...and then we flash forward, as Taylor is holding Eli's hand and repeating the words she just uttered in the dream/vision. She cries a little as she tells him that she promised she'd be there for him no matter what, and she meant it. Nate enters, and he and Taylor hug. She asks if he's hanging in there, and Nate sorrowfully smiles that "they" were almost done with the surgery when there was a hemorrhage, and then another, and the artery walls were weakened due to pressure from the aneurysm, which caused Eli to have a heart attack that cut off the blood flow to his brain. Taylor asks about the aneurysm, and Nate tells her it's gone, for all the good that will do. Taylor raggedly notes that in an alternate universe, she and Eli could be married, and she'd be the one having to make the decision about Eli's life. This probably isn't the most opportune moment to observe this, but I wouldn't have pegged Taylor for a sci-fi geek. Nate thinks that the decision has been made, as Eli didn't want to live this way, but Taylor, a lawyer through and through, points out that that's an easy thing to say as a hypothetical, but now that the worst has actually happened, just because Eli asked Nate to let him go doesn't mean he has to. I'd say that if that's true, Matt Dowd isn't the crack lawyer we all thought, but Nate seems to agree by disagreeing as he says he has to honor Eli. "I've already let him down, and I can't do it again. I can't." We flash back...

...and Eli is telling Chen about his promotion, the party for which there was even, apparently, a red velvet cake. Dude, way to bury the headline! Chen takes Eli's apparent ambivalence about the position as worry that he'll fall back into his soulless existence, although if he knew about the pro bono part he'd realize that that's not the case. Eli goes on, anyway, to tell him about Green and how he heard from God, and how he feels that this great weight has been lifted from his shoulders, which is obviously not a state of mind God has seen fit to grant to Eli. He wonders if God's treatment of him is some kind of "spiritual corporal punishment," causing Chen to go silent and regard him thoughtfully. Eli asks what's up, so Chen tells him that in the commune on which he grew up, he never felt close to God, so when he went out on his own, he immersed himself in the study of all religions so he could find him. "Funny thing is, all those years of seeking him out, he goes and finds me, when he sends a smug, stubborn, pain-in-the-rear lawyer right up to my door." Eli must be thinking that Jordan and Chen would just get along swimmingly. Chen goes on that Eli has lifted his burdens, and Eli snaps that now he's doing it, and why is everyone talking to him like he's gonna...