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 shoveledpaths. 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 readingHeat Mountain Clinicand a smaller one announcingEmergency Services. Not exactly the gleamingtrauma 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.Betafemale.”
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.”
