ace • j. avery

xiv

⚕⚕⚕

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, USA
February 28, 2009

" boston "

⚕⚕⚕

Angelina had been to Boston before, sure. After all, for the past four years she had been cordially invited to each Harper Avery award ceremony, although two of those years were for her own accolades.

Apparently Jackson's family was nagging him for constantly showing up to the awards alone, so he was incredibly grateful that Angelina joined him this year.

So, with a few calls to various colleagues of Angelina's about her interests outside of medicine, he found out that she was quite a history and astronomy nerd. As a thank you to her, he booked a few days off her schedule with historical and science sites.

A few days after she had arrived, they walked the Freedom Trail, and visited the Boston Common.

Yesterday, they went to the planetarium, and Jackson had shown her around his alma mater of Harvard.

Today was the last day before the official ceremony, and the hotel was packed with sleep deprived surgeons.

She wanted to leave before Will Keegan —Mayo's top neurosurgeon— tracked her down again. Last time, it was just two hours of her talking about stereotactic radiosurgery for acoustic neuromas— something she won a Lasker for, but took a shamefully long time to develop.

Telling Jackson this, he opted for a food tour, which just basically involved walking around the city and trying every restaurant they wanted too. She gladly agreed.

With two young people touring one of the largest cities in one of the most populated countries, and those two young people just so happened to have close to a billion dollars between them, it wasn't a surprise that an upwards of five thousand dollars was spent in five hours.

Their adventure had only lasted five hours because Jackson needed to get ready for the next day.

The next day being the Harper Avery Awards, of course.

As her only tolerable companion was now gone, Angelina decided to find her intolerable companions. Oliver and Tom were down in the lounge, doing... an interview of sorts? There were people around the two surgeons, with microphones and notepads, writing down things after one of them talked. There were also several other groups of surgeons and interviewers scattered around the room, making the large space feel much smaller.

She headed over a few feet away from her friends, where she went to socialize with doctors. A very out of character move for her, but she wanted to see her researching competition. Rumor had it that an opthamologist infiltrated the collection of egotistical surgeons.

Somehow, she ended up pulled into the interview, where she was asked about her collaboration with both Tom and Oliver, on laser interstitial thermal therapy. It was the last project she had worked on while she still lived on the east coast.

It was a breakthrough innovation, and being the head of the researching group, she most likely would have been nominated for the third year in row, had she not left.

"Doctor Engelli," a reporter started, "I know we have asked Doctors Koracick and Campbell —congratulations again— but could you explain to us your LITT procedure?"

Angelina blinked, still wondering how she ended up in this position. "Well, LITT is a minimally invasive procedure. We make a small incision in the skull, no more than four millimeters, and insert a small laser wire. We then transfer heat, and the laser releases a specific amount of heat, designed to kill malignant cells, but spare the healthy ones."