Stephanie Edwards

"I've spent my whole life in hospitals. My whole life and I think I need to see everything that's not in a hospital. I need to travel and explore and hike and breathe, and breathe...and breathe. Breath real air. So deep, I want to breathe it all in. Away from the monitors, and the blood, and the sterile gowns, away from saving other people's lives. I want my own. It's time I live my own. You changed my life, Dr. Webber. You taught me how to take my past and find my path. Thank you."

- Stephanie Edwards to Richard Webber

Stephanie Edwards was a surgical resident at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital until she quit to explore and travel after an explosion in the hospital caused her significant burns.

Childhood Illness
Stephanie was born with Sickle-Cell Disease. At the age of five, she was put in a clinical trial at St. Jude that used bone marrow transplants to treat the disease. The treatment was very effective for her and Dr. Keith Wagner, who ran the study, called Stephanie one of the most successful stories from the trial. Her memory of the trial is resisting and being told it was for her own good. There were even times when they had to strap her down to get her to accept the treatment.

Internship
Stephanie started her internship at Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital shortly after the plane crash. She, along with the other interns, quickly learned to fear Meredith Grey, dubbing her Medusa.

While working on the case of Graham Cunningham, Cristina allowed Stephanie the opportunity to do a procedure, even saying that Stephanie was better than Shane. When Bailey stepped in, Cristina backed off, but then ultimately decided to let Stephanie close, over Bailey's objections.

While competing with Leah while they were both on Cristina's service, they both were indefinitely banned from the OR when their fighting led to Leah hooking up a patient's oxygen to her IV, a potentially fatal mistake.

When it seemed like the hospital was going to be sold, Stephanie started looking at programs at other hospitals because she wanted to be the best and to be the best, she had to learn at the best program.

Heather's Death
When Heather died, the other interns were given time off. Derek told them to think of happy Heather stories for her mother, but they realized they didn't have any as they were not very close to her. They went to Meredith and she told them a story about George stealing jello for all of them, a story she had shared with George's mother when he died. They used alcohol from Alex to get drunk and bond, but when Heather's mother arrived, they still didn't have a story to tell her, so they stole Meredith's George story, as well as using a question Stephanie had asked Jo and changing it to involve Heather. Using their newfound bond, the four of them went out to the pile as a group to help.

After Heather's death, the interns began all sleeping at Alex's house and studying. Jo was waiting for Alex to proposition her so they could have sex and Alex was waiting because he thought she was still grieving, so he said they could stay there as long as they wanted. Jo went to the others and said that they needed to leave.

Eye Surgery
The day before Halloween, Stephanie had LASIK eye surgery. She came back to work right away rather than taking the two days off that were recommended. She spent the day running into things. At the end of the day, Jackson told her that he had planned to take the day off with her and take care of her. She asked if they could do it the next day, but he said they'd do it now and took her home.

Meredith's Trial
Stephanie worked with Meredith as she started her portal vein trial. After siding with Alex over Meredith in a surgery, Meredith didn't want to work with Stephanie anymore.

Stephanie operated with Meredith when she put the first printed portal vein in a sheep. The surgery was successful, but the sheep later died.

When Meredith hired a bioengineer to work on the portal vein trial with her, Stephanie was assigned to watch him as he read all the research materials and not allow him to touch the printer. When he doodled something that Stephanie found interesting, she asked him how it would work. Stephanie went to Meredith to ask for permission for Eric Block to use the printer, but Meredith denied permission. However, Meredith later came back to the lab to find them using the printer. Meredith said that she really wanted to work to get her trial off the ground.

April's Wedding
Stephanie was confused when April invited her to her and Matthew's wedding, as she expected to be Jackson's guest. However, Jackson was not invited because of his past with April and inviting Stephanie was April's way of getting Jackson there. Stephanie believed that Jackson and April weren't really over each other because if they were, they would be congratulating each other. Despite this, Jackson assured her that there was nothing going on with them and that they could go to the wedding.

April told Jackson that she wanted him to be there, so Stephanie and Jackson attended the wedding. However, Jackson stood up at at the wedding, and confessed his love for April, effectively ending his relationship with Stephanie.

