Part One - New Beginnings

Hi there! My name is Ambrosia Dawes (Yeah, I know, strange name). I’m 19 and I have just moved to Sunset Valley. I grew up in the big city. I was part of a large family, I had 4 sisters and 5 brothers. I loved them all.

My parents were both thieves and were constantly in and out of prison. There was never a quiet moment and we had to go into hiding several times to avoid some of the bigger criminals. Eventually I had had enough of that lifestyle and I left. I was 16 then.

I moved around for a while after leaving home. One day I heard that there had been a big fire in my old neighbourhood. I contacted the emergency helpline to find out if my family were safe but they couldn’t find any record of them on the survivors list.

I was devastated. I ran straight to the top some cliffs intending to throw myself off them. I stood there for hours crying my eyes out. Eventually an elderly man stopped to talk to me. He said that he had lost his wife and grandson in a fire several years ago and he helped me to come to terms with my grief. I decided that the further away from the city I could get, the better I would feel.

And that’s how I ended up in Sunset Valley. I scraped together all the money I could by begging and selling my jewellery and brought the biggest plot of land I could afford. I always wanted to have a big family house and a garden so this plot was perfect, it was the biggest one in the town! After buying it I had very little money to spend on building a house so I have ended up living in one small room. At the moment I can only afford a bed and a toilet. Tomorrow I am going to look for a job!

I have always been interested in being a nurse so when I read that there was a trainee position at the local hospital I got down there as fast as I could!

I felt very nervous as I walked through the doors. Was it too much to hope that I could get my perfect house and job within a couple of days of each other? What if they wanted to know about my family? Surely they wouldn’t want me, the daughter of criminals, near their patients. I sat in the waiting room with hundreds of thoughts like these going through my head. A woman came in, “Miss Dawes? Please follow me.”…

I followed her through the hospital to the interview room. She introduced herself as the head of HR. The others on the interview panel were the chief-of-medicine, the head of nursing , and Geoffrey Landgraab who would be my boss if I got the job. I was the last candidate so after the interview, one of the nurses gave all of us a tour of the hospital while the panel made their decision.

As I walked out of the hospital I was smiling more than I had smiled in years. I had got the job! I start tomorrow! Just thinking about it, me, a trainee nurse! And if all went well in a few months I would be fully trained!

As I stood there I thought of how proud my family would have been if they were still alive. The thought made me sad again but I quickly pushed that away, I had to go home and prepare for my first day of work!