BEING THE DAUGHTER OF TWO DRUGGIES has advantages and disadvantages: the disadvantages outweighing the advantages. Cleaning up your parents' puke from the ripe age of seven, asking Mommy and Daddy when they'd feel better again wasn't a fond memory a person likes to look back on, especially if you'd fallen down that rabbit hole, as Audrey Karev had. Her spotlight introduction into the world was stolen by her three-minute-older brother Alex, them birthed into this superficial world we know as planet Earth. Some would say the other shoe dropped from there, beating them down.
"Each of you comes here today hopeful," Richard Webber, Chief of Surgery at Seattle Grace Hospital starts the tour of his sanctuary, welcoming the new interns for their first shift. "Wanting in on the game. A month ago, you were in med school, being taught by doctors. Today..." He opened the door to a dark, clean operating room. "You are the doctors." Interns took an opportunity to look around at their stomping grounds for the years to come, hoping to dive right in, headfirst into the action of the OR. But as far as their residents were concerned, they wouldn't be seeing the inside of those rooms until they showed promise. "The seven years you spend here as a surgical resident will be the best and worst of your life. You will be pushed to the breaking point. Look around you. Say hello to your competition."
Alex and Audrey looked towards each other from across the room, giving each other a look as if they hadn't been competing for survival in the womb since day of conception. News flash: they both won that race (although Audrey almost absorbed her brother while they were in the womb). They were each other's biggest competition, and it wasn't going to resolve.
"I'm watching you, Karev," Audrey mouthed.
Alex nodded, narrowing his eyes at her.
Richard continued, "Eight of you will switch to an easier specialty. Five of you will crack under the pressure. Two of you will be asked to leave. This is your starting line. This is your arena. How well you play...that's up to you."
Audrey didn't doubt for a second she'd be the final person standing in this arena, crossing the finish line the fastest, even through all the trauma and heartbreak she may have to endure.
✿✿✿
Wrapping her stethoscope around her neck and quickly shutting her locker, Audrey accidentally bumped into someone's hard figure. She winced, immediately opening her eyes to see who the unlucky victim was. "I am so sorry."
