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.