When Season 21, Episode 7, “If You Leave,” opens, only the audience knows that Mika and Chloe Yasuda have been in a car accident. At the intern house, Benson “Blue” Kwan is looking for a matching sock, searching Simone Griffith’s room first, much to her annoyance- and then heading for Yasuda’s room. He opens the door to wake her, but her bed is empty. Blue tries calling, but there is no answer. Yasuda and Chloe are still being pulled from the accident.
In a different part of town, Levi Schmitt and his boyfriend, James, are spending the morning in bed together. It’s Schmitt’s last day at Grey Sloan Memorial, and both of them are already worried about his move to San Antonio, Texas. They have some plans to make long-distance work, but will it?
At Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, Teddy Altman tries to talk to Owen Hunt about what she told him at the end of Season 21, Episode 6, “Night Moves” — that Cass Beckman kissed her — but he’s not interested in listening. At the same time, Lucas Adams is getting started on his shift and wants to know if Ben Warren wants to help him start up the hospital’s softball team again. Richard Webber catches wind, but before they can get into much conversation, a trauma comes in. Miranda Bailey is on her way out and manages to catch Ben Warren so that they can talk about their kids. As she’s leaving, the ambulances with Chloe and Mika arrive. Webber recognizes Chloe, and once Bailey hears that Mika is one of the patients, she decides she isn’t going anywhere.
The Team at Grey Sloan Works on One of Their Own
Inside the hospital, Adams is the only intern who is on shift and though he wants to stay with Yasuda, Bailey tells him that he can’t. Mika, still awake but fading, asks him to take care of Chloe, so he heads to the other trauma room. Adams has to argue with Webber to get let on the case, but finally, he’s allowed to stay, not that he’ll be allowed to do much. When he is finally tasked with something, he runs into Simone, Blue, and Jules Millin, who have arrived looking for Mika. They head for the trauma room, but Bailey kicks them out. When Jules tries to start putting on a gown, Blue and Simone have to pull her away from Mika, dragging her around the corner so that she can watch through the window.
Things for the Yasuda women are not looking great pretty quickly — Chloe has acute compartment syndrome in both legs, and she just had chemotherapy, so they have to keep an eye on her kidneys. Mika is in hemorrhagic shock, and her liver herniated into her chest. While Warren and Atticus “Link” Lincoln are performing bilateral fasciotomies on Chloe and Mika is being rushed to the OR, Bailey takes Jules, Simone, and Blue out to the ambulance bay to update them. She tells them what is happening and promises that they will try to update them when possible — they all love Mika, so they are going to do everything they can.
When Bailey heads back inside, Jules starts to panic and blame herself. Mika was helping her when she should have been sleeping, and she was the one who told Ndugu that Mika should be in the surgery instead of her. Jules starts to spiral, talking about how if Mika hadn’t been on the road when she was, none of this would have happened. Blue tries to calm her down and tells her she can’t take on that guilt, but she thinks he’s being insensitive and storms off.
Simone goes after Jules and, while she’s searching for her, runs into Adams in the stairwell. Neither of them are doing well, but they seem to be having pretty different reactions. Simone is focused on finding Millin, but Adams seems worried about watching over Chloe. Could this pose problems for them in the future?
In the scrub room outside Mika’s OR, Altman and Hunt are scrubbing in when Altman drops the soap she’s using into the sink. Her hands are shaking, which Hunt notices, asking her what’s wrong. Altman starts to talk about when she caught Mika eating a doughnut out of the trash — Season 19, Episode 13, “Cowgirls Don’t Cry” — and how she yelled at her even though she didn’t deserve it, and Hunt tells her that he’s sure Mika forgave her. Teddy apologizes for what happened with Cass, but Hunt dismisses her, telling her not to think about it. Then he makes her look at him. “We can do this,” he says, and she echoes it back. They’re ready.
Warren and Adams are getting Chloe’s scans done before surgery, and Adams starts talking about Mika. “You know, Yasuda, she’s the glue of our class. Somehow, she manages to be best friends with everybody.” Warren agrees, says he understood her right away. Adams tells him a story about living with Yasuda, saying that he thought there was an earthquake, but “it was just Yasuda pumping herself up for the night shift.” Warren reminds him that it’s hard to be a doctor when he cares for the patient, hinting that Adams shouldn’t be too hard on himself. Moments later, Link and Webber walk in to look over Chloe’s scans. It’s time to prep her for surgery.
