Patrick Dempsey Talks Life & Death on 'Grey's Anatomy'

Entertainment Tonight, Thursday, July 1, 2010, 4:00pm (PDT)

The season finale of "Grey's Anatomy" was a two-hour shocker in which the irate husband of a patient who died at Seattle Grace Hospital returns with a gun and goes on a shooting rampage. As he searches out Dr. Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), who is the target of his wrath, many familiar faces, including Alex Karev (Justin Chambers), Reed (Nora Zehetner) and Charles (Robert Baker) are shot and several die.

Derek is among those shot, and it takes all of Cristina Yang's (Sandra Oh) competence as a surgeon to try to save his life. Derek does survive the surgery, but the question still to be asked is: Will he completely recover?

"Hopefully, I'm not in a coma for all of next year," Patrick tells ET. "I hope I don't become Denny Duquette [Jeffrey Dean Morgan], where I come back as a ghost."

For those not in the know, Denny was Izzie's (Katherine Heigl) boyfriend, who died following an unsuccessful heart transplant, and revisited her as a ghost -- or a hallucination -- when she became ill with cancer.

Last season, Derek took over as Chief of Surgery when Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.), a recovering alcoholic, slipped and began drinking again.

"I think Derek should go back to just being a surgeon and not be the head of the hospital," Patrick says.

And he may get his wish. Executive producer/creator Shonda Rhimes wrote on the Grey Matter blog the night of the finale: "Did you see the Chief take back his hospital tonight? Because that's what he did. He marched into his hospital and he took it back. He poured out the vodka and took control of his hospital. Except now the hospital's not a hospital anymore. It's a crime scene. And that's not a good thing."

When Derek wakes up -- and we are pretty sure he will for at least a few episodes -- he will learn the startling news that Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) was pregnant and lost the baby as a result of the stress of the hospital shootout.

Meanwhile, Patrick is alive and well and shooting 'Flypaper,' his new movie with Ashley Judd, in Louisiana, but he will be back when "Grey's Anatomy" returns to the ABC schedule this fall.

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