The merging of the Seattle Grace and Mercy West hospitals has been hard on the entire staff. Everyone is frantic to save their jobs by working as hard and as often as possible to convince Chief Webber (James Pickens, Jr.) to keep them.

The interns are especially stressed since they are considered to be at the bottom of the proverbial food chain. In the last episode the Mercy Grace interns arrived on the scene in their orange scrubs and their unique medical skills. The Seattle Grace interns declared war on the interlopers and both sides aggressively competed for every patient to secure superiority in the hospital.

Episode 6 opens with both teams of interns sitting outside a conference room like they’re waiting to chat with the principal smoking in the bathroom. Something bad happened in the emergency room and Chief Webber wants to find out who is responsible and he’ll have to get an account from every intern about what went down that evening. Will the various points of view mean the end of the road for one doctor or several doctors?

The flashback opens on a seemingly ordinary day. Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) is ready to be discharged by Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) after recovering from her partial liver transplant to her estranged alcoholic father. Dr. Christina Yang (Sandra Oh) is also ready for Meredith to be discharged by Dr. Bailey. With the “Mercy Westers” trying to take over Christina needs Meredith back to tip the scales especially with Izzie (Katherine Heigl) out of the picture. Now clad in Seattle Grace blue scrubs the Mercy Westers are poised to rule Seattle Grace.

Before Dr. Bailey can get to Meredith her pager goes off as does the pagers of everyone else. The dull day gets a jolt of excitement as victims from a motel fire are wheeled in by the EMTs.

As the gurneys come strolling in the interns scurry around the E/R to get the “good” cases. The featured patients are a mother and son, a severely burned young man, a firefighter with some kind of head injury (I think) and another firefighter with an axe dug into his chest.

Even when all the interns’ stories are put together the scenario is still a mess. Dr. Charles Denman (Robert Baker) tries to assist Dr. Bailey with the axe victim but since he didn’t completely recover from his recent blood donation about five minutes prior to the emergency Dr. Denman faints to the floor with the axe in his clutches. Dr. Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh) helps Dr. Bailey put pressure on the newly exposed and very bloody wound while Dr. Alex Karev (Justin Chambers) is ordered to help Dr. Denman.

Before I continue I need to point out the main Mercy West characters in this tale that were also featured in last week’s episode. This week I was able to match the names with the faces. There’s Charles who is already in the lead to be the new resident “a-hole” (sorry but “jerk” would’ve only covered half of his personality) on the team. It was his shenanigans last week that made Izzie ticked off and helped get her fired. Dr. Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams) is the caramel skinned nice guy with a calm demeanor and gorgeous eyes. The fiery redhead is Dr. Reed Adamson (Nora Zehetner) who has a steely competitive streak similar to Christina’s but she has the warmth that Christina lacks. And who could forget Dr. April Kepner (Sarah Drew) after Lexie bested her by stealing her sacred diary of deep thoughts. Now you know the newbies. Let’s continue.

Lexie bops from one patient to another assisting where she can. Her ultimate challenge comes in the form of a horribly burned survivor. Her boyfriend, Dr. Mark Sloan (Eric Dane), invites her on the case along with Dr. Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw). Dr. Robbins encourages Lexie to keep things light and peppy to help the patient take his mind off his searing pain but Lexie can’t keep back the tears as the young man cries out in agony. Dr. Robbins boots Lexie out of the room so she can collect herself.

Reed is thrilled to be saddled with a little boy while April treats his mother. The two examine their less injured patients while moping over the more extreme cases they’re missing out on. As the rainy night rolls along the face of the stabilized mother turns blue, all of a sudden, and the doctors take turns trying to save her. Despite their efforts the mother bleeds out and dies. Dr. Derek Shephard (Patrick Dempsey) enters the room and asks for someone to call the time of death but no one claims the patient. Hence the students waiting outside the principal’s office to give their account of what he or she saw to set the record straight and save their jobs.

