Warning: Spoilers ahead!

The plane crashed. Friends and co-workers died. The survivors were forever scarred. And opening the third episode of Season 9, lawyers sat around a board room table, offering a cash settlement on the condition that the decision must be unanimous.

“It will allow you to put your painful time behind you and get on with your lives,” one of the lawyers says. The financial incentive is huge, but the doctors are torn.

“Should we settle?” Derek asks Meredith as they’re getting ready for bed.

“Should we not settle?” Meredith asks him back.

But then they have to sleep with the lights on and it’s clear the emotional trauma is still far from over.

Beyond the settlement plotline…

Cristina tries to find her feet in Minnesota and ends up finding unexpected common ground with Dr. Thomas, the surgeon she is paired with (and he hands her a hankie at the end of the episode in a gesture that made my eyes fill!).

April returns (much to Jackson’s surprise!) and though she claims to be praying up a storm and “re-virginizing,” the chemistry between her and Jackson is too much for the two of them to bear. Holy smoochfest! Oh la la!

Alex hits on one of the new residents (surprise, surprise) only to get the funniest smack down from Callie:

“I like chicks with boys’ names,” Alex says about his new resident, Jo.

“Stop sleeping with your co-workers, it ruins them,” Callie warns him.

“I slept with you,” he says.

“And now I no longer sleep with men!” she retorts. Zing!

But it wasn’t all Karev comebacks for Callie’s character.

Callie’s storyline with Arizona is hands down the most heart breaking of all. Arizona shudders at Callie’s touch, throwing things at home nurses and refusing totalk, blaming her amputation on her wife.

When Callie arrives home to find her on the floor of the bathroom, having been unable to get to the toilet on her own, she lifts Arizona, defiant and blazingly angry, into the shower in one of the most moving scenes I’ve seen on the show.

“There is nowhere else to go,” Callie sobs under the stream of water, still holding on to Arizona. “This is my life, too!”

Back to the settlement

The question of the settlement returns. At first, Meredith and Derek talk about using the money to start travelling, and Callie wants the money to pay for

Arizona’s rehab and help pay for Mark’s little girl. But

Derek holds out on agreeing to the money and convinces a guy to let him into the hangar where they keep the wreckage.

The resolve on his face is clear as he deals with flashbacks to the crash.

“We just can’t stand by and let this happen to other peoples’ Lexies and Marks,” he says.

And the rest of the doctors agree.

They won’t take the money.

Let the investigation begin…

“Grey's Anatomy” airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on CTV. Full episodes are also available online at CTV.ca.

About Lindsay Zier-Vogel

Lindsay Zier-Vogel has been working for CTV.ca since 2008. Lindsay’s highlights include interviewing the famed American choreographer Bill T. Jones and Canadian prima ballerina Karen Kain, as well as covering the Juno Awards. Follow her on Twitter!