Post by Joel Watson on Nov 27, 2017 16:06:20 GMT -5
Full Name:
Joel Watson
Aliases:
Joel
Avatar Photo:
Age:
34
Gender:
Male
Appearance:
Joel is in his mid thirties and stands at 5'11''. His short hair is a rich, dark brown that is very thick atop his head. His eyes are a sharp blue. He has a strong jawline, and although his features are more on the rugged side, his tired eyes show a soft kindness within. He dresses smartly in jeans and boots, and he usually has a comfortable jacket on top of his shirt.
Occupation (studies and job before the outbreak):
Before the outbreak, Joel was finishing his residency as a surgeon and working as the personal doctor for the Magaddino crime family.
Hometown (city, state, country):
Joel was born and raised in Buffalo, New York.
Relationships (relatives, friends,...):
Joel's parents died when he was very young, and he barely remembers them. He was raised by his grandmother, who passed away in his late teenage years. Although the Magaddino family treated him as one of their own, anyone who was affiliated with the Italian Mafia is dead, as far as Joel knows. His wife, Emilia, died during the early years of the apocalypse, and anyone he has yet to meet after have all suffered the same fate.
Weapons (currently in possession):
A pistol
A rifle
A few knives
A machete
A bat
Items (clothing, backpacks, first-aid kits, etc...):
A backpack
A few changes of clothes
An assortment of canned foods
Half a pack of water bottles
A flashlight
A lighter
Batteries
A blanket
A doctor's bag filled with medical instruments
Some medical supplies
A deluxe first-aid kit
Some antibiotics
A picture of himself and his wife
A pink baby blanket, unused
Mode of transportation:
Joel is currently driving an old sedan.
List 3 or more good personality traits:
Smart
Kind
Resourceful
List 3 or more bad personality traits:
Defeated
Loner
Self-deprecating
List 3 strengths:
Is very skilled with his hands (was a surgeon)
Has vast medical and health knowledge
Knows how to fight and defend himself
List 3 flaws:
Struggles with depression
Battles with PTSD
Has a weakness for alcohol
Describe your character's life before the Apocalypse:
Joel was born in Buffalo, New York to normal, loving parents. He lived out his early childhood without much fuss or worry, at least until his parents were killed on the way home one night in a mugging gone sideways. His grandmother, his mother's mother, took him in when he was four, and she raised him to be a kind and soft spirit. She always encouraged him to be a good person and to help anyone in need. Although Joel barely remembers his parents as an adult, the initial loss would have darkened his personality had his grandmother not been there to show him the way. Growing up, she wanted him to study hard and be smart, and Joel followed through to make her happy. Though, as he went through school, he came to discover that not only did he have a natural affinity for it, but that he enjoyed it as well. As a high school student, Joel decided that he wanted to be a doctor, and he set himself on that track.
He was eighteen when he graduated high school, and he had already been accepted to a university in the city. Joel worked hard and kept his nose in a book, determined to get into medical school. He knew that it was going to be a lot of hard work, but with encouragement from his grandmother, he worked through his undergraduate years without much of a hitch. His grandmother supported him emotionally and financially, and he applied to medical school with her blessing.
But everything changed in Joel's final year of college. His grandmother, who had become the most important person in his life, suddenly fell very ill. She was told that she had less than a year to live, and sure enough, she passed away during the summer between his final year of undergraduate school and his first semester of medical school. There was nothing that anyone could do, be it a doctor or Joel himself. Her sudden passing rocked Joel to his core, and rather than study during that summer, he shut himself away. He mostly drank and slept, and he didn't want to accept that he could go on without her. But as the semester approached, he knew that he needed to attend medical school to honor her. What had always been his dream had become hers as well, and he didn't want to let her down in the end.
And so with the money that was left behind to him, Joel started medical school at the age of twenty-two. He worked hard and tried his best, though without his grandmother there, it was mostly going through the motions. About halfway through his time in medical school, the money ran out, and Joel knew that there was no way that he could afford to keep going to medical school. Depressed and alone at twenty-four, Joel found himself one day at a bar, drinking in the early afternoon. He knew that he had let his grandmother down. He had let himself down.
