Hey all! I've been reading a lot of SOA fics lately and I felt super inspired to portray my own idea into writing. I hope you like this as much as I do. Be kind! xo

CHAPTER ONE

A paramedic rushed through the double doors of the emergency department, followed by a trolley and another medic directing it through the doors. The wheels rattled in protest at the speed in which it was being pushed through the hallway. "We've got a female, 22 years old, found unconscious in the park." The paramedic spoke out loud to the team who had immediately rushed to the trolley; they'd been warned of her arrival once the paramedics had left the scene. Immediately each member of the team proceeded to do their individual allocated jobs, clearing a space for Cate who was at the head of the bed in an instant. She took a quick glance down at the information that had been handed to her by one of the medics, before moving to look down at the injured woman, placing a hand to the side of her head whilst bringing out her pen torch from her pocket. She was pleased to see that the woman was just about conscious, but that meant very little in the grand scheme of things. "She came too in the ambulance, barely though." The male paramedic added directly to Cate, and she nodded her head in thanks.

"Hey sweetheart, can you tell me your name?" she spoke loudly, flashing the bright light into each of the patient's eyes, checking for the response of her pupils. She wasn't happy with the way the pupils reacted and she pushed her lips together with a frown.

"Sandra…" the blonde slurred in response, her eyes flickering slowly from one person to another, blinking slowly. Cate noted that her eyes were slightly bloodshot and red around the lids.. She was under the influence of something. Cate looked down at the blondes arm and turned it palm up, that was when she noticed that scattered across her pasty skin were a mixture of old and fresh track marks, one of which had some fresh blood around it. She sighed and clenched her teeth, one of her awful stress-induced habits. This town was full of crackheads and drug addicts; she'd seen way too many incidents like this during her short amount of time working there.

"Great. Sandra, do you know where you are right now?" she asked, popping the pen torch back into the pocket of her scrubs. She watched her face whilst waiting for a reply, trying to gauge her reactions as part of her quick examination. One of her colleagues passed her a clipboard with the patients observations jotted down onto it and she cast her blue eyes down to the paper. After the briefest of looks, she nodded her head in thanks and passed it back to the nurse beside her. Cate looked back down at Sandra, another frown tugging at her brow. "Sandra, I asked if you know where you are? Can you tell me what happened to you?" she repeated a little more firmly this time. The patient made a small sound, barely enough to be considered a mumble. Within seconds she clicked that something was about to wrong, and before it had even begun Cate was shouting "She's crashing!" Sandra's eyes rolled to the back of her skull in an instant and her body began to convulse violently as the heart monitor rang out with a series of quick beeps. "Get me the Naloxone!" she demanded to her team and within seconds a syringe was passed to her which she quickly grabbed. She flicked the end and pushed until some of the liquid trickled out of the syringe to ensure there was no air, before bringing it to Sandra's left arm which her colleague was kindly holding down for her. She worked so quick that her team barely knew what she was doing until she had done it. Cate pushed the Naloxone into a vein, emptying the contents of the syringe into the young girls system.

Even though the patient was still convulsing, she raised her hand as a sign for her team to hold fire. The anaesthetist was still at Sandra's head, tilting her head back to keep the airway clear. There wasn't much else they could do whilst she was fitting, they could cause more harm than good. However, the drug she had just administered was a drug that reversed the effects of opiate overdoses and would take just a couple of minutes to kick in. Almost like clockwork, Sandra's body began to still and the beeping of the heart monitor started to slow down. The tension within everybody's bodies left them and they all let out sighs of relief. Cate, however, always looked tense and didn't often look pleased, she was hard to read, she knew that much. "Good call, doc." One of the nurses commented whilst tending to Sandra who was now completely still. Cate did nothing but nod her head once, bringing her hands up to rest on her hips as she silently observed the young blonde girl in front of her.

"I want you to continue monitoring her vitals, take some bloods and I'll prescribe another dose of Naloxone in case anything like this happens again. We don't know how much she's had and I suspect that it's heroin." Cate spoke without looking away from the blonde, biting on the inside of her lip for a moment. She grabbed the drug chart, scribbling down some prescriptions. "Dan, I've written up a 4 hourly bag of fluids, if you can get that going please." She turned her attention to the nurse with dark hair stood at her side, passing him the drug chart. He nodded his head at her and got to it. She liked this team; they did what they were told with no questions asked. She popped her pen into her front pocket and looked at the 2 remaining members of the team now that the others had gone back to their previous jobs, since Sandra was now relatively stable. "If her oxygen levels drop below 94 percent, pop some nasal specs in. And if you could do an ECG, that would be fantastic." She requested, smiling a small smile as she popped her hand onto Lisa's shoulder. Lisa was another one of the nurses, a fantastic one at that.

