Chapter 1 #2
“That’s the goal.” I try to sound confident, but anxiety churns in my stomach.
This rotation is crucial for my wilderness medicine certification—the last piece I need to secure a position in emergency medicine that will take me to remote locations where no one will question my designation or my abilities.
A notification chimes on my phone. “Uber’s here.”
Josephine watches me wrestle my suitcases down the three flights of stairs to the street, because I refuse to let her risk the baby over my over-packing. A tired-looking driver waits beside a sedan that seems too small for all my luggage.
But I still survey the bags, mentally cataloguing their contents. I have to be forgetting something.
“You packed half the apartment, Holly. Whatever else you might need, you can buy once you get there,” Josephine says as we somehow cram everything into the trunk and back seat. “You’re going to a mountain town, not the wilderness itself.”
“Says the woman who packed fourteen different pairs of heels for a weekend trip to the Hamptons,” I tease, turning to face her for our goodbye.
Josephine pulls me into a tight hug, her baby bump pressing against my stomach.
“Be careful out there, Holly. And call me. Not just texts—actual calls where I can hear your voice and make sure you’re not working yourself to death.
I would say that you need to find a nice beta to spend those winter nights with, but I won’t waste my breath. ”
It’s always seemed easier to let her believe that I have no interest in dating at all
“I will,” I promise, hugging her back just as fiercely. “Take care of yourself and that little bean.”
“I’ve got three alphas making sure I do nothing but eat unprocessed food and take prenatal vitamins,” she reminds me with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll be fine.”
We hold each other for another moment before reluctantly letting go. I slide into the back seat of the Uber, waving as we pull away from the curb. Josephine stands on the sidewalk, one hand resting on her belly, the other raised in farewell. She looks so happy, so complete. So omega.
I feel a twinge of familiar guilt at the reminder that even my closest friend doesn’t know the truth about me.
I turn away as we round the corner, swallowing the lump in my throat. This is what I’ve chosen—independence over connection, career over designation. And I don’t regret it. I can’t.
If I can spend a lifetime keeping the fact that I’m an omega from all my friends and colleagues, I can do it in a tiny mountain town for the next eight weeks.
My rented sedan rounds the final bend, and there it is—Heat Mountain looms before me, a fortress of snow-capped peaks against cloudless blue. My phone chimes its familiar alert, a twice daily alarm that never fails to land like an electric shock.
One pill small enough that I can swallow it dry, then followed immediately by a capsule worth of crushed herbs that I have to open, shake on my tongue and hold it in my mouth for long enough that it feels like the bitter taste of it will never wash away.
Disgusting enough that I’ve never quite gotten used to it, even after years.
My mom used to brew the whole leaves in tea and give me a cup with meals, but my busy schedule hasn’t allowed for that sort of leisure since middle school.
I’d rather my mouth taste like the underside of a back alley dumpster than take the risk of missing a dose.
So I take in my first full view of the quaint town at the foot of Heat Mountain with the taste of ash and rotten fungus on my tongue.
Rustic buildings with smoke curling from chimneys, people bundled against the cold moving purposefully along shoveled paths. My new home for the next two months. A place where no one knows me.
No one knows what I am.
My fingers tighten around the steering wheel. I’ve hidden my designation through undergrad, through thousands of volunteer hours, through everything. One more year before the end of my residency, and I’ll have proven that I can do this.
Just a few more months of secrets.
I ease the rental along Main Street, where weathered wooden storefronts line both sides like sentinels.
My rented car with its out-of-state plates draws curious glances from locals who pause their conversations to track my progress.
A woman in a handmade sweater nudges her companion.
An older man with a white beard stops shoveling snow off the stoop of his storefront to watch as I drive by.
A spike of anxiety runs through me at their obvious curiosity. This place isn’t like the city, where I can disappear so easily into the crowd. It won’t be long before my name and description travel from ear to ear like grist in the gossip mill.
A Klondike gold rush port town, Heat Mountain’s population quadruples in the summer when tourists descend to enjoy the hot springs and ride the old mining railroad kept open only as a novelty.
