Meredith Grey woke up next to a guy named Derek. And she promptly said
good-bye to him, presumably for good, as she went off for her first day
of work as a surgical intern at Seattle Grace Hospital. Meredith, along
with fellow interns Cristina Yang, Izzie Stevens, and George O'Malley,
all get assigned to surgical resident Dr. Miranda Bailey, but they
would all come to know her as "The Nazi" (for her abrasive treatment of
interns).
Meredith's first patient, a teenage beauty pageant contestant, recently
began suffering from seizures so severe they threatened her life. As a
neurological disorder that might need surgery, a neurosurgeon new to
Seattle Grace gets put on the case to work with Meredith. That
neurosurgeon is none other than Dr. Derek Shepherd, Meredith's would-be
one-night-stand. Derek wants to talk to Meredith about the previous
night, but Meredith wants none of that. He's an attending, she's an
intern, that's what their relationship should be.
Meredith forms an immediate bond with Cristina that gets quickly tested
when Derek chooses Meredith over Cristina to scrub in on brain surgery
(it would've been a first for either of them). Izzie is assigned to do
rectal exams amidst frustrating bouts of deciding when it's appropriate
or not to bother Bailey. And George gets selected by the arrogant Dr.
Preston Burke to actually perform a surgery - an honor he allegedly
bestows on the intern who shows the most promise, but in actuality is
for the intern he just wants to torture and make an example of in front
of the others. George freezes up during an appendectomy with Burke and
gets branded "007" - license to kill - by a fellow intern that rubs
everyone the wrong way - Alex Karev. Alex also insults Meredith, but he
gets his comeuppance when she is able to offer a proper diagnosis for
one of Alex's patients in front of Dr. Richard Webber, Chief of Surgery
at Seattle Grace.
Dr. Webber, by the way, turns out to be a friend of Meredith's mother,
the famous Dr. Ellis Grey (whom all the interns hold in the highest
regard). We get the impression that the relationship between Meredith
and Ellis wasn't the best - Ellis didn't think Meredith had what it
takes to go to medical school -- but no one, save for Meredith, knows
that early onset Alzheimer's Disease has left her a shell of the person
shell of the person she once was, relegating her now to a nursing home.
