Spoilers ahead for Grey's Anatomy Season 16 . Okay, so this wasn't the season finale that ABC originally planned, but finding out about Richard Webb's diagnosis on Grey's Anatomy 's April 9 episode is the good news we all need right now. Although it seems like everyone except Meredith and DeLuca has accepted the fact that Richard has Alzheimer's, thankfully the reality is much simpler.
Leave it to Meredith to discover at the 11th hour that something is wreaking havoc on Richard's nervous system, just as Katherine is preparing to take her ailing husband home to face his fate. As scary as this discovery sounds, the silver lining is that the symptoms were inconsistent with Amelia and Koracik's Alzheimer's diagnosis. However, before Mel and Bailey can perform a nerve biopsy, DeLuca frantically rushes into the operating room to deliver the real answer to what happened to Richard: He has cobalt poisoning.
In a throwaway line about Richard's medical history in the previous episode, Bailey mentioned that he had a hip replacement in Boston. When you put that in the context of brain tumors and electrocutions, it seems trivial. But DeLuca discovered that if Richard's hip replacement was made of cobalt and was deteriorating, he could experience metal toxicity, which could cause him memory loss, depression, hallucinations and tremors.
After nearly pissing off Bailey, DeLuca is proven right and Bailey reluctantly lets him operate on Richard. Link cleared out the "sludge" that had built up in Richard's body and successfully repaired his hip - all while Amelia was giving birth to their son, by the way - and praised DeLuca 's "Amazing Catch." He told his fellow surgeons that if other hip replacement patients also started testing positive for cobalt poisoning, it could be a game-changer for the entire medical community.
This is supposed to make DeLuca feel on top of the world, but in the final scene of the episode, Meredith picks him up off the hospital floor in some kind of meltdown. "I don't...I can't...uh. I don't know what's going on," he admitted. Meredith insists on taking him home so they can possibly get back together. Regardless, we look forward to seeing DeLuca's mental health storyline continue to unfold in Season 17, with Meredith becoming an integral part of his support system.
Irving and Teddy also ended the season on a low note: Thanks to a wildly ill-timed back-to-back dial, Irving had to listen to Teddy and Koracik on voicemail — just a few days before he and Teddy were set to get married. An hour ago. Their wedding is now postponed...or likely canceled altogether. We'll have to wait until Season 17 to find out for sure, but at least the impromptu finale gave Richard a long-awaited resolution.
