Unwritten, p.1
Unwritten, page 1
Unwritten
Elisabeth Bell
Copyright © 2023 Sharon Campbell
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Cover design by: Art Painter
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
The Prologue
Part 1: The Buildup
The Info Dump
The Main Character
The Denial of a Problem
The Witty and Supportive Side Character
The Meet Cute
The Brainstorming
The Need for Chili Peppers
The Unexpected Encounter
The Kill Off
The Pep Talk
The Miscommunication Trope
The Friends to Lovers Trope
The Spontaneous Date
The Past Trauma
Part 2: The Action
The Villain
The Love Interest’s Backstory
The Falling in Love Montage
The All is Lost Moment
The Plot Twist
The Third Act Conflict
The Rising Action
The Explanation
The Final Battle (part one)
The Climax
The Resolution
The Final Battle (part two)
The End
The Epilogue
The Second Epilogue
The Afterword
The Bonus Chapter
Acknowledgements
About The Author
For all the characters who are begging to be written.
The Prologue
(a.k.a. The Setup)
Lily, age 17
The princess cut her way across the battlefield, carving a path one by one until she reached her final target. Nothing would stop her now. This was it. This was her moment. After decades of war - a war her ancestors had started fighting long before she was even born - she was finally going to end this.
End him.
He never saw her coming, not until she screamed his name, and by then it was too late. Because as he turned to face her, he was met with the edge of her sword slicing straight through his neck. And as he fell, the princess went to her knees as she let out of cry of victory.
But the sound of her triumph was drowned out by the grief-ridden roaring of a dragon.
I can still hear the shrieks of the dragon echoing in my head as my mind climbs up from the depths of my dream and slowly enters into consciousness. I've been going on adventures in my sleep nearly every night for as long as I can remember, so I got used to having vivid dreams a long time ago. These days, the only thing that ever shocks me about my dreams is waking up to realize that none of what happened was real. That's why I wouldn’t usually give a second thought to having a dream about a warrior princess destroying an evil villain.
And I didn’t think anything about the dream...the first time I had it. Two nights ago. But then I had the same dream again last night, and that seemed odd. Still, it wasn’t strange enough for me to waste any time thinking about it.
Well, now I’m thinking about it.
A lot.
Because this is the third night in a row I’ve had the same exact dream. Down to the last detail. And that is something I’m definitely not used to. I don’t think I’ve ever had the same dream twice, but I know for a fact that I've never had the same dream three nights in a row. What could it mean? It has to mean something. Right?
I glance at my phone and see that it’s only 2:30 in the morning, but there's no way I’m going back to sleep any time soon, so I decide to do something else I’ve never done before. I hop out of bed and rush over to the small bookcase in the corner of my room, rifling through my books until I find my old diary. There’s a pen still stuck in the spiral binding, and - since I didn’t make it more than twenty pages of journaling during my angsty preteen years - it has more than enough blank pages left for what I need to do. So I sprawl out on my floor, right next to the bookcase, and I start to write.
I write down every single detail I can remember about the dream I keep having. The princess’s name. What she looked like. The things she had done in battle, and other things that she planned to do after she won. I write it all down because when I woke up a few minutes ago, I realized this dream is important. It's more than just a dream. It feels real, like a story that needs to be told. And I know, deep down, that I need to write the rest of this princess’s story.
So I promise myself that one day, that’s exactly what I’ll do.
∞∞∞
Lily, age 22
I’m finally down to the last box to unpack. I hadn’t thought it would take long to move my things into my new apartment - considering I’ve been living in a 12x16-foot dorm for the last four years - but I was dead wrong. It’s taken ages to go through everything. But I saved the box labeled “books” for last on purpose. Because it’s the one I’m the most excited about unpacking.
Gosh, it’s good for my soul to see these books again. I haven’t held them in my hands in ages, partly because I didn’t have enough room in my dorm for a bookcase and partly because I haven't had time to read anything but textbooks over the last few years. So they've just been hanging out in this box under my bed for far too long. After signing the lease on this apartment, you’d better believe the first piece of furniture I bought was a bookcase. A big one. I mean, it’s a second-hand one I bought off Facebook marketplace, but it’s mine. And now that I'm done with nursing school, I can fill it with tons of new books that I'll actually have time to read.
With an appropriate amount of reverence, I start to pull out the books that took me to magical places in my teenage years. Twilight, Harry Potter, Vampire Academy…so many classics. So much nostalgia. When I get to the bottom of the box I see a small journal, and I grimace just thinking about what kind of embarrassing nonsense is written in there.
I pick it up, fully intending to toss it in the recycle pile, but I stop myself before I do. Because there's something about the journal that calls out to me. Like there’s something in here that I’ve forgotten about but need to remember. I open it and thumb through the first few pages, and suddenly I do remember - the unrequited crush I had on Brett Winnop in sixth grade. Suppressing a shudder, I slam the book closed and chuck it into the recycle bin.