Down in the basement, Simone finds Jules sitting on the same bed where she and Mika nearly kissed back in Season 20, Episode 8, “Blood, Sweat and Tears.” They argue at first, with Simone trying to remind Jules that she isn’t the only one who is friends with Mika, that they’re all having a hard time, and then Jules finally tells her that she and Mika are more than just friends. There isn’t really a label — it’s “complicated” — but they’re definitely more than friends. Simone takes Jules up to the nursery to look at the newborn babies which doesn’t really work until Simone makes Jules sit down in one of the rocking chairs. “It’s like sitting into a hug,” Jules says, before finally beginning to relax. Jules tells Simone about her and Mika, and it seems to ease both of their minds, if only for a little.
Back in Mika’s OR, things aren’t going super well. She’s bleeding too much, and the four surgeons working on her — Altman, Hunt, Ndugu, and Bailey — can’t seem to agree on what to do about her liver. Bailey finally takes over and decides they’ll pack her body, run a full body scan, and then give her body some time to rest in the ICU while they figure out what to do next.
Once Mika is settled in the surgical ICU, Blue comes in to sit with her, giving Altman a chance to take a break. “You mess up the laundry again,” he tells Mika. “I don’t have a single clean sock.” As he sits down next to her bed, he promises to do all her laundry for as long as they live together if she pulls through and then, with tears in his eyes, reaches for her hand and says, “You’re a terrible roommate.” It’s clear from every interaction with or about Mika that everyone at Grey Sloan really loves her.
Ndugu finds Bailey in a different part of the hospital, on a treadmill. She’s trying to get an idea, so he joins her and shares about how much talent he thinks Yasuda has. As they talk about teaching, Bailey finally figures out what they can do, but she has to get everyone to buy in. She and Ndugu find Altman and Hunt, and Bailey tells them that they should take out all but the good 25% of Mika’s liver and then, to give the remaining part of the liver its best chance, remove Mika’s spleen and connect the liver where the spleen used to be. It’s a long shot, but it’s their only option.
Just as they are getting started, Adams runs into the OR from Chloe’s surgery. They need a vascular surgeon for Chloe, which is either Altman or Ndugu. Altman offers to go and leaves the OR, but Adams seems frozen. He can’t stop looking at Mika lying on the table, and when he finally does, he has to stop to vomit in a trash can on his way back to Chloe’s OR.
For the next several minutes, the Yasuda sisters are operated on at the same time. Link, Webber, Altman, and Warren work on Chloe’s legs while Bailey, Hunt, and Ndugu operate on Mika. Adams remains in Chloe’s OR, while Jules, Blue, and Simone sit in the waiting room, Schmitt bringing them coffee and sitting down with them.
Chloe’s surgery is successful, and so is Mika’s — at least, they hope so. Bailey finds the other interns talking about Mika and tells them that she’s stable and in the ICU, and all they can do is “wait and see.” When she is settled in the ICU, all four of her friends gather in her room to sit with her, but they aren’t there for very long. A code blue is called from a room down the hall. It’s Chloe.
Adams, Blue, and Simone jump into action, trying to save Chloe. Jules remains somewhat frozen, standing on the edge of the room, which is where she is when Link and Warren finally arrive. Adams has been doing CPR for 40 minutes, but it’s no use. Chloe’s potassium spiked, and she went into VFib, and there’s nothing they can do. When Adams stops and calls the time of death, Jules loses it. She jumps in, trying to start compressions again, and Blue has to stop her, telling her that Chloe is gone. Jules races out of the room, distraught.
Down in the ER, Altman finds Hunt so that they can go home. She tells him that Yasuda is stable and that the interns are with her, and then they both try to talk at the same time. Altman tells Hunt to go first, and he finally says the thing he has needed to say all day. “I overreacted. It was a mistake, and you told me right away. You did nothing wrong.” Altman tells him that she’s still sorry and that she would never want to cause him any pain, but he knows that. He picks up her bag and reaches for her, and they leave the hospital together.
