Open Heart: Second Year {On Halt}

Prologue

The universe was a sphere. It was a curve of space filled with countless wonders of creation. It has no beginning or end because the point you started was the point you eventually ended. And like the shape of it, our life was the same.

The moment I stepped into Boston, everything changed. I knew the risk of coming here with a burden hanging down to abysmal depths. Secrets, deep and scarring. Mind, damaged and uncertain. Body, shattered and fixed again. Life, beaten and broken but managing to stand still.

Everything changed like the tides breaking gravel in shore. Changed to such degrees that it made me a different person, gave me hope to be different than I once was. Once thought always will be. Different. Worst. Broken. Dangerous. Unstable trying to grab strings of humanity for the promise I made. Destructive to destroy everything like once I tried to do. 

Years ago, I was the girl who was controlled by her mother and carried welts of past where my father and uncle had beaten me to death. I carried the guilt of my cousin, Sylvan whom couldn't save and deep down...I would've never able but that didn't stop the twelve year old me to harbor it for next decade. 

But life had more for me. A lighted path to save myself. It turned when I became an intern at Edenbrook Hospital. Nothing about the first year was normal. I dealt with compelling cases, made great friends and also enemies. I nearly died because of once such encounter. I nearly lost my medical license because of my choice to value life more than captivity. I was torn by winds of harsh world, yet...that uncertain, unstable Charlotte Turner never swayed away from her duties.

And it was made possible because I met him.

Ethan Jonah Ramsey.

My idol. My inspiration. And now, perhaps the only one I could call my everything.

It wasn't supposed to happen. Everyone thought that. Everyone who later found out thought it to be a mistake, a caricature of such a beautiful bond. Everyone found out of course, but everyone didn't know the story.

Undeniable.

That was what my explanation was. It was undeniable. Inevitable.

From the path we began, a warring factions of two, fighting each other with equal intensity as the whirlwind of passion reflected in eye of the storm. He challenged me, pushed me over my limits, nearly threw me into a verge of losing all because he wanted me to be the best of my kind ever. He was significantly biased to me which blurred the line between us, as a boss and his employ. But our relationship wasn't conventional. It wasn't star-crossed or fated or anything like that.

It just happened. The least protected souls carrying taints of their dark pasts forged together. Was it fate? Destiny? I don't know. And I never wanted to as well. Because I found myself in him again and against all odds, Ethan and I stayed together.

But even this fragile brilliance was threatened by both of us. At nights, when I would be beside him...I can't help but feel these treacherous secrets, so many secrets between us. From us...both of us. He thought I had bared my soul to him that night but he still had no idea who I really was. What have I done before to reach here...what I did to take justice on my own hands. What I bore after that, bore along a psychopathic analyst who knew everything about me and had me under control by locking everything in my mind in vaults. And those vaults kept my darkest tales safe, waiting one day to flood out and damage everything in my life. Destroy me. Make me that inhuman again.

And Ethan? He was still a convergence of all veils shifting constantly. I knew almost nothing about him as well. Nothing about his childhood which I knew wasn't good because he never wanted to remember. Nothing about his past which he just simply forgets to mention as if it never existed. I knew that prior to coming to Edenbrook as an intern...something very dangerous had taken turn in his life. Something serious which made him this unbreakable wall of condensed puzzles. Part of my withheld that it never dwindled the eternal love I have for him. But rational part always warned the growing poison of secrets. And both of us have our fair share of those.