Because I’m perfectly fine with not ever remembering whatever other embarrassing crap is written in there.
Part 1: The Buildup
The Info Dump
Lily, age 27
I stifle a yawn as I flip on the lights in the Day Patient Center, then boot up the computers at the nurse’s station and start brewing our first pot of coffee for the day. Right on cue, as if the smell of coffee is luring them in, the rest of the staff starts to trudge through the employee entrance.
It’s just before 5:00 in the morning, and if you’re thinking that is an appalling time of day for a human to be awake - much less clocking in at work - just know that I agree with you. Completely. There’s a reason the five separate alarms that wake me up every Monday through Friday are chronologically labeled in my phone as “denial,” “anger,” “bargaining,” “depression,” and “acceptance.”
Jasmine, our Unit Secretary, drops her purse down beside her computer and grumbles, “Remind me why we all have to be at work at this ungodly hour.”
I hand her a cup of coffee but don’t bother answering. It’s way too early to start a conversation, and she knows the reason anyway. She works this shift because it lines up with her boyfriend’s work schedule. Although, if you ask me, I think she'd be better off being away from him as much as possible. But that's not my business.
My reason for working at a job where I have to wake up so early, on the other hand, is…a bit more complicated. See, when I started nursing school seven years ago, I was a bright-eyed young woman who thought becoming a nurse meant I’d be spreading rainbows and splashing sunshine at my future job. On top of that, I would be loved by every single person I met, change the world for the better, and make everyone’s lives happier in the process. I think the actual term for that particular psychosis I was suffering from is called “superhero syndrome.”
And inevitably, my optimistic vision of what being a nurse would entail was slowly but surely replaced with the reality of what being a nurse is actually like. What is it like, you may ask? A whole lot of trying your hardest to keep patients alive while simultaneously juggling anxious family members, egotistical doctors, and dangerously high nurse-to-patient ratios.
After graduating with a fresh perspective of what my reality was going to be, I cycled through several jobs trying to find the best fit for me. Because even after realizing I wasn’t going to change the world as a nurse, I still wanted to bring a little light into the life of every patient I was entrusted with. I knew by then that I wasn’t going to be spreading rainbows everywhere I went, but I was determined to at least throw some sprinkles around every once in a while.
My quest to find the best-fitting job for me started in the Intensive Care Unit, but there wasn’t enough Xanax in the entire world to manage the level of anxiety I dealt with there. Next up was home health, which turned out to be a charting nightmare plus the added risk of premature death by second-hand cigarette smoke inhalation. My third attempt was a doctor’s office, and its calm work environment was a breath of fresh air - quite literally, after the home health fiasco. But the daily repetition started to get to me, and eventually I couldn’t take the monotony anymore.
So that’s how I ended up here, as the charge nurse over Franklin Hospital’s Day Surgery Center. The workflow here has enough of a routine to keep my anxiety minimal, but it's also spiced up with enough variety to keep me challenged and motivated. The downside of working here? Ridiculously early mornings and way too many people telling me how much they don’t want me stabbing them with a needle right before I start their IV. But no patients are actively dying, which is nice. Also, there’s an endless supply of coffee in the break room, and coffee is my source of life. Until I get home for the day, at least, and then that source switches over to wine.
Now, can I honestly say that I feel fulfilled at my current job? That I feel like I’ve found my purpose in life? No. But as far as nursing jobs go, I’m convinced this one is about as good as it gets. And at this point, I’m fine with settling for that. So that’s my overly-detailed reason for having to be at work at such an ungodly hour. But it's always good to have some backstory, don't you think?
After handing Jasmine her coffee, I open the front door and set to work getting our first few patients settled into their assigned rooms. I’ve just got the last patient sorted out when I see Nish rushing in, her long braids bouncing down her back as she hurries into the break room. Nish is another redeeming quality of my current job - more so than the endless coffee, even. I flash her a smile as she flies past me, but I don’t bother saying anything to her. Here’s the thing about Nish: she’s going to get to work a little late every single day, but once she gets here, she works twice as hard as anyone else.
Now, I’ve worked under plenty of charge nurses who let the “charge” part of that title go to their head, using it as an excuse to nitpick about things like clock-in times, but I am not that type of charge nurse. This hospital already has way too many people walking around it with a God complex without me adding my own ego to the mix. If I had an ego, that is, but I think I lost it somewhere between Microbiology and Pharmacology.
But besides all that, I'd rather work with a slightly late, hard-working employee over a punctual one who barely pulls their weight any day of the week. So when Nish walks in that door five minutes late every day, I just give her a smile. And a solid two hours to fully wake up before I try to engage in any conversation with her. Because that woman hates mornings even more than I do, and that’s saying something.
