On Thursday’s Grey’s Anatomy episode called Fight the Power, Bailey has a tough time when she finds out Silver Villas, her parents’ assisted living facility, has been struck by a COVID-19 surge.
Miranda takes center stage during the hit ABC show’s Season 17 Episode 5 when Ben brings her mother Elena into Grey Sloan Memorial. The very sick woman, who is delirious, happens to be one of the senior citizens hit by the pandemic. Not only that, but she also suffers from dementia.
Bailey tried to get both her mom and dad out of their place of retirement when she heard about how bad it had been hit by COVID-19. Sadly, before her husband could rescue both parents, her mother was already ill.
That meant her husband of 60 years was left to go to Bailey’s hotel to stay since his daughter does not want him to risk getting the coronavirus, too.
Bailey joins Meredith in her room on Grey’s Anatomy
Before her mom arrives, Miranda visits Meredith, who is in a coma.
She confides in her colleague about her mother’s condition, knowing she probably can’t hear her. Apparently, this is a way for Bailey to voice what’s on her mind.
Actually, the two appear in another COVID-driven dream on Meredith’s beach.
There, Miranda tells her friend that her mother has Alzheimer’s, the same disease Mer’s mother suffered. Apparently, this was a confidence she had not previously shared with her or Richard. At the time Bailey found out about the diagnosis, she didn’t want to cause them pain.
“It’s difficult to talk about with someone who hasn’t been there, been through it. Nobody understands that you are watching your own mother die twice,” Miranda tells Meredith.
Miranda is hard on herself on Grey’s Anatomy
Sadly, Bailey blames herself for her mom’s current condition.
After all, she arranged for her parents to move to the retirement facility in Seattle. This happened because her mother was starting to become forgetful, and she wanted to help but that was only possible if they relocated to the city where their daughter lives and works.
Now Miranda believes it would have been best if she hadn’t influenced that move. If they didn’t live where they did, the couple could have been together in this own home in a quarantined situation that would have saved her mom from contracting COVID.
Bailey also talks to Maggie about her mom’s condition. She talks about her shame with regard to enticing her parents’ move to Seattle. Maggie tells her colleague that she should not feel guilty. It isn’t her fault that her mother contracted the horrible virus. She also tells Miranda she has provided her mom with the benefit of a dignified death.
One very poignant moment during the Grey’s Anatomy Fight the Power episode occurs when Bailey’s mom experiences a bit of lucidity as her organs fail. After Miranda tells her mom she can go, her mother responds by saying she is not ready to pass away.
Finally, Bailey spends quality time with 84-year-old Elena.
In tears, she soothes her dying mom by singing an old favorite: The Temptations’ hit, My Girl. That’s when the woman — who raised such a spunky daughter who became a surgeon despite all odds — ultimately slipped away from this life.
Grey’s Anatomy airs Thursdays at 9/8c on ABC.