THEA WELLS
full name:Â dorothea mae wells
nicknames: thea, dottie/dot (family only)
pronouns & gender:Â she/her, cis woman
birthday & birthplace:Â september 3, 1988 (37); aurora bay, ca
location: seabrook quarter
time in aurora bay: born & raised, left at 18 for college, returned full-time january 2026
sexuality: bisexual
occupation: pediatrician at aurora bay hospital
@aurorabayaesthetic
about.
infertility, parental death tw
middle child of the wells clan, born to fisher's cove-based activists daphne and august wells
afflicted with one of the worst cases of middle child syndrome you'll ever see — attention-seeking, insecure, competitive — exacerbated by the fact that her parents' presences were spotty throughout her childhood
so she did a little bit of everything growing up, trying to find something she could excel at to differentiate herself (and attach a lot of her self-worth to). her older sister was always writing, so thea tried her hand at that. when that didn't work out, sports. when that didn't work out, music. and on and on it went
she was bad at a lot of it and good at some of it but not quite exceptional at any of it, which frustrated her to no end. she did well in school, probably subconsciously driven to do well by constant comparisons to her older siblings (she'd love to never hear the question "are you delilah/sawyer's younger sister?" ever again), but more than anything, she found she was dispassionate about everything she tried her hand at
a desperation to leave the nest had set in by her freshman year of high school, and she was headed off to the opposite coast just a few weeks after she got her diploma. nyu, with an undecided major, uncaring about the mountains of student loan debt she was about to accrue, too focused on figuring out who she was outside of constant comparisons (which were mostly self-inflicted by that point)
college was good to her. she made friends and took advantage of being a bright-eyed twenty-something in new york, and mellowed out a little overall. she spent her first two years fulfilling general requirements and seeing what interested her before finally landing on biochemistry with an eye toward med school. she still wasn't passionate about it, per se, but she was challenged by it, and that was good enough for her
she graduated toward the top of her class and headed to johns hopkins for four years of med school, where she finally figured out what she was passionate about. she liked helping people. it wasn't all selfless — there was something about the stakes of it, the ability it required, the terrifying power over other people's lives — but realizing that very basic core instinct was revelatory to her
specialized in pediatrics in her third year of med school, very much inspired by her niece sophie, who was 14 at the time
med school was done and dusted when she was 26, and she ended up moving back across the country, much closer to home, for her residency at rady's children's hospital in san diego
she met luke weaver, another resident, on her first day on the job. he pursued her instantly, but it ended up being a slow burn — thea was far more interested in her career at the time. she didn't agree to a date until she finished her residency at 29, and they were married three years later
they started talking about kids a few years in, but when they did start trying, nothing took. she put off a visit to an OBGYN for a fertility evaluation for as long as possible — she worked with kids, she could figure out why things weren't working — but it eventually confirmed what she'd been dreading: she couldn't conceive.
the dissolution of her marriage was almost as slow as the lead up to it. thea had a moral opposition to both adoption and surrogacy, and luke could never wrap his head around the devastation it caused his wife. his impassiveness was the seed for one long fight, which ultimately led to a divorce in september 2025
thea stayed in san diego for a little longer, but ultimately couldn't stand sharing not only a city but a workplace with her ex-husband. she moved back to aurora bay at the beginning of this year and is staying with delilah while she looks for a permanent place
family
mother: daphne wells
father: august wells (died 2023)
siblings: delilah carreño, sawyer wells, dolores "louie" wells, buddy wells
ex-husband: luke weaver
personality
+ striving, generous, resourceful
- jealous, competitive, irritable
tidbits.
keeping her last name after she got married was a no-brainer. she had no interest in filling out all of the paperwork the change would've required. very forward-thinking of her
she found out she was infertile just a few months before her dad died in 2023. it wasn't a good year
she's still paying off the student loan debt that built up between undergrad and med school
materialistic as fuck in her adulthood, probably an overcompensation for her family's lack of money in her childhood
more than a little bitter about her divorce, she was on the apps as soon as she moved back to AB. and then she was off of them, and then she was back on within days. she's still recalibrating her relationship to relationships while mourning the loss of the future she wanted and trying to get over the feeling that everything is a dead end, but it never hurts to have a little fun
reads a lot, but almost purely nonfiction. she tends to lack whimsy
plays five instruments semi-decently as a product of her try-anything childhood. she still has a clarinet at the back of her closet and will whip it out once a year to see if she's still got it
has not mastered the art of work-life balance and probably never will, even though pediatrics do allow for that a little more than a lot of medical fields
when she does take time off, she usually spends it outdoors. her ex-husband was a big camper/hiker, and while she never felt fully sold on it during their marriage, she took a solo trip out to sequoia right after they got divorced and found she liked it a lot more