Stephanie walked out of the hospital that night. Three weeks later, Leah and Jo were surprised to see her back finally, though she claimed she wasn't in hiding. She avoided interacting with Jackson. However, when her patient, Robert Fischer, expressed desire to undo the changes he'd made to his body to look like a cat, she went to Jackson and asked him to fix Robert's face pro bono.

She talked to Leah about how hard it was to be around Jackson and how she knew that dating him was a bad idea, but she did it anyway. Leah told Stephanie that it was Jackson's fault because he was her boss and he chose to date her and then he chose to toss her aside, like Arizona had done with her and Cristina had done with Shane. She said it was awful and that someone should do something about it.

Non-Fraternization Policy
When the non-fraternization policy was introduced, Jo immediately assumed that Stephanie had filed the claim that led to the policy being enacted.

After hitting both Arizona and Jackson with gurneys in the same day, Stephanie had to go to HR to fill out an accident report. Jackson was in there at the same time filling out his own paperwork about the incident. Jackson told her that he didn't plan what he did at the wedding. He apologized for it and said he didn't know how to make it better. Stephanie said he couldn't. She got looks of pity, something she'd never had before. But she was done feeling bad about it. To her, he just existed and she didn't care about him at all.

Richard's Teachings
When a case came in of two sisters, one of who had developed three kinds of cancer in her lifetime, Richard told the residents to do research on Li-Fraumeni, as that's the condition the girl had. They did the research and developed a treatment plan, but Rory Williams had already died.

At Richard's birthday party, Owen asked him to be director of the residency program because he noticed how well he'd been mentoring the residents.

When Shane was worried that he was sick, Stephanie took over the conduit patients for the day in exchange for him taking her weekend calls for a month and being her swap monkey for two months.

When Stephanie got bored watching Bailey look through options, she pulled swap monkey on Shane and sent him to work with her while she printed sample conduits for Cristina's trial. However, when Shane ended up in a surgery instead, Stephanie tried to call swap monkey to switch back. She tried again to swap to go back to Bailey after surgery and ended up chasing Shane down the hall.

Derek, warned that he wasn't teaching enough, took all the residents to work on a case with him that he had rescheduled several times. As the OR wasn't available until 1 AM, he then took them to the ER to work on the incoming patients, including having them work on a patient who was already dead so they could work with real brain tissue. When a man came in with scissors puncturing his forehead, they took him into an OR for a controlled extraction. Then they went back to the case of Nova Jenkins. Each of the residents took a turn to step up to the microscope and ask a question so they could learn.

Braden Morris
Stephanie worked with Bailey on the case of Braden Morris, who was born with SCID, which left him vulnerable to illness. His parents consented to them using de-activated HIV as a vector to deliver an enzyme to his body, but before the procedure could be done, his mother withdrew consent. Despite this, Bailey proceeded with the procedure, desperate to prove that her research would help people.

When Braden's t-cell count jumped overnight, Stephanie confronted Bailey about it and Bailey confirmed to her that she had done the treatment without consent.

When Bailey came clean to the parents, Bailey and Stephanie were both involved in legal meetings. When the parents announced their intent to sue and get Bailey's medical license revoked as well as charging her with assault and battery, Stephanie took the blame, saying that she didn't tell Bailey that the parents had revoked consent and Bailey was covering for her. They dropped the charges and Stephanie was suspended for a week.

Hospital Fire and Departing Grey Sloan
Per Eliza Minnick's instructions, Stephanie went to counseling, but she returned to work after only a few sessions with Richard's support. On her first back, she and Jackson treated Keith, who was brought in along with Alison Goodman after the car they were in drove off a cliff. Since both were partially undressed, the doctors assumed them to be a couple who were making out. Eliza punished Stephanie for quitting counseling and left her to monitor Keith, who had a liver lac. When they were alone, Keith begged Stephanie to take him to go see Alison. She agreed to his request, while the other doctors found out through Alison that Keith is a stranger who got in her car and tried to rape her. Intern Hannah came across Stephanie and informed her that a patient had been raped, oblivious to the fact that Keith was said rapist. As soon as she was gone, Keith pressed Stephanie against a wall and threatened her with a scalpel. He demanded that she take him out of the hospital without anyone seeing. They came across Ben, but Stephanie convinced him she was just helping her patient get back on his feet.

