The Beautiful Monster

"Is he bragging about that brain abscess?" another voice sounded from behind Alyssa.

"What do you think?" Alyssa smirked as she glanced over her shoulder at Eva, a specialist in cardiology.

They were in the same resident group and had become quite close over the years. In fact, she had made a lot of great connections during her time here in New York.

"That's just wrong, Micah," Eva scoffed as she shook her head at the other doctor.

She slipped a hair clip out of the pocket of her white coat and pinned her blonde hair up before stopping at Alyssa's side.

"We should go out and celebrate your successful surgery."

"If we celebrated every single one of Alyssa's successful surgeries, we would be alcoholics in liver failure," Micah said as he nudged Alyssa with his shoulder.

Alyssa smiled to herself as she shook her head. She still wasn't that great at taking compliments from her fellow doctors, but everything that they said meant a lot.

She didn't float right through medical school or residency. She fought and clawed through each and every day, class, and test.

They were the hardest eight years of her life, but at least her hard work was finally paying off.

"No one said you had to drink," Eva said pointedly. She looked over at Alyssa. "What do you say?"

Alyssa checked the time on her watch just as a yawn broke from her. It was already almost midnight.

She basically lived in this hospital, despite having an apartment of her own in the city. She worked so much that she spent more time here than her own place.

But she would rather be here at the hospital than alone in her apartment.

"I really need to get some sleep," she told them, earning groans from them. She put her hands up in an innocent manner, laughing softly.

She knew that it wasn't what they wanted to hear, but she was reaching the point of being exhausted.

She actually considered sleeping here at the hospital, but she knew that she needed to suck it up and go sleep in her actual bed.

She was paying an outrageous amount of rent to never even be there. She just didn't like how uneasy she felt when she was in her apartment alone.

Maybe it was just the exhaustion from working so much affecting her brain, but she felt as uneasy as she did back in college, like someone was always right behind her.

She never really saw anyone. Sometimes, she thought that she saw a shadow every once in a while that got closer and closer, but she tried to convince herself that she was just experiencing sleep exhaustion.

It couldn't be anything else. It couldn't be anything from her past, which she desperately tried not to think about.

She had come so far from that low point in her life, and she didn't want to relapse into that crushing feeling of sadness that took her so long to distance herself from.

She wasn't that girl anymore. She was Dr. Alyssa Morgan, a talented pediatric surgeon. No one could take that away from her.

"Fine. Get some sleep, but we're celebrating another time," Eva said, and it was obvious that nothing was going to change her mind. Her pager then beeped. She checked it before sighing. "Gotta run. No celebrating without me."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Alyssa said as she watched Eva hurry down the hallway to get to one of her patients. She turned back to Micah. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow."

"Bright and early," Micah said as he drifted his hand through his hair sleepily. Everyone always seemed to be so tired until something came up and snatched their attention.

"You should get some rest," Alyssa told him. The last thing that needed to happen was for him to get too tired before dealing with a brain abscess.

She had faith in her fellow doctors, though. They had spent years training and learning to get to this point in their careers. So many people relied on them, and they were sure not to let those people down.

"Aren't you sweet?" Micah teased her, stepping closer to her where their arms almost brushed.

Alyssa playfully rolled her eyes at him, taking a step back to match his movement.

"I'm not," she joked.

Well, it was a partial joke. She had lost a lot of her sweetness and fluffiness when she got into medical school.

But that wasn't only because of how hardcore medical school was. She spent all of that kindness on a boy who didn't even care about her in the end. But enough about him.

"Well, I think you are," Micah said, his tone taking a softer edge.

His eyes were the shade of dark chocolate, warm and sweet, as they rested on hers.

He was nice to everyone, but he was especially nice to her, and Alyssa didn't want to delve into why that was.

Alyssa could feel the moment growing deeper. Instinctively, she mentally jerked away from that, not wanting to get caught up in emotions or any of that messy stuff.

She knew what the result of messing with that could be, and she wasn't interested in splitting apart at the seams again.

"Goodnight," she told him before turning and heading down the hallway to go grab her things from her locker and change into normal clothes.

She didn't have much to tote around. She changed into a long sleeve shirt, jeans, and sneakers, preparing for the chilly weather of October outside.

Once she grabbed her purse, she walked out of the locker room. Part of her wished that she could just stay here. The hospital was everything that she knew right now. It was a source of comfort for her, even if bad things did happen.

However, she had more control of things here than she did when she was alone. That was when things took a turn for the worst.