Doctors and Lawyers Are Both High-Risk Professions
Avery Hayes walked out of the hospital into an October evening breeze that had finally shed the stickiness of late summer. As it washed over her, the suffocating frustration that had been clamped around her chest for a week began to loosen its grip.
She paused at the entrance, staring out at the streetlights with a hollow gaze, and after a moment, pulled out her phone. The two trending topics about her were still buzzing.
#LawyersAreAHighRiskProfession#AssaultAtWestlakeGeneral
The first was from ten days ago. Passionate users were still slamming the domestic abuser, demanding he be punished to get justice for her, the innocent lawyer. The second, from a week ago, was still clinging to the trending list, with people calling for the protection of doctors.
Two completely different events, and somehow, she was at the center of both.
Her thumb hovered over the screen before finally tapping on the assault topic. At the top of the feed was a censored photo of the scene. The resolution was blurry, but she recognized the white-coated figure on the ground at a glance. It was "her."
For the past week, she'd been actively avoiding the memory of waking up in this body, the blinding pain in the back of her head, the faint, metallic tang of blood in her mouth. They weren't her memories, but they were branded onto this mind all the same.
Snapping out of her trance, she closed the app and started searching for information on the Sterling family.
Sterling Foods Co., a local business backed by the Westlake City government, was a typical family-run company.
It wasn't publicly traded but was estimated to be worth around three hundred million dollars.
Avery stared at the screen, her expression unreadable.
To her, right now, the Sterlings were giants.
She had nothing to fight them with. She knew better than anyone where the law fell short.
This was a minor assault charge, carrying a sentence of three years at most.
With the Sterlings' money, if they played their cards right, the person responsible might not even serve a full year.
And the brilliant doctor, Avery Hayes, who should have had a bright future, was gone forever.
No one could get real justice for her. In a few days, the trending topics would fade, and the whole world would forget.
A life shouldn't be that cheap.
She had to think, really think, about how to make them pay a price they would actually feel.
In her group chat, messages from her colleagues were piling up.
"Avery, where'd you go? We didn't see you in the ward."
"The hospital director just called her into his office. I saw that woman from the Sterling family show up. He's not going to ask Avery to just let this go, is he?"
"I'm at the director's office. I just saw Avery's resignation letter."
"Resign? Avery, are you quitting?"
"It's a minor thing, why quit? You studied for eight years and just finished your residency. You can't just give up like this!"
"Get back here! You have a concussion, you shouldn't be running around."
Avery blinked, snapping back to the present, and typed out a reply.
"Yeah, I resigned. I'm mostly healed. Going home to recover."
She closed the app, deciding her first stop should be Doctor Avery Hayes's home.
It was the only place she had to go, after all.
The lawyer's apartment wasn't in Westlake City, and it had never been a real home anyway, just a rental.
In that life, she'd been an orphan with no house, no car, no savings, and definitely no friends.
Besides, that body had died in front of everyone. There was no going back.
She had to keep living as Doctor Avery Hayes.
But she was going to have to change careers. She didn't have the guts to be a lawyer again, and being a doctor was completely out of the question. She wasn't about to lose her life a second time.
As the sky darkened and the city's neon signs flickered to life, Avery crossed the street and pushed open the door to The Corner Diner. She'd grab a bite and rest before figuring out the trip back.
She had just ordered a cheeseburger and fries when her phone buzzed with a call. She answered, and an anxious voice poured through the speaker.
"Avery, where are you? What if you faint out there somewhere? Is it true you're resigning?"
It was Cole Hayes, Doctor Avery Hayes's cousin. He was three years older and already an attending physician. Her decision to study medicine had a lot to do with him.
The doctor's background was similar to her own, but their lives had been worlds apart.
Her parents died when she was eight, and she was taken in by her aunt and uncle.
Cole, worried his little cousin would get lost in her grief, had taken her everywhere with him.
Over time, the doctor had become completely attached to him, even choosing the same major in college and studying under the same mentor.
He'd been the one to get her the job at Westlake General after she graduated.
A week in, Avery had mostly adjusted to her new identity and understood the dynamic. "Cole," she said quietly, "I don't think I'm cut out to be a doctor."
There was a long pause. "You worked hard for eight years," he finally said, his voice laced with disbelief. "You made it through residency, and now you want to give it all up because of this?"
"Cole, I just don't have it in me to save people anymore," Avery said, the exhaustion plain in her voice. She stared at her faint, unfamiliar reflection in the diner's window, a face she had to accept as her own.
"Were you scared?" Cole asked cautiously.
"Yeah," she admitted. "I was."
To Cole and everyone else, this assault was just a bump in the road, a professional hazard. But to her, it was the bloody event that had ended Doctor Avery Hayes's life. If she hadn't woken up in this body, Cole would be planning a funeral right now.
Avery looked down at her pale fingers, the knuckles distinct. These hands had held the scales of justice and, more recently, the scalpel of life. Now, she wanted nothing to do with either.
Her voice sounded distant, even to her own ears. "I was trying to save someone, and they tried to kill me. When that stool was coming down, all I felt was fear. I even regretted studying medicine."
It wasn't exactly a lie. It was the original owner's last thought before she died: *I regret this.*
That regret still lingered, a heavy weight in her chest, even with a different soul in charge.
It felt just like her own final regret after being killed by the domestic abuser, regretting she'd ever become a lawyer.
She was starting to think that saving lives and upholding justice weren't nearly as important as just... living.
Cole was silent on the other end of the line.
What could he possibly say to that? Their mentor always said his sister's hands were born to hold a scalpel, that she was destined to be a master surgeon.
Her future was supposed to be brilliant, and now it was shattered by a single moment of violence before it had even begun.
Swallowing his own hurt, Cole forced a calm tone. "If you're not going to be a doctor, what are you going to do?"
"I haven't thought that far ahead. I'm just going to rest for a while," Avery said, though she already had an idea forming. In her past life, she'd chosen law because, besides the prestige, it paid well. A few more years, and she might have even been able to afford her own apartment.
And now...
A new resolve hardened in her thoughts. She had to get justice for Doctor Avery Hayes. To do that, she needed to find a job that paid fast. With money, some things just got a whole lot easier.