As they entered the stairwell, Keith dragged her through a door as he heard security approaching. They ended up near a lab and as Keith wanted to enter the stairwell again, they found out the doors wouldn't open because of a lockdown initiated by Bailey. To make matters worse, they were trapped with Erin Miller, a child who had been wandering the hospital all day. Figuring that a fire would override the lockdown, Keith gathered supplies to start a fire while Stephanie protected Erin. As Keith was busy holding a burning towel up to the sprinklers, Stephanie seized the opportunity and sprayed Keith with hand alcohol. Burning fibers fell down and lit Keith on fire. Stephanie shut herself and Erin into the nearest room, but quickly realized that that Keith's burning body fell just a few inches from the oxygen tanks in the adjacent room. Stephanie quickly went to drag him away, but the tanks burst right before she could stop it.

Stephanie recovered from the blast in the burning lab as Erin was calling her name. Erin's leg was trapped under a machine. Stephanie created a path through the flames towards Erin. She used lab supplies to tie off the blood supply to the wound and clamped the vessel. She helped Erin get up. When their path was blocked by flames, Stephanie wet a blanket and her hair at the sink, picked up Erin, and jumped through the flames with the blanket wrapped around them. They entered the stairwell and discovered the floors beneath them were on fire already. They slowly went up, with Stephanie supporting Erin. Upon reaching the door to the roof, Stephanie discovered her key card was gone. Since they were trapped by the ascending fire, Stephanie sat down with Erin and wrapped her in the blanket to give her the best chance of surviving and accepted her own faith. However, as Stephanie glanced down at floors engulfed in flames below her, she spotted her badge on the floor through the smoke. She went to retrieve it, and they accessed the roof. No one on the ground heard her cries for help and Erin suddenly coded. Stephanie started CPR and was still doing so when Ben and the firefighters finally found them.

She and Erin were taken to the ER since the OR floor was inaccessible due to the damage. She yelled at Eliza to get out of her face and stayed with Erin when Richard and Bailey operated right there. With Erin finally stable and her leg saved, Stephanie's body finally shut down. She was taken to the burn unit for the severe burns on her arms. Richard came to visit her. While telling her that she was gonna be all right, but it would be a while until she could perform surgery, Stephanie, who was still traumatized by the whole incident, said that due to the fact she had spent her whole life in hospitals, she thought she should go anywhere that was not the inside of a hospital and wanted to travel, explore, hike, and breathe away from the monitors, blood, and sterile gowns. She concluded that she was done saving other people's lives and she wanted to go out and live her own life, away from the hospital. She thanked Richard for changing her life and teaching her how to take her past and find her path and that now she has found it. She quit and then told Andrew to turn up the morphine to stop the pain. Richard stayed and accompanied her while Andrew turned up the morphine as Stephanie was calming down.

The day after the fire, she was airlifted to a burn unit in Texas to continue her recovery. Bailey later revealed to the owner of the hospital, Harper Avery that her bravery during the incident has been all over the news.

Jackson Avery
April set her up as Jackson's date to Bailey's wedding. They missed the ceremony, so Jackson suggested he just take her home. She misinterpreted, letting him know she did not want to sleep with her boss. They both agreed that sleeping together would be a mistake, but ended up having sex right there in the car anyways.

They initially kept things quiet because Stephanie didn't want anyone thinking she was sleeping with her boss to get ahead.

They began seeing each other. Jackson claimed it was just sex, whereas Stephanie believed it was more serious than that because she stated that she would follow him if he were to move and get a job somewhere else.

When Jackson's mother came to town to see him, he sent Stephanie away so that his mother wouldn't interrogate her.

When his new role as board director started to interfere with their relationship, as he began to forget dates, she asked him why he'd been standing her up and demanded to be treated better. He kissed her and she stopped talking.

