I've Been Thinking Lately, Everybody's Crazy

by Aquietauthor

Summary:

Completing your residency at Chicago Northwestern Memorial, had always been your dream but after your brothers suicide, a transfer to Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Centre to complete your forth year of residency was your escape, a chance to feel safe again.

You are tenacious, fast paced, efficient and unshakeable but you can only stop the cracks from showing for so long before something has to give. You keep your cards close to your chest but finding real friends and real support slowly gives you the space you need to allow yourself to feel human again. But Dr Jack Abbot complicates things, a man who has become an expert at hiding his own insecurities, but can see straight through yours.

This will be a slow burn and long! Discussions of suicide, OCD, self harm, eating disorders and trauma/mental health. There will be sexual elements and in depth discussion of a power play relationship (no graphic sexual scenes but implied).

I've never published anything I've written before so I hope you enjoy! I may write another follow on with the same characters. This was posted on Wattpad originally so i am copying it over!

Chapter 1: To Pittsburgh, With Love

Working your medical residency at Chicago Northwestern Memorial had always been your dream—one of the top-ranking hospitals in the country. You were an R4: tenacious, fast-paced, and incredibly focused. In your time there, you had built a steadfast reputation as one of their best residents. Never did you imagine that, at thirty-two, you would be starting over, leaving everything you had built behind. But you had no other choice.

Rolling down the window of your beaten-up blue Lexus, you let the warm air lap at loose strands of your hair as you drove, sunlight spilling across your face. You allowed the warmth to wash over you—fear churning in your stomach, but also something else: freedom. You were leaving behind everything you had ever known, but you had to. You had to get out. You had to feel safe again. After your brother's suicide, there was nothing left for you in Chicago. Everything you owned had been packed into your car, your number changed, no forwarding address given.

In the last six months alone, you had lost eighty pounds. Your eyes were ringed with a dark hue that no amount of effort could erase. Your auburn curls had lost their shine, your gaze its light. You barely recognized yourself anymore. You poured everything into your work—gave every part of yourself to the job—burying what had happened somewhere deep, locking it away. But cracks had a way of showing.

Finding an apartment in Bloomfield had been relatively easy—a short commute to PTMC, Pittsburgh Medical Trauma Centre, where you would finish your fourth year of residency. Getting Northwestern to agree to the transfer had been the difficult part. Thankfully, you had a friend at PTMC who made things simpler, helping you get settled. For that, you would be eternally grateful. They had agreed, of course—who could refuse a woman whose brother had taken his own life on hospital property?

Images of your brother flickered through your mind: his smile, the way he laughed, the quiet ways he had kept you safe growing up. Losing him felt like losing a part of yourself, and you weren't sure it was something you would ever recover from. But for now, you had to keep going—keep pushing, prove you were still worthy.

You had no idea what PTMC had in store for you but it had to be better than what you were running from. It had to be.