Julia Sato

who: @drjuliasato where: the hospital

Julia was paying no attention to the world around her as she tapped away on the screen of her iPad trying to get through some extra charts over her lunch break before heading back out to the NICU. She’d gotten herself an apple with the intention of eating it while she worked but instead it sat just to her right entirely ignored so much so that it was starting to go brown where she’d cut it into haphazard slices. Hearing someone say her name she looked up with the intention of telling them she was too busy to chat, until she saw Carlos had come with a peace offering as well. 

Arkin still felt like he was missing something. Something that clearly Julia had pieced together and it had her reeling. His face softened at seeing her reaction and the usual sort of scowl he had when it came to their past and what had been weighing on his mid for years finally eased a bit to try to put together what he had missed in that moment. If she had never sent him a letter and he had clearly never sent her a message who the hell had?

The sensation of his hands against her arms sent a kind of lightening bolt through the woman’s entire body because it brought back so many memories in a flash that she’d repressed for years. Making it her mission to separate the two times in her life, before she had left Aurora Bay and after, and these were before feelings. Raw ones that hadn’t been properly dealt with, let alone any of the traumas that had come along with them, it had her breath catching in her throat as she gripped the side of the table. 

CLOSED STARTER @drjuliasato WHERE: aurora bay hospital, children's department

Julia had already started ignoring Alfie to make a point when he’d appeared out of the blue with this so called ‘idea’ but as soon as her dad’s retirement party was mentioned she felt her jaw clench. It wasn’t even something she was planning on attending at all let alone with any kind of gift. When he’d finished his little tirade of information she looked up at him with a single eyebrow raised, unable to stop the scoff that escaped. “Spitting acid? No, I was thinking something along the lines of hand crafting him a cocktail containing it.” Starting off down the hallway as she returned her stethoscope to around her neck from where it had previously been laying at the nurses station next to her. “I’m not going to his retirement party, let alone in matching colours with anyone. I’m too busy with work. I’m sure he’ll understand - it’s what he always taught me after all, work comes first. But i'm sure he'll be very touched by the effort he sudo son went to in an attempt to plan a nice gift for him.” @rhxdes

It’s been an eventful evening. One spent mostly on the dancefloor with the occasional drink in hand, sucked down faster than they should ever be. The buzz was slow to start, but then once her vodka sodas tasted like water, Blake did switch to just water for the last hour. It hasn’t stopped the way the edges of her vision have softened, and the invigorating feeling remains even once she decided she needed to escape and catch her breath. 

Julia just giggled as the woman told her she wouldn’t be the one to know about good tequila, something that was unusual for her since…well she wasn’t a giggler. She was hardly even a laugher but apparently when liquor was involved things got super interesting. “Well it’s the good shit…take it from someone who’s had a few many shots of it tonight.” Shooting her the finger guns, another thing that was just so unlike Julia it was almost funny. 

Eden's brows rose at the sudden, near outburst of the woman. She wasn't trying to be mean or rude, it's just that she really didn't know her and she did believe Arkin. He was an actor, sure, but she could see how hurt he was and she didn't believe that hurt was something he was playing off of. "You're not going trying to tell me that you had a situation like the Notebook, except letters were sent rather than being withheld, are you?" Eden gave the woman a skeptical look, what she said was half a joke, but she was still curious. Maybe it was true, but could anyone really blame her for being suspicious of the woman she'd heard so many things about, who'd broken her brother's heart? Eden didn't have too much of her own opinion on the situation in general. She was only eight years old when it happened and she didn't exactly hang out with Julia or her brother that much when she was that young, but she knew what she'd been told. However, as a journalist, Eden had learned that it was always good to get both sides of the story and try to keep your own emotions out of it. That was a bit more difficult when it was family, though.

“If I could tell you the answer then things would have been a lot easier sixteen years ago, but I can promise you I never wanted to stay behind while Arkin went to LA. And if I’d thought for a second he wanted me there with him then I’d have walked out the house with my bags and never looked back, trust me it would have made a lot of things a hell of a lot easier.” Eden had no idea the hell that followed her in the wake of what she thought had been her ex boyfriend leaving her, but the visceral feeling in her chest of anger that she was being blamed for something she wished with every fibre in her being she could have avoided? It was enough to make the otherwise often stoic woman a little emotional in her throat. “I’ve never seen The Notebook, so I wouldn’t know.” Well it wasn’t like her parents were going to allow her to sit around the house watching romance films, they thought they’d fill her brain with fairytales and dumb ideas, and by the time she was at medical school the woman was too focused anyway. 

CLOSED STARTER for @drjuliasato

“I’m home.” Julia repeated in a low voice, not wanting to disturb his quiet moment, but when she was invited to join she did so with a grateful smile. Sinking into the other chair that was sat on the balcony next to him, among the foliage that he’d so carefully cultivated which brought the woman inner peace she really needed in this moment. 

Eden furrowed her brows as she listened to Julia's side of the story and she shook her head before the woman had even finished. "That's not what I've heard. Look, I don't want to go into everything about this because it's Arkin's business, but he seemed really hurt that you never showed up. I really don't believe he'd ever say anything like that to you." And what Eden wasn't going to say aloud was that she would believe her brother over Julia any day, which sounded mean but she it was true. Eden trusted Arkin. Well, some of that trust had been broken when she nearly lost him but they were working on rebuilding it.

“I get it…okay? You don’t know me, you don’t trust me, why would you when Arkin is your brother.” The woman wasn’t an idiot, she wouldn’t stand there thinking a few simple words of explanation could explain away what was no doubt a years old grudge the entire O’Connell family had built up towards her. Admittedly one she hadn’t known about until she got back to Aurora but it was becoming very obvious the more she interacted with them. Only serving to make the already lonely woman feel more isolated in truth but she didn’t blame Eden or even Arkin for that. If wires had been crossed…well then their anger was as valid as her own deep rooted sadness. “And I would never have said anything like what he is saying I said to him…in a million years…I was beyond in love with your brother. I would have followed him to the ends of the earth.” There was a note of passion behind her tone before being followed up quickly with a soft sigh. 

He nods with a smile, and his gaze remains trained on her face. She wears the late hours in the tiredness of her eyes, the exhaustion in her voice, and her shoulders. “Don’t you ever want to go home right after work? If I had to watch the sun set and rise, I’d be out for the count.” He scratches her order down on the server pad.

His question was a fair one, it was probably what most people would do right? But something about the half an hour to an hour she’d spend here in the diner helped her put the stresses of the shift behind her so when she finally did go and try to get some rest it came a little easier. Possibly just from simply getting to chat to Fletcher for a little bit. He had such comforting energy to Julia. “Sometimes, but I need to seperate myself from the things I’ve been doing during my shift, you know? Otherwise I’d just lay in bed thinking about them. This is like my….diner buffer.” She joked weakly. 

☎️ + Julia