The culprit, at first, appears to be Alex. In more than one account it was revealed that Alex had also gone to the hospital blood center to donate along with Charles. He, too, abruptly left the donating room like Charles did to assist in the big emergency. Alex was also found guilty of being terribly distracted because he was on his cell phone with Izzie. He then rushes over to the patient to cut a little hole in her throat to make an alternate passage way for the breathing tube. When the blood gets into the tube and the mother’s status declines soon after that then all eyes are on Alex.

Ironically, Reed is the one who inadvertently saves Alex’s butt and the butts of the other interns. Reed gets a flash of memory back to when she and April were examining their patients. While they were ogling the guy with the axe in his chest April forgot to check the mother’s throat for soot inhalation. This led to all the calamities the patient experienced. Alex’s throat cut wasn’t at fault nor was Lexie’s wrapping of the patient’s burnt leg or Christina’s prescription of morphine for the patient’s pain. Alex is additionally exonerated when it’s revealed that he left the donation room before the nurse could stick the needle in his arm.

April is then called into the room with Chief Webber and two members of the hospital board. As Chief Webber helps to jog her memory April comes to the same conclusion Reed did; she forgot to check inside the woman’s throat. With that admission April is asked to leave Seattle Grace hospital.

As the other interns breathe a collective sigh of relief Reed is sad and worried about April as they watch the disgraced doctor head out into the rain and the dark. Meanwhile, Derek shares with Chief Webber that even though April was fired it didn’t exonerate the other interns. Derek walked into a room of about six doctors working frantically on one patient and when the patient died none of them could claim her or would claim her. Derek laid the responsibility at Chief Webber’s feet and left to escort his wife, Meredith, out of the hospital.

This could be the turning point that forces the squabbling interns to put aside their childish color war and focus on being healers. What happened to that woman was a result of the negligence from both the Seattle Grace and Mercy West doctors. They learned that it doesn’t matter where they came from. If an intern screws up royally he /she will be shown the door.

I’m really enjoying the Mercy Westers. These guys are a lot more exciting than those fledglings they brought in last season to follow Christina and Izzie around. Reed is intriguing. I can see her becoming an unlikely buddy for Christina or a new interest for Alex.

Though Alex is still a butthead at times he has matured a lot since Season 1 and “McSteamy” is all monogamous now so I’m kinda grateful for Charles. I miss having a complete pain in the hiney around Seattle Grace and Charles looks like the prime candidate to fill that position. At this point, Jackson has proven that he’s not afraid to get physical. He tackled a guy in Episode 5 and almost went to blows with Alex in Episode 6. I look forward to learning more about his character if he’s around long enough for Shonda Rimes (series creator and writer) to flesh him out. For now, he’s really, really nice to look at.

Alex eventually got through to Izzie but she is not ready to come back yet and, yes, it sounded like she partially blames Alex for her dismissal. All she knows is that Alex talked to The Chief but she doesn’t know that he was sticking up for her not putting her down. Izzie is the force that helped Alex to come out of his steel shell. With Izzie gone for who knows how long Alex will probably revert back to his cro-magnon ways. Will the rest of the cliché play out to involve Alex in a post-Izzie affair?

What was most amazing about Episode 6 was how virtually all the interns treated that woman. April did the basic check-up, Lexie wrapped her leg, Christina ordered her morphine, Jackson punched a hole in her chest, Alex cut a hole in her throat and then everyone was in the room trying to stop her from bleeding out. They just kept passing her chart around like a hot potato and when she croaked it was like no one knew her. Even in their individual meetings the doctors talked about the woman like she was a ghost or someone else’s problem they quickly tried to fix so they could move on to more important things. One of the lowest professional points for the Seattle Grace crew I’ve ever witnessed.

Notable guest stars included Bill Fagerbakke (Coach, Spongebob Squarepants, Jennifer’s Body) as the fireman with the head injury and Mitch Pileggi (The X-Files, Stargate: Atlantis, Sons of Anarchy) returning as Seattle Grace boardmember, Larry Jennings.

Next week will focus on Derek (aka McDreamy) as he agrees to operate on an inoperable tumor. Remember last season when Derek had that career breakdown and spent a bunch of time in his woodland trailer getting hammered to dull the pain of all the patients he’s lost on the operating table? Well, get ready to return to Derek’s dark place as he begins to freak out again over a difficult surgery.