But in the winter and without a cruise ship in port, there are few enough residents that they probably all know each other by name.
Which means there is nowhere for me to hide.
I focus on my breathing. Four counts in, four counts out. My go-to technique for anxiety management. I am not prey being watched by predators. They’re just curious about the new arrival.
I can do this.
The clinic appears on my right—a single-story building with a modest sign reading Heat Mountain Clinic and a smaller one announcing Emergency Services.
Not exactly the gleaming trauma center where I’d completed my last rotation, but exactly what I need: remote, understaffed, and directed by one of the few certified wilderness medicine physicians in the country.
I pull into one of the three spaces marked for staff and cut the engine.
“You are Dr. Holly Chang,” I whisper to my reflection in the rearview mirror. “Top of your class. Excellent diagnostician. Beta female.”
Two truths and a lie, but they all leave the same bitter taste on my tongue.
I grab my bag and step into the icy mountain air.
The clinic’s front door ushers me into a warm waiting room that smells like pine needles and antiseptic.
I weave through a collection of mismatched furniture—worn couches and chairs that have seen better days arranged around a coffee table stacked with outdated magazines.
Local artwork adorns the walls, giving the place a kitchsy feel, very unlike the coldly clinical emergency rooms I’m used to navigating.
Also unlike the Level 1 trauma center I came from, the front desk is deserted.
The little sign on the counter of a clock with its hands pointed to a time about forty-five minutes from now has me assuming that this clinic only has one receptionist at the desk and that person is on their lunch break.
I drum my fingers on the peeling faux wood countertop, trying to decide how presumptuous it would be to walk back into the patient care area on my own.
Dr. Mercer had given me a time to meet him here, and I’m only five minutes early.
First impressions are too important for me to mess this up.
I have to strike a balance between considerate and assertive.
I’ll look like a complete idiot if my new mentor finds me cooling my heels in the waiting room like a walk-in patient hoping to be squeezed in if he expected me to find him myself.
“You must be our new resident!”
Anxiety flares and recedes as I turn to find a younger man with kind eyes and neatly tied locs that nearly reach his waist approaching me.
Too young to be Dr. Mercer, but unlikely to be non-medical staff.
His white coat hangs loosely on his frame, and a stethoscope drapes around his neck like an old friend.
Beta, from the look of him, I notice with relief.
“Dr. Holly Chang,” I say, extending my hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Jackson Reed.” His handshake is firm but gentle. “I’m the town pharmacist, just stopping by to stock up the medicine cabinet. You need me to let you in the back?”
With a nod of thanks, I follow him as he swipes a badge at the metal door just beyond the reception desk. “It’s my first day. I’m supposed to be meeting with Dr. Mercer in a few minutes for orientation.”
“Oh, Dr. Mercer is out this week.”
My heart rate ticks up. “He is?”
“Got called out to Anchorage to give a training, but he should be back next week.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize…” My mind whirls, anxious thoughts already swirling.
If I can’t start my rotation for another week, then I won’t be able to get enough hours to finish the certification.
Did he reach out to reschedule with me and I missed it?
Have I already made a terrible impression before even stepping foot on the clinic property?
How is the clinic even open without a physician on site?
“Should be fine,” Jackson continues, seemingly oblivious to my mental litany.
“You’ll probably figure this out on your own eventually, but Dr. Mercer can be a little scatterbrained with the administrative stuff.
Dr. Klinkhart has been here long enough to know the ropes, so you’ll be with him until Mercer gets back. ”
“Dr. Klinkhart,” I repeat. To cover my lingering nerves, I catalog the clinic’s layout as we walk—supply closets, lab area, what appears to be a small emergency bay. Standard rural setup, minimal equipment. “Who is that?”
“Noah Klinkhart. He’s homegrown like the rest of us, but only moved back to town a few months ago. Rumor has it that Dr. Mercer is grooming him to take over the clinic when he retires, though I’m not sure how Noah feels about that.”
We stop at the nurse’s station, where a harried woman types on her computer while simultaneously talking a mile a minute into the phone propped on her shoulder. She gives us the slightest wave of acknowledgement before returning her attention to the screen in front of her.