And that was when it happened. In the back of the bar, a large table of well-dressed men panicked as one of their members collapsed on the table. It caused a scene, and no one knew what to do. The man who had collapsed was going into cardiac arrest, and without thinking, Joel jumped into action. He helped keep him as stable as possible until the ambulance arrived, and he was credited with saving the man's life. Little did he know that that simple act of kindness, an instinct that was ingrained in him from his grandmother, would change his life forever.
A week after saving the man's life, he got a phone call. Apparently, the man was Frank Bifulco, the boss of the Magaddino crime family, within the Italian Mafia itself. He wanted to speak with Joel, and he was initially terrified. But after meeting with him in a restaurant, he was treated to dinner and thanked for saving his life. More than that, Frank was so impressed that he wanted Joel to become the personal doctor to his family. Stunned and overwhelmed, Joel expressed that he wasn't even a true doctor, but a medical student who couldn't even afford to finish. But Frank wasn't letting Joel walk out of that restaurant without employing him, and he offered to pay for the rest of Joel's medical schooling if it meant that he would become a doctor only to his family.
Joel agreed, and from that day on, he was owned by the Magaddino family. He knew that his grandmother wouldn't have wanted him to be consorting with the Mafioso, but it was the only way in sight for Joel to finish his education and have a job at the end of it. And so he finished medical school at the age of twenty-six, and went on to start his residency at a top hospital. He would only complete four years of it and never finish, thanks to the apocalypse.
During his time spent with the Magaddino family, things turned up for Joel in the most unexpected of ways. He still missed his grandmother every day, but without having to worry about finances, he excelled in the remainder of his medical schooling. He also came to meet Emilia, the daughter of Frank Madaddino, and the two fell for each other almost immediately. Initially, her father was uncertain about their relationship, but inevitably decided that Joel was the safest bet among the pool of men asking for her hand. And so, with his blessing, the two dated for a few years before marrying when he was twenty-eight years old. Emilia became the center of his life, and the two were happy together as he worked through his residency at the hospital. About halfway through, he came to find out that his wife was pregnant, and he couldn't have been happier.
At twenty-four, he had been depressed and alone in a bar, with nothing to his name. And then, by one chance encounter, he was thirty with a wife, a child on the way, a medical degree under his belt, and a residency at one of the top hospitals in the country. Things couldn't have been going any better for him. Joel had finally hit a streak of good luck after living a life of bad fortune.
What happened to your character on Outbreak Day?:
But Joel's luck was about to run out, though he never would have thought so on that seemingly normal day. He had heard the news reports and knew that many were fearing it was a new virus causing an outbreak of something like mad cow disease. Joel had already booked a ticket to go and attend a conference on the subject in the following weeks, but for now, he had a surgery to attend. Joel got all cleaned up and into scrubs, and he started his surgery with his support system all around him. It should have been an easy surgery, something routine for Joel like putting in a stint, but it didn't turn out that way. The patient had a severe allergic reaction to a medicine that he had never taken before, and the staff wasn't able to control the reaction in time. The man went into severe cardiac arrest and died on the table within minutes.
Joel was stunned. The staff was shocked. No one knew what to do when the patient passed, but more than that, no one knew what to do when the patient came back to life. But there wasn't any beeping on the monitor. There was simply hunger and fury. The man attacked the staff, taking a chunk out of one of the nurses, and everyone tried to control the chaos. Joel managed to stop the attacker, but only with a scalpel through the eye. Rattled, Joel left the frenzy of the operating room only to then find his phone blowing up with calls and texts from Emilia, begging him to come home.
Describe your character's life after the Apocalypse:
Life after the outbreak was difficult for Joel. It was as if the universe had made a mistake in giving him a streak of good fortune, and was now taking it back two times over. The world ended faster than he had anticipated, though he and his family were very safe within the protection of the Mafia. They survived pretty well at first, but his wife's pregnancy, which had been a joyous blessing from the start, had quickly turned into a harrowing worry. Joel didn't know how they were going to help a baby to survive in the world. They could try to raise her inside of the Mafia compound, but although that was safety, it wasn't much of a life. Joel had been trained by the Magaddinos in hand to hand combat, as well as how to shoot and fight. But he wasn't a killer, and he just wanted to be a doctor. But Joel would soon find out that there was a time to fight, and there was a time to heal. And more than that, there was a time to run.
