Grey’s Anatomy is almost always devastating, but tonight’s episode was on another level.
As Koracick (Greg Germann) and Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) continued to deal with their own bouts of COVID-19, Bailey (Chandra Wilson) discovered that her mother’s care facility had a huge outbreak and her mother was extremely sick. So sick, in fact, that she wasn’t going to make it a day in the hospital.
Bailey had been quiet about the fact that her mother had Alzheimer’s to keep from bringing up bad memories for Meredith or Richard (James Pickens Jr.), but the fact that her mother was dying without even knowing what was happening was really hard on her. She tried talking to a sleeping Meredith (and Meredith tried to talk back on the beach) and she really let loose with Maggie (Kelly McCreary) about their Black mothers and watching them die.
Richard and Jackson (Jesse Wiliams) also pointed out to each other that they were seeing a huge proportion of Black and brown patients dying of coronavirus, and as Bailey said goodbye to her mother, she started reading out names in voiceover. The episode then ended with a long, long list of names on screen.