“ The only cure for grief is action .“
✚ AGE & DOB: Thirty-five & January 3rd, 1984
✚ OCCUPATION: ER Doctor at Northwestern Memorial
✚ AFFILIATION: Unaffiliated
Calm mind, quiet hands. They were the sort of hands that brought serenity and stillness with both touch and movement, the sort of hands required of a bomb diffuser or, in this case, a doctor tasked with immediate and precise triage. Even as stress beaded sweat on her brow and an adrenaline buzz in her veins, never did an errant twitch manifest in her fingers or a nervous jitter make its way down her arms to her hands, even as blood pooling in a man’s chest cavity raised the stakes to beyond what most people think themselves capable of handling. The hammering of her heart in her chest felt like a metronome, a beat to keep her focused on the task at hand, and only once did she ever waver.
A calm adult was much the same as a child. Surrendered by a young mother who couldn’t take care of her, she was left at a hospital with just a name and a scant sheet of medical history. Yanyu Liang therefore only remembers existing in the system, though given her potential life outside it, she never minded. They gave her the name Eleanor and she quickly became Nora, the quiet, bookish girl who spoke infrequently and hid herself in odd places just for a sliver of privacy in a place with far too many siblings. The home where she grew up was a bit too crowded for her liking with parents perhaps stretched too thin with a squad of children constantly vying for their caretaker’s attention. Never cruel, always kind, but sometimes absent. The kids shouted or misbehaved just to be heard, but Nora never liked the idea of having to work for someone’s affection, and so on the sidelines she remained, lonely but content with her choices. One of her siblings, a boy four years her senior, had other plans.
He was the sort of boy from children’s books, rowdy and brash and always somehow a little dirty, but with the sort of emotional depth Nora would eventually learn was a rare thing. He tried to get her to go outside with him, to play or do literally anything other than bury her face in another book. After she fixed him with a flat stare following every attempt, he realized she could not be swayed with promises of sword fights or races down the sidewalk, and he began to bring her things he thought she might like. At first it was frogs or bugs or even a mouse–a hard pass–and then quickly he shifted his focus to books. Despite his own apparent disinterest in reading, he seemed to enjoy finding things that made her smile. It was in this way he won her over, with pages that promised escape and a patient sort of friendship that she so desperately desired. He made her feel seen, and Nora didn’t understand how badly she needed that until she had it. It was from him she learned her appreciation and love of people; the pair of them differed so substantially, and yet he took a persistent, patient liking to her almost immediately. He was like that with most anyone he came across, and Nora admired him for his ease and aspired to treat people more like he did.
And so with an example set, a quiet, bookish girl grew into a quiet but social teenager, introverted but not shy and always the first to offer help with studies or advice. It afforded her a comfortable amount of popularity in almost all cliche circles throughout her most formative years, and even helped land her the position of student council president during her final year of high school. Politics was not what drew her though–it was the idea of helping people and being in a role that facilitated it. And with her predilection for math and science, the universe made her choice easy. She wanted to be in the medical field. It meant a lot of schools and spending probably more money than she could even imagine, but with the seeds of that dream sewn, nothing could stop her from that goal.
The entire road through university, Andrew remained at her side. He split an apartment with her to cut costs and despite their very different lifestyles, he supplied all the moral support and unconditional love she needed. Where Nora’s path in life seemed straight and clear, Andrew’s was more meandering. He waited tables, bartended, and did whatever odd jobs necessary to make the rent, and though there was no missing the exhaustion behind his eyes, he never seemed to let it eat at him. She had Superman for a brother, Nora decided. When she finally completed her residency at Northwestern Memorial in the emergency room, she applied for and received a job in that very same hospital, much to her utter joy and relief. The job itself was unpredictable and stressful, but Nora thrived under those conditions–patience and a serene disposition made her a welcome presence to both her coworkers and patients alike. When her experience and knowledge grew to a comfortable place, she began to take on emergency room residents as a teacher and mentor. It was perfect. A perfect life.
Of course, she wasn’t naive. Chicago’s darker side crept into the emergency room on an almost weekly basis, a monster of blood and violence and ice with the name Kovali or Zhang or any number of nameless associates in a war waged in plain sight. She took an oath to do no harm, no matter the terrible things these people did, and at first, the juxtaposition was jarring. She patched them up so they could go repeat the process, no lessons learned or oaths to change their ways following a brush with death. Nora would simply set her jaw and take a deep breath. Calm mind, quiet hands. Yet there were cracks in the facade–theirs, anyway. Where Nora treated them with unwavering kindness and care, she still noticed their discomfort at her touch–a hiss of pain as she threaded closed a laceration, or the flinch when she ran a firm but careful hand over a broken bone. Despite the darkness, they were people, and they bled all the same. It humanized them. It shouldn’t have.
Given these regular occurrences, Nora didn’t bat an eyelash when one of the ER surgeons grabbed her out of the breakroom to help attend to a gunshot victim in critical condition. More violence, more bloodshed, more wounds she needed to heal. As she did every time, she snapped into action, only to have the sight of her unconscious brother on the table stop her in her tracks. The surgeon couldn’t have known–it’s not like Andrew was an emergency room regular. With shaking hands, she wordlessly performed the movements to save someone’s life, but there was too much blood, and it was far too late. Useless. She was absolutely helpless to do anything but watch as life ebbed. Tears blurred her vision as attempts to resuscitate him failed over and over until she heard the surgeon’s voice call time of death from somewhere miles away. In a haze, Nora left the ER. She didn’t remember getting home that night and the subsequent week passed in a similar manner. It was a cliche, but the sun seemed dimmer and the whole world less warm without him. She didn’t want to exist without him.
The loss utterly broke her. She took an extended leave of absence from work in order to plan his funeral and take care of the logistics involved in her best friend’s death, but once the ceremony passed, she found herself unable to return. Nothing in her life ever hurt so keenly, so persistently, and despite all her years spent helping people heal physically and otherwise, Nora didn’t know how to cope with this heavy of a loss. At first, it was one drink. The buzz made her sleepy, and if she slept, she didn’t have to contend with the gaping hole in her chest that throbbed painfully with every waking moment. One drink turned into a bottle of wine, then enough tequila to wipe her memory. She woke up in strangers’ beds in unrecognizable places, head pounding and soul still bleeding, and absolutely nothing eased the endless, pounding grief that gripped her every waking thought. For a month she repeated the process until one night, shot glass in her hands and a girl’s hand atop her thigh, she had a moment of bitter clarity.
Do no harm, she promised. But why should she heal these people just to allow someone else’s brother to die at their hands? It was a cycle, and she was absolutely part of the problem. It was then a drunken plan was hatched, one made more tangible following eventual sobriety and the hangover. It took time, but she eventually returned to work with a new goal in mind: gather information, find the man who killed her brother and… and… do something. Nora had always been a woman of action. This was just of a different kind.
(+): patient +empathetic +adaptable
(-): vindictive -self-righteous -obstinate
