Kayla Thornton
From Sinanju
 | |
| Tamera Mowry as Kayla Thornton | |
| Kayla Thornton | |
|---|---|
| Played by | Fikgirl |
| Statistics | |
| Goes By | none |
| Status | Alive |
| Race | Human |
| Gender | Female |
| Age | {{{Age}}} |
| Primary Occupation | {{{Occupation}}} |
| Special Abilities | Whatever makes this character stand out frm the crowd. |
Kayla Thornton (Series: Strong Medicine)
Contents |
Pre-Deluge history and biography
Kayla Thornton spent her whole life living in Pennsylvania. She grew up in the rural town of Mount Union ("population 2,500"), and gained a love of books and learning from her mother, an elementary school teacher, and a love of nature and fierce independence from her father – self-employed gardener in the summer and snow-plow worker in the winter.
Blessed with a natural intelligence, brimless curiosity and photographic memory, growing up Kayla changed ambitions as often as the seasons switched. However, it was a family tragedy that made her decided on her ultimate path: when she was ten years old, her younger brother was shot by a friend playing with a hunting rifle. While the friend ran for help, Kayla tried in vain to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, the nearest doctor was 25 miles away and Kayla's brother died despite her desperate attempts. That experience is what made Kayla decided to become a doctor and she put herself through medical school.
Upon graduating medical school, top in her class, she got a coveted residency at Rittenhouse Hospital ER's in Philadelphia, PA. There Kayla quickly learned that even books don't substitute for a human and heart and that being a doctor is also about knowing your patients and not just your diagnosis. Under the steady and capable guidance of the other doctors at Rittenhouse, Kayla blossomed from a very well-educated first year resident to a very caring and capable doctor as a third year resident.
When the Deluge hit, Kayla was on rotation at the Rittenhouse ER. She knew that something had happened, she felt like a million ants crawled over her skin and out of her body when the lights flickered and dimmed. That was when the screaming started. All around her, the ER was in absolute chaos – nurses, doctors, residents, orderlies – everyone briefly went into a state of panic as they realized all around them colleagues and patients alike had disappeared, melted, been mutated or fused into the floor, or furniture. After the initial shock and horror wore off, Kayla and Dr. Linn snapped into action, helping those that they could and doing what they could to make those they couldn't help more comfortable.
Post-Deluge events
Rittenhouse ER became a rotating door of activity for the next 72 hours. Kayla, Dr. Linn, Dr. Dylan West and Dr. Luisa Delgado ("Dr. Lu") along with several other residents and doctors, worked tirelessly, catching only a nap for an hour or so here and there. The results of the Deluge left people in need of trauma care all over Philadelphia. All non-essential procedures and examinations were cancelled and Rittenhouse turned into one of the primary trauma care centers. It was only when the chaos begin to die down that Kayla recognized that her fiancé, Peter Riggs, an ER nurse, was nowhere to be found and hadn't been seen since before the Deluge.
Seeing a news report for the first time since the madness, Kayla understood what had happened, and was relieved to see that there was a long line of people disappearing – and reappearing even if it were halfway around the world. That gave her hope that Peter was alive, and trying to get back to Rittenhouse … and to her.
Time to worry and fret over her fiancé was limited. Soon the first cases of Fate's Handmaiden were coming through the ER, and as diagnosis and treatment began, Kayla made an unexpected discovery: she could diagnose and detect illness by touch. Not that such a gift did her much good when faced with Fate's Handmaiden. In that case, all that she could do was sigh sadly and know that she was resigned to watching another patient die. And die they did; not just patients, but colleagues and support staff and her good friends and family that were the staff of Rittenhouse. She tended to both Dr. West and Lu in their final hours, offering what little support she could to Lu's husband, Jonas now a widower with a six-month-old infant to care for.
One by one, everyone around her died while news reports insisted that a cure was right around the corner. Kayla was a doctor and she wasn't naïve. If there was a cure, she knew that half of the population would be dead before it was distributed. Eventually, Kayla was the only doctor working with the dying and she didn't know what was worse: the mayhem and anarchy in the streets of Philadelphia or the hospice and tomb that became the corridors of Rittenhouse hospital.
Kayla went through the motions, living the hospital to breathe in fresh air and check her apartment to see if her fiancé had returned. The longer he was missing, the more hopeless Kayla realized his chances of survival were. Still, she chose to believe that he was somewhere he always wanted to visit like Tibet or China, and not lost to her forever. She kept going back to the hospital, segregating the living (dying) from the dead and offering them comfort. The numbers of the living were dwindling fast.
One night as she made her "rounds," Jonas burst into the ER with six-month-old Milagro in his arms. One touch and Kayla knew. She hugged Jonas and promised to do everything to help Milagro, though she knew it would be futile. The little girl was a much a fighter in this as she had been in birth, but in the end, she lost the fight. Kayla accompanied Jonas to bury Milagro in the Ray family plot beside her mother. Though she hated to leave the man there, at his insistence, Kayla returned to what was left her patients at Rittenhouse.
When it became apparent that there was nothing more that she could do, Kayla set about her last duty as a Rittenhouse doctor: filing death certificates. For every single patient who had a name, a wallet, a note tagged to them, she filed a certificate. Chances were no one would ever see them, but it was something she felt had to be done.
That done, Kayla left Rittenhouse hospital for what she knew would be the last time. Amazingly, the streets of Philadelphia were one thing that they never had been: quiet. Walking Philadelphia was like walking in the tomb of Rittenhouse and Kayla had never been so happy to reach her apartment. After trying and failing to get a television signal or a radio signal or even a dial tone, she started packing. She would go to Mount Union and hope that her family, or someone she knew still lived. She was in the middle of packing when she found the birth announcement of Milagro and that reminded her of Jonas. The last time she'd seen him, he hadn't shown any signs of the disease. Could he still be alive?
Kayla packed up her neighbor's SUV and navigated Philly's streets to Jonas's upper-middle class suburban neighborhood. The door to the house where Jonas once lived with his wife and infant daughter was wide open, and Kayla found her mentor's widower in the living room passed out and smelling of alcohol. After some arguing, fighting and bullying, Kayla finally got Jonas cleaned up and sobered up and convinced him to come with her to Mount Union – mostly because she was afraid he'd drink himself to death, or worse.
Mount Union was as deserted and dead as Philly. Her father had already been buried in the church cemetery, but her mother died in bed alone. Jonas helped her bury her mother beside her father, then together they moved through town laying to final rest those who'd had the unfortunate luck of outliving their loved ones. That duty done, Kayla and Jonas decided to move on together, deciding to see the world – which Kayla had never done – and hoping to find survivors.
