Meredith Grey is the daughter of famed general surgeon Ellis Grey a trail blazer for women in medicine who left a legacy that would be near impossible to equal. Alzheimer's Disease cut short Ellis' career and Meredith lives with a crippling fear that she will one day fall victim to the illness; she also worries about allowing medicine to consume her life the way it did her mother's. Meredith has plenty of resentment toward Ellis, having felt cast aside by a mother whose primary focus was her career and who lacked what would be considered traditional motherly instincts. Meredith also has a strained relationship with her father Thatcher Grey, who left Ellis when Meredith was 5 but has tried to repair his relationship with his daughter now that she is an adult. Meredith is also the half-sister of Lexie Grey, who had a different experience with Thatcher as a father after he'd left Ellis and married Susan Grey, Lexie's mother. Meredith's best friend is Cristina Yang, a heart surgeon who began her internship at Seattle Grace at the same time. The series begins with Meredith hooking up with a man she met at a bar across the street from the hospital on the night before her internship starts. This man would soon be revealed as Derek Shepherd, a world-renowned brain surgeon at Seattle Grace. Meredith has a sometimes begrudgingly father-daughter-style relationship with Dr. Richard Webber, who is the chief of surgery at Seattle Grace and worked with Meredith's mother.Meredith is a no-nonsense doctor. She's truly a natural when it comes to medicine, but that doesn't stop her from occasionally doing something she knows is wrong or risky if she thinks she's doing it for the right reason. Meredith has made particularly perilous choices, both in and out of the hospital, that suggest she's all too willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good Show less «