The rest of the day goes smoothly, for the most part. I mean, yes, two of the doctors do rage at me over something petty. But that’s two less than normal, so I'm not complaining. And sure, a male patient makes some sexually suggestive comments to me after his surgery. But anyone who works around surgery knows that anesthesia annihilates verbal filters, so that's not exactly newsworthy. On a positive note, a very sweet older patient gives me a piece of candy. Granted, it does look like it’s been camped out at the bottom of her purse since 1987, but it's still a sweet gesture. No pun intended.
Once the last patient is discharged, I head toward the nurse’s station to catch up on my charting. Hopefully, it won’t take me too long to finish - I have plans made for the night, after all. When I get to the desk, I sit down at the computer closest to Nish and ask how her day has gone. We chit-chat as we work, but my thoughts soon wander to how I plan on spending my evening. Visions of cuddles, cozy blankets, and rosé wine fill my mind. It’s Friday, so I can stay up late tonight and sleep in tomorrow morning. A contented sigh slips out when I think about that.
“You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said, have you?”
I snap out of my daydreaming to focus back on Nish, who had been telling me a funny story about a patient. “I’m so sorry. I completely zoned out there for a minute.”
Nish laughs, “Yeah, I noticed. You over there thinking about your big Friday night plans?”
“I was, actually.”
“Hot date?”
“Mmm, yes, I guess you could call it a date.”
Nish perks up at my answer, her brown eyes flashing with excitement. “Are you serious, you’re going on a date and you haven’t told me? I need details. How did you meet him? What does he look like?”
“Let’s see, he has short, gray hair. Bright green eyes. And he's very fit for his age.”
“Wait, you’re going out with an older man? Finally! I've been telling you for years that's what you needed to do. Tell me more about him, every detail.”
“Well, he loves to cuddle, and he purrs a lot when I scratch behind his ears. His friends call him Mitt, but he’s formally known as Mr. Mittens.”
Nish rolls her eyes and groans. “A date with your cat, really? So, in other words, you’re just doing the same thing you do every other night when you get off work. You had me all excited.”
“No, I usually read and drink wine with my cat after work. Tonight I’m watching Netflix and drinking wine with my cat.”
“Living on the wild side, I see.”
I laugh at that. Nish can always make me laugh, probably because she has a way of saying things that somehow come across as sarcastic without being condescending.
Okay, maybe she can also be a little condescending. But it works for her.
“You could come over,” I offer. “I’ll order the pizza you like and even let you pick what we watch.”
“Thanks, but I have an actual date tonight. With a human man.”
“Ugh, sounds awful. Text me later to let me know how much of a disappointment he turns out to be.”
It’s Nish’s turn to laugh now, “Girl, you are way too young to be this jaded. I know you’ve had crap luck with guys on the dating front, but I promise they aren’t all terrible.”
“I’m not jaded, I’m just…” I trail off, not quite sure how to finish that sentence.
"You're just what?”
“I’m just…waiting I guess.”
“Waiting for what, exactly?” Nish raises her eyebrows and waits for me to continue, not willing to let it go.
“I don't know," I answer honestly. "Something more than I’ve ever found by trying to force a connection. I want a spark with someone who completely catches me off guard, you know? I guess I’m just waiting for my meet cute.”
“What the hell is a meet cute?”
"You know, like in a book or movie, when the main character does something especially dramatic or embarrassing; and then they look up right into the eyes of their future love interest. And, of course, then comes all the tension and flirting and adorable awkwardness.”
Nish gives me an incredulous look. “You do realize that’s not a thing that happens in real life, right? This is the age of dating apps. People don’t even meet out in the wild anymore. You’ve been reading too much, girl.”
“You’re probably right.”
“No, I’m definitely right, Lily. Seriously, what happens when you never have this fictional moment with someone? Are you just going to be lonely forever?”
I can’t help but bristle a little at that question. I love Nish, but she’s dead wrong if she thinks I’m sitting around pining away in loneliness. And I don’t mind correcting her. “Alone doesn’t mean lonely. I’m perfectly content without a man in my life, I promise. Probably happier than a huge percentage of people in relationships, honestly.”
Nish throws her hands up in a show of surrender, “Listen, I understand and support you living the single life. I really do. But sometimes I can’t help worrying that you’re shutting out the possibility of love because you think there’s no way you’ll find a man who-”
“No.” I cut her off before she can finish that sentence. I don’t want to think about the reason I stopped dating in the first place. “That's not what this is about. I mean, yes, you know what made me give up on dating initially. But after I stopped focusing on finding the right man and started focusing on living for myself, I realized I don’t need a relationship."
