Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)

Chapter One: A Hard Day's Night

Today was the day.

Today Edit Constance Rose (Eddie) Sousa was no longer just a doctor, she was at the starting line of her dream job. Today, she started the long and hard journey of becoming a surgeon. The thing she had been working so hard for since she was nine and she broke her arm and a surgeon had fixed it. She had sparked something in her, and answered all of Eddie's questions and Eddie was hooked.

And, thirteen years later it was finally happening. At just twenty-one (okay twenty, but twenty-one in October, so practically twenty-one) she had graduated medical school and was now starting her internship and her residency at the top surgical residency programs in America. Seattle Grace. She was also the youngest intern to date, and out of all her options--she had gotten into all the programs she applied to--she chose Seattle Grace for it's prestige but also for the fact it was the farthest from her home.

Eddie, due to her age, had to stay close to home when she picked her college and medical school. Not because her mom, step-Stan, and younger half sisters would miss her and they wanted her close to home. No, that wasn't the case at all. They had to keep her because she was a minor. Eddie was positive if her mom, step-Stan, and her sisters were happy to have her gone long before now.

Eddie had never had a particularly close relationship with her mom. She was her accident baby. A baby she got pregnant with from a fling with a married man she had "fallen in love with" and he left her not wanting Eddie to ruin his perfect life, and because her mom couldn't give her baby away, even if she didn't really want her either. Her mom treated her as if she was a burden to raise, she sucked all her fun youth away.

And, when Eddie was five, her mother met her second love of her life, Eddie's Step-Stan, Stan Elliot, a handsome, young New York Real-estate agent to the filthy rich, who was also filthy rich. He fell for her mother, and simply put up with Eddie, as if she was some ugly piece of furniture her mother refused to let go of, even after it broke. And, that is the start of when Eddie started to feel as if she was unwanted in the family they created. And, it was obvious when two years later her sister Amelia was born, followed two years later by Beth, and three years after that CeCe, and then a year after that Daphne.

Eddie was treated more like a red-headed step cousin than a daughter or sister. And, the line was clear. Eddie was left behind while her mom and Step-Stan took her sisters, their daughters, on exotic locations or even Disneyland. And, her sisters even called her their "half sister" as if they didn't share some blood. Or, they simply never talked about her.

Eddie had tried for years to get them to even like her. Did her best at school, didn't argue, always nice. But, it didn't matter. Soon, the escapes to school or even the local library was better than being somewhere she wasn't wanted. It was the fuel that helped get her to this spot today...well along with her eidetic memory and the fact she was a literal genius.

Eddie simply left her forwarding address for her family, but she doubted she would ever hear anything from them again. Their lives wouldn't be affected by her absence.

But, she tried to push those depressive thoughts out of her mind as she looked up at Seattle Grace. It loomed over her. It looked so much bigger than last night when she was here for the surgical intern mixer.

This was it, her new workplace. Her new life. Her new future. Her lifelong dream was becoming a reality.

It was going to be hard, but worth it. Just like all the good things in life.

            She took in everything Dr. Richard Webber, the Chief of Surgery at Seattle Grace Hospital, was saying as he showed them around the hospital. The intern locker room, the cafeteria, the labs, CT and MRI machines, and now he was showing them the room they all wanted to spend time in, the OR.