Cuddy has learned to hold back her compassion – the only way to succeed as a doctor, as a boss is to suspend empathy beyond a certain point. She wouldn't have gotten where she is if she took every patient, every decision and weighed it like humanity was at stake. She tries to keep the moral high ground, but sometimes she needs to stay away, to not step in, to let something slip by her, to turn the other way. She tells herself that she is choosing her battles; that it's probably for the greater good. But there's a part of her that looks at Allison Cameron, at the idealistic woman she herself once was, and wonders if the world would be better were there one more person still like that.