Until I Met You (COMPLETE)

Chapter One

2002

It had been a rough seven years for Angel High. Moving to Tucson and struggling to stay at the top of her University classes before going on to medical school, she was one of the few opted into the 7-year program, she'd get out a year early and that meant her ten-year plan was obtainable.  She wanted to go to a different state, to go to a new world away from the bad memories of Halex leaving her, of having no friends after she left Magnolia.  

Angel made acquaintances and her roommate situation was something out of a sitcom with Janie and Livia. She was pushing eighteen credit hours a semester leaving little to no room for any other life except work, and living with two other medical students was a positive and a negative, the lights were always on somewhere, the apartment always smelled like coffee and there were always textbooks littering the tables and floor.

They kept their apartment thru grad school going their own separate ways the closer to internships and in the final days before assignments were handed out all three of them went to different hospitals.  Angel was sent to Tucson Medical Center, otherwise known as TMC to the locals. Livia went to the county hospital, and Janie went all the way to Northwest so Janie moved to the northwest side.

 Angel fought her way to the top in the field of plastic surgery and landing a job in a hospital just outside Chicago in the end.  She also met her new best friend while in internships.  She'd had magnificent doctors to follow, a wonderful internship, indeed.  She slipped through her rotations with ease, earning more and more with each step and improving her bedside manner with each patient.  The Hospitalists were happy to have her around and her teachers were glad to be able to lead her up the right paths to excellence in medical care.

At first, she thought the tall petite woman was a patient when she first joined her in the ER, but by the maternity floor, they had both decided what their programs they wanted to excel in and so they began their serious work.  

Angel met Rain Montgomery in the Emergency Room rotation when she started and both had become best friends almost right away. Rain was a different sort and it put people on edge and other people opened right up when she talked to them. Angel always figured it was the tattoo's Rain had sleeves down both arms in a bright colorful montage to Disney's Alice in Wonderland cartoon. Her wispy blonde hair had streaks of blue through it that was kept up in a tight French braid when she worked; but she loved proving to the people around her that someone they frown on in the ER or on a floor because of their marks or hair color could be the doctor that saves you next week and she decided on being on OB/GYN after their 6 weeks in maternity.  She got to deliver four babies to Angel's two and fell in love with the mothers talking and joking with them, helping them get through their labors or lifesaving surgeries when they had no one else to help them...

Angel thinned into a bright bubbly girl who knew where she was going.  She still had frizzy red hair she kept in a braid and pulled up in a bun she happily bounced around in her five foot nothing frame that let to lots of teasing about boxes and stools as they worked in a school. She lost her baby fat and her skinnier self-was full of more energy, full of more life.   Everyone towered over her but if anyone could do it she could and happily adapted to life on a stool.  Her hands were petite and just perfect for the field she chose.  The plastic surgery field.  Helping people overcome what she herself had overcome with hard work and courage.  She had nearly emerald green eyes that sparkled with fire and bravery as she answered questions and procedures.  The week before she graduated from the intern program she happily moved through her sections of what she had to learn as all medical students did, the psych round scaring her but she passed it.

Rain moved with Angel to Chicago for the first two years, but ended up back in Tucson, Arizona, working in a clinic there and delivering babies at TMC and St. Joseph's.