Late into Emilia's pregnancy, the compound was attacked by a few rival families. They were looted and almost the entire family was killed in that one invasion. If others survived is unknown to Joel, who took his wife and escaped with her once the bullets started flying. Together, they drove as far away as they could from the compound, and together, they finally got out of New York. But they had barely entered Pennsylvania when they had to stop. Emilia's water broke, and Joel set up a relatively safe place for her to give birth. But the danger would come from within, not outside. There was much more blood than usual, and Joel wasn't able to ascertain what was wrong with his wife. It was a difficult childbirth that he tried his best to coach her through, but in the end, she had internal complications and died. The child, too, was unable to be saved. With the blood of his darling wife and child on his hands, Joel found himself alone almost a year into the outbreak with nothing to show for it but a baby blanket that would never be used.
After that, Joel moved around a lot, but his luck didn't seem to get any better. He spent a year in Pennsylvania and Maryland with a small family that had stumbled upon him and taken him in, but their seizure-prone son inevitably turned in his sleep and killed them all, except for Joel, who put him down. He spent another year in Virginia and North Carolina, where he traveled with a band of men who he had found while hunting. During a severe walker attack, everyone died except for himself and one other, who had been bitten in the calf. Joel tried to amputate his leg to save him, but it was too late, and he bled out before he had a chance to turn. Within the next sixth months, he traveled around with a small group of survivors through South Carolina and Georgia, but an illness overtook them, a virus, and Joel was lucky to have been the only one to not get sick. Everyone else died painfully from the affliction.
The past sixth months have just been Joel, traveling from Georgia into Florida. He stays away from groups now, for the most part. He seems to be cursed, and it appears that every time he gets with a group since his wife's unfortunate passing, something happens that wipes everyone out. Joel tries and tries, but he can't ever seem to save anybody. And so, he doesn't practice medicine much anymore. He doesn't feel worthy to be a doctor, and he knows in his heart that he let everybody down. His grandmother had raised him to be a man who took care of people, a good man, but it seems like lives just keep slipping through his fingers. Currently, Joel just drinks and wanders. He's very lost, and in more ways than one.
Joel Watson
Aliases:
Joel
Avatar Photo:
Age:
34
Gender:
Male
Appearance:
Joel is in his mid thirties and stands at 5'11''. His short hair is a rich, dark brown that is very thick atop his head. His eyes are a sharp blue. He has a strong jawline, and although his features are more on the rugged side, his tired eyes show a soft kindness within. He dresses smartly in jeans and boots, and he usually has a comfortable jacket on top of his shirt.
Occupation (studies and job before the outbreak):
Before the outbreak, Joel was finishing his residency as a surgeon and working as the personal doctor for the Magaddino crime family.
Hometown (city, state, country):
Joel was born and raised in Buffalo, New York.
Relationships (relatives, friends,...):
Joel's parents died when he was very young, and he barely remembers them. He was raised by his grandmother, who passed away in his late teenage years. Although the Magaddino family treated him as one of their own, anyone who was affiliated with the Italian Mafia is dead, as far as Joel knows. His wife, Emilia, died during the early years of the apocalypse, and anyone he has yet to meet after have all suffered the same fate.
Weapons (currently in possession):
A pistol
A rifle
A few knives
A machete
A bat
Items (clothing, backpacks, first-aid kits, etc...):
A backpack
A few changes of clothes
An assortment of canned foods
Half a pack of water bottles
A flashlight
A lighter
Batteries
A blanket
A doctor's bag filled with medical instruments
Some medical supplies
A deluxe first-aid kit
Some antibiotics
A picture of himself and his wife
A pink baby blanket, unused
Mode of transportation:
Joel is currently driving an old sedan.