"No problem, Cate." She chirped and went off to do as she was asked.

Cate grabbed the notes from the side and retreated to the nurse's station, passing through the otherwise quiet emergency department and all the empty beds. Charming was a small place so the ER wasn't always busting with emergencies. A lot of the time it was slips and trips, bumps and bruises that brought patients into her department which was a hell of a lot different to what she was used to. The raven-haired doctor let out a big huff as she dropped down onto one of the spinning desk chairs. The doctor who would be taking over for the night shift had arrived and was stood across from her, leaning against the desk. His name was Tom and he was a great doctor, but a massive flirt. He'd asked her out on several occasions already, of which she had declined every single one. He was a nice guy, but she wasn't looking to date and in total honesty, she just wasn't interested.

"Hey Cate, how's the day been? Quiet as usual?" he asked with a wide grin, tapping his pen against the palm of his other open hand.

"It's been alright, my day ended with another overdose. I swear this town has a huge problem and everybody just overlooks it." It was true, it was as if the locals just swept it under the carpet and ignored the problem. Even the sheriff's department lacked control over the situation. "She's over in bay 6, so far she's stable and I've got the team sorting everything else out. You might wanna go check the ECG and blood results though." She advised him with a small smile, whilst standing up and passing him the set of notes that she had been holding on her lap. Tom chuckled lightly and took the notes, in one hand and saluted her with the other.

"Yes ma'am." He joked and she rolled her eyes so far, she thought she might lose them in the back of her head. Rumours had spread about her career history and she wasn't fond of it, she hated gossip.

"Alright. Have a good night." Cate said her goodbyes and parted ways with him, making her way to the staff room to collect her things and finally leave after what had been a busy 18 hour day.

Cate was met with a warm breeze as she exited the hospital and stepped out in the night. She stood for a minute and tilted her head back, inhaling deeply and letting all her tensions go with one big exhale through parted plump lips. She still wasn't sure if she could be happy here, but for now it was all she had, and she was in no position to be picky. Opening her eyes, she looked up at the starry night sky for a brief moment before sniffling and looking back ahead of her. The car park wasn't very busy and she'd parked in the closest space available so it didn't take her long to get there. Anyone watching would have noticed the smallest limp in her walk, so slight that if you weren't looking long enough you would miss it. Her knee was painful some days and completely tolerable on others. Today was one of the bad days and she blamed it on herself for the short run she had gone on the night before last. It was an old injury which would stick with her forever and be a constant reminder of what she could never achieve.

Within minutes she was in her car and had started the engine, it ticked over nicely and she couldn't help but run her hands over the leather of the steering wheel. She'd recently become the owner of a 1981 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 and it was her pride and joy. She toyed with revving the engine just to hear her purr but she just wanted to get home. So without a second more of delay, she put her car into gear and left the hospital. She didn't live too far away, but far enough to be able to enjoy the drive. Driving was something she'd always liked doing, she'd been a bit of a car fanatic during her tomboy teenage years and it hadn't quite left her.

Cate stopped at some traffic lights, the glow of the red illuminating the interior of her car and she glanced at herself in the rear-view mirror for a moment, admiring the red hue. It was then she heard loud rumbling engines, louder than her poor little Camaro. They were that of Harley-Davidson motorbikes. She'd often heard them around town.. In fact, there was always one outside of her neighbour's house, sometimes even more! With a brief glance out of her window she spotted the line of the rumbling motorcycles. They sounded like angry dragons and she couldn't help but smile at the childish thought, she was definitely tired and definitely needed some sleep if a thought like that was enough to make her laugh. She looked again, only this time, her eyes met with a pair of big brown eyes, looking directly at her from his place on the bike beside her. She couldn't bring herself to look away and as she held eye contact with him, the sound of the loud rumbling engines slowly became background noise to the point where she barely even noticed it was there. Suddenly, he gave her the goofiest, biggest and kindest smile she'd ever seen and he nodded his head to the side. She arched her brow, not quite getting what he was doing or his gesture, until a honk of a horn from behind her broke her out of her trance. She came crashing back to reality and noticed that her car was now illuminated green with the change of lights. She kicked her car into gear and sped off from the traffic lights, leaving behind the smiling biker. If only she knew that this would be the man who would make Charming a place worth living.