The Inner Voice of Meredith Grey

Why do we even try, when the barriers are so high and the odds are so low? Why don't we just pack it in and go home? It'd be so, so much easier. It's because in the end there's no glory in easy. No one remembers easy. They remember the blood, and the bones, and the long agonizing fight to the top. And that is how you become legendary.

In 1888, William Williams Keen became one of the first surgeons to successfully remove a brain tumor. A big win. It's true. You can look it up. What's harder to find, however, are stories of all the times old Double Billy K tried to pull a tumor out of a brain and lost. The losses must have happened. A surgeon must always be prepared to lose. And in neurosurgery, with the big tumors. We lose those battles as often as we succeed. The key, though, win or lose, is to never fail. And the only way to fail is not to fight. So you fight until you can't fight anymore. Hold up your head and enter the arena and face the enemy. Fight until you can't fight anymore. Never let go. Never give up. Never run. Never surrender. Fight the good fight. Even when it seems inevitable that you're about to go down swinging.

I never placed much value in wondering about an afterlife. My concern was always this life. What would I do with it? How would I make my mark? I wanted to break new ground. I wanted to leave a legacy. I wanted my life, my brain, my existence to mean something. The thing I never really thought about though, the thing I never really wrapped my brain around until now was, in order to be remembered, in order to leave something significant behind, you have to leave.

I don't like questions without any answers. Like, where do we go when we die? I mean, I know what happens physiologically speaking, but beyond that, what really happens? Anything? That's what you start asking yourself when you live on a clock. All these questions without any answers. They drive you nuts. That's why I like what I do. Fixing babies. Birthing babies. No ambiguity there. No questions, just answers. Clear, precise, obvious answers. And life, beautiful, new life. Hope for the future. God, I miss that.

t's scary to reveal everything about ourselves. Fear makes us hold ourselves back. Is that so wrong? Maybe. Probably. But still. It helps to be a little sneaky, a little protective. It's not safe to just blurt out all of your secrets. We can't just lay all the truth out there. Expose ourselves to God and everybody. 'Cause once the truth is out, we have to face it ourselves.

Everybody has something to hide. We can't just expose all our secrets to the world. That's how we get hurt. That's how we risk hurting other people. We have to decide how much we let out and keep the truth to ourselves.

We can't get too close. If we felt even little of the joy and the hopes that our patients are saying goodbye to, we'd never be able to function. So we say, 'We're sorry for your loss.' and we hope it offers something. Some little bit of support. Some bit of peace. Some bit of closure. Something good. Some little piece of beauty in the midst of some place dark. An unexpected gift, just when it's needed most.

There's a thing we say when someone dies. We say it to the patients's family. We say, 'I'm sorry for your loss.' It's a pat little phrase and an empty one. It doesn't begin to cover what's actually happening to them. It lets us empathize without forcing us to feel their devastation ourselves. It protects us from feeling that pain, that dark, sinking, relentless pain. The kind that can eat you alive. And every day, I thank God for that.

The last true hermit was found and dragged out of hiding and into the world. Most might find his existence sad but the hermit knew something we didn't. He knew that when it comes down to it, even when you’re with someone or in the noisy rush of people, it’s just you. The one you can count on and lean on and depend on. It has to be you and once you figure that out, being alone becomes a choice.

They found this guy in Maine who had been living completely alone in the woods for 30 years, they called him the last true hermit. 30 years without the warmth of human touch, without conversation. The hermit felt more lonely when he was out in the world than he ever felt in the woods by himself. Surrounded by people but drowning in solitude.

When shock wears off, when the body can accept that a trauma has happened, when it can let down its defenses, it's a scary moment. It's vulnerable. The shock response had protected us, and it just might have saved us.

When exposed to trauma, the body deploys its own defence system. From the first second the brain receives the signal that a catastrophe has happened, the blood rushes to the organs that need help the most. Blood floods into the muscles, the lungs, the heart, the brain. The brain makes a decision for the rest of the body. Either face the danger or run away. It's a mechanism designed to protect the body from harm. From knowing that what has happened might be irreparable, we call it 'shock'.

Nobody's memory is perfect or complete. We jumble things up. We lose track of time. We are in one place... then another and it all feels like one long, inescapable moment. So, what does it mean? What do we take away? Which pieces will haunt us? Hurt us? End us? Inspire us? It's just like my mother used to say, the carousel never stops turning. You can't get off.

Nobody's memory is perfect or complete. We jumble things up. We lose track of time. We're in one place, then another, and it all feels like one long, inescapable moment. It's just like my mother used to say: the carousel never stops turning.

It's hard to give second chances. It's even harder to ask for them. A chance to do it again, knowing what you know now, what you've learned. A chance to do it completely differently. A chance to right our wrongs, to try and correct our mistakes. A chance to try and start over, from scratch.

They say life doesn't give you second chances. But we do. Surgeons do. You break a bone, we put it back together. You bleed, we make it stop. You flatline, we resuscitate you. But as much as we give people second chances, surgeons don't usually get them, because the kind of mistakes we make, are sometimes impossible to recover from.

The ABCs of trauma are a handy tool for keeping a patient alive, but they're only a starting point. Once the patient's airway, breathing, and circulation are all clear and accounted for, the real work begins. The messy work. There's no telling how long it's gonna take to clean up that chaos once you've begun, because sometimes, you don't know what you're in for. You don't know exactly what you're about to face. You don't know what secrets the body in front of you holds and whether, by the time it's all over, if there's anything left worth saving.