𝐧𝐨 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐢𝐞 [m. sloan]

[001] new york, i love you

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CHAPTER ONE
"new york, i love you"

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CLEMENTINA had spent her life split between Boston and New York. New York was loud. It was a place of extremes. The summers were scorching, so humid you could hardly breathe some days. The winters made you question whether you'd make it home without frostbite. New York didn't rest. It was constant. There was always something happening somewhere. Even in the middle of the night there was a thrum of activity, you could feel it buzz through the city. It was comforting in a way. You never really felt alone.

Boston was different. It was colder, quieter. She could lay in bed with the window open at night and fall asleep. It had a warmth, though. A slower way of life. Boston was her home, really. She was born there. She lived there for thirteen years before moving to New York - not dissimilar to how she'd moved to Seattle. There'd been family in New York. Her dad's family was massive. Her grandparents had emigrated from Guatemala when her dad was only three years old, and they had raised him and his sister in Brooklyn. So, New York was home too.

Maybe that was why she constantly found herself torn between the two. At seventeen, she moved back to Boston to stay with her mum's family and went to Harvard for undergrad. But then she moved back to New York, going to Colombia Medical School. Half her heart was in Boston, and the other half was in New York.

And yet, there she was in Seattle.

Specifically, she sat in the parking lot of Seattle Grace Teaching Hospital. It was the first day of her internship—an internship she didn't have until two weeks ago. She'd been all set to start at New York Presbyterian; it was linked to Columbia and felt like the right fit—until it wasn't.

So, Seattle it was.

Clementina wouldn't say she was having second thoughts, per se. But she was living out of a hotel room—a nice one; she liked her creature comforts. And god, the rain. She had learnt to handle her hair in the humid summers of New York. But the constant on-again-off-again showers? They might push her over the edge.

Seattle was just... different.

She'd brought a piece of home with her; that was a plus. Her cousin called her a week ago, saying he was also in Seattle doing his surgical internship at Mercy West. If she didn't know Jackson better, she'd think his mum had engineered the whole thing to check up on her. But he was an anti-meddler. He was a professional at minding his own business—a happy coincidence but a coincidence nonetheless.