Plenty going on this week at Seattle Grace. Let's break it down by story line:

Derek and the Chief

The board has appointed Derek interim Chief. They've presented Webber with a choice: either quit and walk away, surrendering your medical license, or go to rehab and come back to your job.

Richard is so angry at Derek, that's making this emotional choice even harder.

Derek's understandably nervous about the new gig and his initial speech to the staff is terrible. His screaming match with Richard that everyone ends up hearing is even worse.

Meanwhile, Dr. Bailey's patient wakes up on the table during surgery, and is confronted with Bailey yelling at the anesthesiologist and Meredith trying to soothe her back to sleep.

Consequently, the utterly traumatized patient doesn't want Bailey anywhere near her when she wakes up, and when she requires another surgery she insists that Meredith do it.

Bailey unloads on anesthesiologist, who came from Mercy West and who she doesn't hesitate to accuse of negligence. However, it turns out that the patient has a condition that allows her to metabolize the anesthetic faster than normal.

There's no way he could have known, in other words. Forced to apologize, or close to it, Bailey and the new guy bond. That should be interesting.

After successfully mentoring Meredith through the surgery, she counsels Derek to do apologize to the patient, and to the staff. It's what Richard would do.

Which he does, insisting that he wants to honor the legacy of Richard and start freshm which means hiring back some of the laid-off staff.

The Chief goes to rehab.

Arizona and Alex

Arizona's working with Alex on teenage boy with intermittent stomach pain. His unsympathetic dad thinks he's just faking it, and they end up doing exploratory surgery to try to figure out what's wrong.

Alex stands up for the boy and for the doctors. While the kid is in intensive care, his father lays into Alex about how much this is costing him when he starts bleeding hugely from his chest tube.

Teddy gets called into surgery and ultimately they save the day. Alex berates the father until Arizona pulls him away and counsels him to knock it off.

But all in all, Alex earned Arizona's respect with passion and commitment to the peds rotation, and it looks like that partnership will continue.

Cristina and Owen

Intense week on the Owenstina front. A hot one! They're intimate all over the place to the point where Cristina ends up with burns from a session in the boiler room.

Teddy decides to use Avery on her service rather than Cristina, except for when she really needs her in the kid's surgery. Then she pages Yang. Uh oh. Crunch time.

Owen's urges her not to leave him, and Cristina uncharacteristically ignores her page. Later, Teddy berates her for ignoring her page. Owen tries to help, but it's no use.

She accuses him of trying to subdue and control her with sex, and he despairs that she doesn't give any of herself to him, so he can't know her.

He didn't know, for example, about her engagement to Burke until it came out in a conversation with Derek and Mark.

She insists that Burke isn't relevant to their relationship, and finally breaks down and explains that that relationship took pieces of her away, slowly but surely.

She's terrified it'll happen again, just as she's getting herself back, and confesses that when he made her not answer the page, he took a piece of her away.

Lexie and Mark

He's still upset she slept with Alex after breaking up with him ... even though he was with Addison.

She tries to talk to him, he ignores her. In frustration she turned to Callie and explained her side.

Callie talked to Mark and he warned her not to take Lexie's side, and so it goes. It is complicated.

Lexie got incredibly upset when she ended up having to be on an elevator with Mark.

Mark's venting over the situation brought no sympathy from Derek, for obvious reasons. The best part was the shot of Mark in bed with Callie and Arizona, a la George lying with Meredith and Izzie.