her 'mentor'. However, this could be partly because while at Joe's, Meredith saw him have a drink after being twenty years sober and he is bartering her silence for one-on-one coaching. Eventually, things come to a head when she is called to the bar by Joe to come and look after the Chief on New Year's Eve, who has become very intoxicated.

In the season finale it is revealed that Meredith is pregnant with Derek's baby, but she has yet to tell him. Derek is then shot by a man named Mr. Clark who enters the hospital, searching for Derek, Lexie and Richard and intending to kill them as punishment for failing to save his wife. Because no attending physicians are on the floor and Derek's injury is life-threatening, Cristina agrees to perform the surgery as long as Meredith stays out of the OR. Clark reappears and wants to shoot Derek to finish what he started. Meredith rushes into the operating room and attempts to convince Clark to shoot her instead in order to truly torture Derek when he awakens, stating that she is the closest person to Lexie, Richard and Derek, all three of the doctors on his wife's case. Jackson then tricks Clark into thinking that Derek has died, without Meredith knowing that he simply unplugged Derek's heart monitor. Derek's life is saved but Meredith experiences a miscarriage while operating on Owen. In the locker room, the camera shows Meredith at her locker and looking at her pregnancy test, Cristina comes in and tells her that Derek is asking for her, Meredith responds saying "okay" and takes one last look at the pregnancy test and throws it in the garbage.

Season Seven

In the season seven premiere, Meredith is unable to be cleared for surgery by Dr. Andrew Perkins because he feels that she is not telling him everything. Meredith is also frustrated with Derek's reckless driving and she decides to leave Derek in jail so that he can learn a lesson on the day of Cristina and Owen's wedding. In the second episode of season seven, Meredith comes to Cristina's rescue, when the latter is experiencing post traumatic stress in the middle of an operation. Later, Meredith convinces Cristina to not give up on her marriage with Owen, telling her to wait for the good times to come. Meredith also tells Derek about her miscarriage and makes him promise to drive safer - she says she let him overnight in jail so she for a single night wouldn't have to worry about him dying again. She also tells Dr. Perkins and she is cleared for surgery. It is revealed in episode 4 that she has allowed Jackson Avery and April Kepner to stay at her place for as long as they want and she starts to bond with April.

The obstetrician tells her she has a "hostile uterus", which makes Meredith think of her other possible genetic flaws. In "Almost Grown" Meredith performs a solo craniotomy and is successful in stopping a brain bleed, leaving Lexie and Derek proud. Derek then talks to the chief about initiating an Alzheimer's clinical trial because he is worried about Meredith and confesses that every time she forgets something, he worries that she may have inherited her mother's disease. Meredith and Cristina's relationship is damaged when Cristina admits that she blames Meredith for her post traumatic stress as Cristina could have stopped operating if the victim was not Derek.

In "Disarm" there is a shooting at a local college campus and the victims are brought to Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital. The doctors take this hard as they went through the same thing six months ago. Meredith and Derek treat a patient with a brain injury. During the surgery Meredith constantly updates the patient's wife. Derek gets annoyed and argues with Meredith about continually leaving the OR. She responds by angrily telling Derek that he has been too busy supporting Cristina to realize that she also went through a trauma, which is why she is sympathetic to the wife in the waiting room; she states that being the wife in the waiting room was difficult and that she asked the shooter to kill her instead of Derek. Derek and Meredith reconcile and Derek tells Meredith that Cristina is in OR 1. Soon after the surgery Cristina is assisting on is over, Meredith and Cristina reconcile and become friends again.

In "Start Me Up" a first year medical student shadows Meredith for the day; which annoys her. She later receives a poor performance review from the student and becomes down over her perceived decline in work performance. She is at first barred from assisting Derek on his Alzheimer's clinical trial but is later chosen after Derek realizes how invaluable her experiences with the disease are. She is offered to continue her mother's work on diabetes in the form of a clinical trial offer from the Chief. However, she turns it down to remain on the Alzheimer's trial, stating that she only wants to cure her mother's disease.

External links

• Grey's Anatomy at ABC.com