Up in the attending’s breakroom, Warren brings Chloe’s personal belongings to Bailey, who is devastated to learn that Chloe didn’t make it. He tries to hug her, but she backs away. She knows that if he hugs her, she’ll cry, and she cannot cry. He asks if she’s going to stay the night, and she says she is, apologizing for not being with him and the kids, but he doesn’t care about that. He knows Mika needs her. Bailey tells him to give the kids whatever they want for breakfast. “You make something good happen, Ben Warren,” she says. “I need something good to happen.” They understand and support each other so well, especially in stressful times. Bailey and Warren are truly one of Grey’s Anatomy‘s best couples.
Outside, Simone finds Adams, who is taking Chloe’s death hard. Mika asked him to take care of Chloe, but he was the one who couldn’t revive her, and he was the one who called time of death. Simone tries to comfort him and tells him that it isn’t his fault, but he leaves, not able to handle the conversation.
Later that night, Bailey finds the interns with Mika and tells them that it “could be days before she wakes up” and that she’ll call if anything changes. Bailey sits down next to Mika after they leave, and the next several minutes show several days sped up. Eventually, they take out Mika’s breathing tube, leaving her simply on oxygen. When she wakes up, Bailey is the only one in the room, so it’s Bailey who tells Mika that her surgery went well, and it’s Bailey who tells Mika that Chloe didn’t make it. The final seconds of “If You Leave” can only be described as devastating as Mika weeps over the loss of her sister.
Grey’s Anatomy Says Goodbye to Levi Schmitt
Though fans have known it was coming since before Season 21 began, that doesn’t make Levi Schmitt’s departure any easier to deal with. Throughout the episode, interspersed throughout the team caring for the Yasuda sisters, Schmitt and Jo Wilson take care of a baby in the NICU who is supposed to be graduating from the NICU but begins to turn blue while doing her car seat test.
Schmitt intubates the baby and then discovers she has fluid around her heart. When he has to perform a procedure to remove the fluid, he sings “You Are My Sunshine” to the baby, perfectly performing a very precise procedure on such a tiny human. Wilson reminds him of the time his glasses fell into a patient’s abdomen, which Schmitt does not want to relive, and then tells him that he has come a long way.
Outside of working on the baby, Schmitt has a couple of conversations with Wilson about trying to have a long-distance relationship with James. Eventually, he goes to James and asks him to move to Texas with him. James seems unsure, and Schmitt tells him to take his time — he doesn’t have to answer right then or even before Schmitt leaves. “I’m falling in love with you,” Schmitt says and asks James to think about it.
Wilson and Schmitt have several important conversations throughout the episode, including one where Schmitt tells Wilson that he doesn’t know what he would have done without her. Then, while Schmitt is waiting in the lobby for James, Wilson finally tells him how much he means to her. “Getting drunk and sleeping with you was the best mistake I ever made,” she says, continuing on to tell him that he is always there when she needs him, and she’s really going to miss that. Then Wilson asks him to be the godfather to her babies.
“You walk through life with this giant, open heart.” Wilson says. “I want you in my kid’s lives. I want you to teach them to be gentle and warm-hearted. And all that Star Wars stuff.” Schmitt jokes that he doesn’t even know if he can be their godfather because he’s Jewish, but Wilson tells him to just say yes, so he does. It’s a beautiful ending for their friendship, which has been one of the best ones built by the show.
Outside, Schmitt is unlocking his bike and looks up at the hospital. There is a quick montage of some of Schmitt’s greatest moments, and it perfectly encompasses his time at the hospital. As he finally unlocks his bike, James comes running down the stairs, apologizing for not meeting him in the lobby. Schmitt starts to tell him that it’s okay, that he made a big ask, but James stops him. He wasn’t in the lobby because he was resigning from his job. “You still want me to go to Texas with you, right?”
Seeing Schmitt end up in a positive relationship and on his way to a great career was an excellent ending for the character — something audiences don’t always get on Grey’s Anatomy. And while Mika Yasuda appears to be in the next episode — Season 21, Episode 8, “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” the Fall finale — it’s likely she won’t return after the hiatus. Either way, it appears that both of these departing characters will be treated to a satisfying ending, as promised.