List 3 or more good personality traits:
Smart
Kind
Resourceful
List 3 or more bad personality traits:
Defeated
Loner
Self-deprecating
List 3 strengths:
Is very skilled with his hands (was a surgeon)
Has vast medical and health knowledge
Knows how to fight and defend himself
List 3 flaws:
Struggles with depression
Battles with PTSD
Has a weakness for alcohol
Describe your character's life before the Apocalypse:
Joel was born in Buffalo, New York to normal, loving parents. He lived out his early childhood without much fuss or worry, at least until his parents were killed on the way home one night in a mugging gone sideways. His grandmother, his mother's mother, took him in when he was four, and she raised him to be a kind and soft spirit. She always encouraged him to be a good person and to help anyone in need. Although Joel barely remembers his parents as an adult, the initial loss would have darkened his personality had his grandmother not been there to show him the way. Growing up, she wanted him to study hard and be smart, and Joel followed through to make her happy. Though, as he went through school, he came to discover that not only did he have a natural affinity for it, but that he enjoyed it as well. As a high school student, Joel decided that he wanted to be a doctor, and he set himself on that track.
He was eighteen when he graduated high school, and he had already been accepted to a university in the city. Joel worked hard and kept his nose in a book, determined to get into medical school. He knew that it was going to be a lot of hard work, but with encouragement from his grandmother, he worked through his undergraduate years without much of a hitch. His grandmother supported him emotionally and financially, and he applied to medical school with her blessing.
But everything changed in Joel's final year of college. His grandmother, who had become the most important person in his life, suddenly fell very ill. She was told that she had less than a year to live, and sure enough, she passed away during the summer between his final year of undergraduate school and his first semester of medical school. There was nothing that anyone could do, be it a doctor or Joel himself. Her sudden passing rocked Joel to his core, and rather than study during that summer, he shut himself away. He mostly drank and slept, and he didn't want to accept that he could go on without her. But as the semester approached, he knew that he needed to attend medical school to honor her. What had always been his dream had become hers as well, and he didn't want to let her down in the end.
And so with the money that was left behind to him, Joel started medical school at the age of twenty-two. He worked hard and tried his best, though without his grandmother there, it was mostly going through the motions. About halfway through his time in medical school, the money ran out, and Joel knew that there was no way that he could afford to keep going to medical school. Depressed and alone at twenty-four, Joel found himself one day at a bar, drinking in the early afternoon. He knew that he had let his grandmother down. He had let himself down.
And that was when it happened. In the back of the bar, a large table of well-dressed men panicked as one of their members collapsed on the table. It caused a scene, and no one knew what to do. The man who had collapsed was going into cardiac arrest, and without thinking, Joel jumped into action. He helped keep him as stable as possible until the ambulance arrived, and he was credited with saving the man's life. Little did he know that that simple act of kindness, an instinct that was ingrained in him from his grandmother, would change his life forever.
A week after saving the man's life, he got a phone call. Apparently, the man was Frank Bifulco, the boss of the Magaddino crime family, within the Italian Mafia itself. He wanted to speak with Joel, and he was initially terrified. But after meeting with him in a restaurant, he was treated to dinner and thanked for saving his life. More than that, Frank was so impressed that he wanted Joel to become the personal doctor to his family. Stunned and overwhelmed, Joel expressed that he wasn't even a true doctor, but a medical student who couldn't even afford to finish. But Frank wasn't letting Joel walk out of that restaurant without employing him, and he offered to pay for the rest of Joel's medical schooling if it meant that he would become a doctor only to his family.
Joel agreed, and from that day on, he was owned by the Magaddino family. He knew that his grandmother wouldn't have wanted him to be consorting with the Mafioso, but it was the only way in sight for Joel to finish his education and have a job at the end of it. And so he finished medical school at the age of twenty-six, and went on to start his residency at a top hospital. He would only complete four years of it and never finish, thanks to the apocalypse.
During his time spent with the Magaddino family, things turned up for Joel in the most unexpected of ways. He still missed his grandmother every day, but without having to worry about finances, he excelled in the remainder of his medical schooling. He also came to meet Emilia, the daughter of Frank Madaddino, and the two fell for each other almost immediately. Initially, her father was uncertain about their relationship, but inevitably decided that Joel was the safest bet among the pool of men asking for her hand. And so, with his blessing, the two dated for a few years before marrying when he was twenty-eight years old. Emilia became the center of his life, and the two were happy together as he worked through his residency at the hospital. About halfway through, he came to find out that his wife was pregnant, and he couldn't have been happier.