The night of the fundraising gala, Stephanie was mad at Jackson because he didn't invite her to go with him, because he believed that she didn't want to go. After working closely with Shane on a group of junkies while covering the ER, Shane kissed her, which Jackson saw. He fled back to the gala, but she followed him. They fought and Stephanie explained what had happened, so they made up.

When Jackson's mother came back to Seattle to visit Richard, Stephanie met her when she burst into the on-call room where Jackson and Stephanie were making out, giving his mother a bad impression of her. While they worked on a patient with an enlarged penis together, Catherine continued to tease Stephanie. Later, at the bar, Stephanie talked to Catherine about what had happened.

Stephanie went to April's wedding with Jackson. During the ceremony, Jackson stood up and confess his love for April, thus ending his relationship with Stephanie.

Kyle Diaz
Kyle heavily flirted with Stephanie during his hospitalization.

She agreed to text him during his tour and said they might be able to go out when he got back. They ended up exchanging dirty texts.

When Kyle came back into town, he asked Stephanie to go out with him. She tried to decline, worried that what they had was all texts, but he showed up at the hospital and she agreed to go with him when he said he wanted to take her somewhere special. She went with him to a recording studio, where they started to kiss and then undress.

They continued to see each other, though without labelling their relationship. When Kyle developed a tremor in his other hand, Stephanie told him to go to the hospital, where she stayed by his side as he waited for surgery and waited in the waiting room while he was in surgery. After his surgery, she came to visit him before he woke up and left a note ending things between them.

He came back to the ER with meningitis. While he was there, he refused to see Stephanie or having her involved in his case. He later died in surgery.

Jo Wilson
Jo and Stephanie met on the first day of their internship, and became friends. Their only huge argument was when Jo accused Stephanie of lying about being sick as a child and Stephanie eventually forgave Jo.

Amelia Shepherd
At first Amelia was just Stephanie's boss and colleague but as they learned more about each other they began to grow closer. The Nicole Herman surgery was big for both of them. They had each other's backs in the OR and worked together to complete that surgery to save one of their own. In Season 13 Stephanie allowed Amelia to live with her when Amelia's marriage with Owen was falling apart.

Career
She was a surgical resident at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. While on Cristina Yang's service, she got reprimanded for accidentally almost killing a patient and was banned from the O.R. until further notice, a ban which has since expired. She's often on Amelia Shepherd's service, after which she was recruited for Nicole Herman's brain surgery, who had a practically inoperable tumor. The surgery was successful, inspiring Stephanie to become a neurosurgeon. She worked closely together for Amelia the following years. When Amelia took a drink and wasn't allowed to work, Stephanie, as a fifth year resident, kept her service going. She later quit following the hospital explosion, saying she wanted to explore and live her life.

Notes and Trivia

 * Edwards proclaimed that Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital's surgical program was the residency-match to get.
 * She went through college on a cheerleading scholarship.
 * Stephanie had laser eye surgery because "glasses are annoying." She returned to work early and, because her eyes had not healed up yet, she strained them and spent the day struggling to see.
 * Stephanie dressed up as a clown for Halloween.
 * She has a thing for karaoke.
 * Stephanie sheds hair easily and is known to leave her many bras lying around.
 * She uses lavender-scented shampoo.
 * During her residency, Edwards has shown an aptitude for several specialties including neuro, general, fetal, and urology. She claims to be good at everything.
 * According to Meredith Grey and Amelia Shepherd, Edwards was the resident that "gets things done".
 * According to Nicole Herman, Edwards has a good eye.
 * She doesn't like dogs.
 * She likes mushrooms.
 * She never goes to church.
 * During her first solo surgery, a gallstones removal, she lost her patient.
 * She sometimes stands on a stool while operating.

Notable Episodes
These episodes are Stephanie-centric or are otherwise very informative about her life.
 * I Want You With Me
 * Throwing it All Away
 * The Distance
 * Old Time Rock and Roll
 * I Wear the Face
 * True Colors
 * Ring of Fire

Appearances
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