[opening voice over] 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.
“The Distance” · Season 11, Episode 14
In this episode: Amelia Shepherd (4), Richard Webber (2), Arizona Robbins (1)
Stop it right now! You're right, Dr. Bailey. I am not Dr. Herman. I am Dr. Robbins and I am the fetal surgeon here. And I have chosen to do this procedure and there was a point at which you could no longer be on board, but that point is long gone. I'm in the middle of a woman's uterus and any slip I might make could result in catastrophic blood loss. And if I slip, it will be because you were screaming in my ear and not because I don't know what I'm doing. You either need to get on board and shut up or you need to get the hell out.
Dr. Shepherd.
Dr. Webber. What do you need?
I thought I could help, maybe be a sounding board. We could work through whatever it is you're stuck on.
Kill the intercom, please. Dr. Webber, step over here, please. Edwards, would you mind taking a step back? (to Webber) You can be a big help. I need you to call my brother, tell him he needs to get on a plane. He's in DC, so if he goes now, he can be here in what, six hours, seven?
I'm not sure that's the best idea.
I am in over my head. I made a mistake. I took on an impossible task and my hubris is going to kill her. Please. Get him on the phone. Get him on a plane. Get him here. Now.
You have it in your head that he's better than you, but it isn't true. I've seen him standing exactly where you are now, staring at an impossible spinal tumor, terrified, unsure where to go next.
I know that tumor. They've got it hanging on their bedroom wall. Not the actual tumor.
He found a way.
Yes. Which is why I need him here.
Shepherd, I can tell you right now what would happen if I called your brother. He would hop on a plane and seven or eight hours from now, if she hadn't already herniated, Derek would come in here and he would take this surgery, your surgery, away from you and then he would kill her because this is your plan.
[ending voice over] 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.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Grey's Anatomy pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.