At twenty-four, he had been depressed and alone in a bar, with nothing to his name. And then, by one chance encounter, he was thirty with a wife, a child on the way, a medical degree under his belt, and a residency at one of the top hospitals in the country. Things couldn't have been going any better for him. Joel had finally hit a streak of good luck after living a life of bad fortune.
What happened to your character on Outbreak Day?:
But Joel's luck was about to run out, though he never would have thought so on that seemingly normal day. He had heard the news reports and knew that many were fearing it was a new virus causing an outbreak of something like mad cow disease. Joel had already booked a ticket to go and attend a conference on the subject in the following weeks, but for now, he had a surgery to attend. Joel got all cleaned up and into scrubs, and he started his surgery with his support system all around him. It should have been an easy surgery, something routine for Joel like putting in a stint, but it didn't turn out that way. The patient had a severe allergic reaction to a medicine that he had never taken before, and the staff wasn't able to control the reaction in time. The man went into severe cardiac arrest and died on the table within minutes.
Joel was stunned. The staff was shocked. No one knew what to do when the patient passed, but more than that, no one knew what to do when the patient came back to life. But there wasn't any beeping on the monitor. There was simply hunger and fury. The man attacked the staff, taking a chunk out of one of the nurses, and everyone tried to control the chaos. Joel managed to stop the attacker, but only with a scalpel through the eye. Rattled, Joel left the frenzy of the operating room only to then find his phone blowing up with calls and texts from Emilia, begging him to come home.
Describe your character's life after the Apocalypse:
Life after the outbreak was difficult for Joel. It was as if the universe had made a mistake in giving him a streak of good fortune, and was now taking it back two times over. The world ended faster than he had anticipated, though he and his family were very safe within the protection of the Mafia. They survived pretty well at first, but his wife's pregnancy, which had been a joyous blessing from the start, had quickly turned into a harrowing worry. Joel didn't know how they were going to help a baby to survive in the world. They could try to raise her inside of the Mafia compound, but although that was safety, it wasn't much of a life. Joel had been trained by the Magaddinos in hand to hand combat, as well as how to shoot and fight. But he wasn't a killer, and he just wanted to be a doctor. But Joel would soon find out that there was a time to fight, and there was a time to heal. And more than that, there was a time to run.
Late into Emilia's pregnancy, the compound was attacked by a few rival families. They were looted and almost the entire family was killed in that one invasion. If others survived is unknown to Joel, who took his wife and escaped with her once the bullets started flying. Together, they drove as far away as they could from the compound, and together, they finally got out of New York. But they had barely entered Pennsylvania when they had to stop. Emilia's water broke, and Joel set up a relatively safe place for her to give birth. But the danger would come from within, not outside. There was much more blood than usual, and Joel wasn't able to ascertain what was wrong with his wife. It was a difficult childbirth that he tried his best to coach her through, but in the end, she had internal complications and died. The child, too, was unable to be saved. With the blood of his darling wife and child on his hands, Joel found himself alone almost a year into the outbreak with nothing to show for it but a baby blanket that would never be used.
After that, Joel moved around a lot, but his luck didn't seem to get any better. He spent a year in Pennsylvania and Maryland with a small family that had stumbled upon him and taken him in, but their seizure-prone son inevitably turned in his sleep and killed them all, except for Joel, who put him down. He spent another year in Virginia and North Carolina, where he traveled with a band of men who he had found while hunting. During a severe walker attack, everyone died except for himself and one other, who had been bitten in the calf. Joel tried to amputate his leg to save him, but it was too late, and he bled out before he had a chance to turn. Within the next sixth months, he traveled around with a small group of survivors through South Carolina and Georgia, but an illness overtook them, a virus, and Joel was lucky to have been the only one to not get sick. Everyone else died painfully from the affliction.
The past sixth months have just been Joel, traveling from Georgia into Florida. He stays away from groups now, for the most part. He seems to be cursed, and it appears that every time he gets with a group since his wife's unfortunate passing, something happens that wipes everyone out. Joel tries and tries, but he can't ever seem to save anybody. And so, he doesn't practice medicine much anymore. He doesn't feel worthy to be a doctor, and he knows in his heart that he let everybody down. His grandmother had raised him to be a man who took care of people, a good man, but it seems like lives just keep slipping through his fingers. Currently, Joel just drinks and wanders. He's very lost, and in more ways than one.