Everett Ramos is a resident surgeon at Mercy West Hospital in Seattle, Washington. She's on the uphill climb to becoming one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the world, studying alongside her best friends and hoping one day to make a difference...
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THE POUNDING bass of the music she seriously dislikes echoes through her left ear as Everett pulls out her right earphone, eyebrows raising at the sight of her best friend making a pot of coffee in their falling apart kitchen. Alina Atwall wears her favourite fluffy pyjamas, unicorn slippers sliding across the tiled kitchen floor as she reaches for the milk in the fridge, humming the opening to the reality show she's been watching religiously for the past week or so. She's finally brushed her hair into a long, thick braid that hangs down her back, swinging back and forth as she gets to work making a less-than-healthy breakfast, and the smell of her favourite shampoo tells Everett that her friend has finally showered.
Everett can't help but watch her from the kitchen doorway, feeling Reed and April slide up behind her. Alina hasn't moved from the couch since the moment Richard Webber handed over her notice, stuck under a blanket that's started to smell, surrounded by take-out she can only eat half of before the memories make her feel nauseous.
"Is she–"
"Singing?" April finishes off for Reed, sing-song voice sounding more depleted by the day, like someone has forgotten to turn off the record player and the black vinyl is starting to get scratched up as it spins and spins and spins in a perpetual loop of disregard. Unlike Alina, April's been scouring hospital after hospital for another job, but if nothing comes up she'll be back to the farmland that she grew up on, slicing open cows instead of humans.
"Well, I'd call that humming, but close enough." Everett steps into the kitchen, alerting Alina of their presence, and pulls her other earphone out of her ear so that the white wire lies around the back of her neck, stuck there by the sweat that drips from her ponytail. "Hey, Ally, can you get me a cup of coffee. I'm exhausted after that run."
Her words are enough to jolt April and Reed into action too and the two women join her in busying themselves about the kitchen to prepare for their days. Everett is the only one out of the four of them who goes for regular runs, despite the screaming of her calves when she finally settles on the couch with a cup of decaf coffee in one hand and a slice of toast in the other. Alina is chattering away to her about the latest episode of some family drama show and Everett nods along, pretending to be listening. Instead, all she can think about is the way that her best friend is finally on the move.
Maybe this is the jolt she needs to get herself another job at another hospital.
"So, what's your plan?" April finally asks, sitting on the arm of the armchair that Reed is sat in. It's covered in long nail punctures from when Everett's cat had used it as a scratching post only months before their landlord threatened to 'get rid of it' – which they all know is code for putting it down – and she was forced to send him all the way back to Minnesota.
