At the pinnacle of her career, orthopedic surgeon Ava King conquers the lucrative medical field of London.
A wild and intimate night with competitive Formula One driver James Ellis ends with Ava being stood up. The rejection leads her straight into...
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About 3 and a half weeks later
My heart races nervously at the prospect of seeing Jamie again. And even though it's not face to face, I'll take a virtual date over nothing.
The program has had its ups and downs. I nearly quit after the first week. Fuck it, I did. I packed my bags and told them to go fuck themselves.
I just couldn't understand the need for isolation... I was not only physically away from my loved ones, but was also only allowed one ten minute phone call a day. So if James and Adam weren't together I'd have to speak to the one without the other and just deal with it.
It felt like rehab; like I was being isolated, on some detox, and being punished for something I didn't do. And it wasn't what I signed up for. Where were the kumbaya group therapy vibes? Not like I signed up for that either but I'd take it.
Anyway, Jamie once again talked some sense into me and so did Dr. Khan.
The second week was better, and once my new therapist, Natasha, and I started bonding, I felt we made some progress. It's a short span of time to entrust strangers with one's mental wellness but it's not the actual therapy that's the game changer (don't ever mention it to Malik, but he really is in a league of his own).
The real MVP's of the program have been the amazing women I've met; each a powerhouse in every right. Mothers, daughters, sisters and friends... each having faced a tyrant, a demon, and an oppressor who was determined to tear us down.
The scary thing is that most of us knew our attackers. There's one or two women who got randomly attacked as an act of opportunistic crimes like house robberies or carjackings.
But the majority of us knew the culprits. Boyfriends, husbands, uncles, fathers, friends, colleagues. There was trust and abuse, manipulation and tales about love. Most of us saw the signs but couldn't possibly fathom that these men would hurt us in the most inhumane way.
My roommate, Karabo, was subject to sexual violence since she was a kid, first at the hands of her uncle, then the boys pretending to be men in the slums of her township. Despite all her hardships, she became a civil engineer and started a family of her own, only to find herself partnered to an abusive, cheating prick who was emasculated by a woman earning more money than him. She had been through more sexual trauma than most women could endure but it turned out to be the emotional and mental abuse that broke her.
Another lady, Aileen pushed her traumas aside for years and years, refusing to address them. And one day she just lost it. In the worst way possible. She hit her daughter. In our group therapy, she said she had never so much as spanked her daughter before. But on that fateful day, she had lost her job, realized she was balls deep in debt and her partner walked out. Her daughter broke a glass cup and she just snapped. A school teacher saw the bruise and reported it.
