Eliora Ruth Ish-Shalom

[Eliora Ish-Shalom]

The Basics

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Name: Eliora Ruth Ish-Shalom
Nicknames: Lia, Eli (Eee-lye)
Age: 34
Orientation: Heterosexual
Desired Rank/Job: On-call Nurse Practioner
Powers: : Psychometry by touch. Anything Eliora touches has a past, a history connected to it by anyone or anything that touch it. By coming in physical contact with it, a jolt of emotions surges, and images flash by in a neverending sequence faster than she can comprehend if she isn't trying to read it purposely. She could feel the rush of cold air of a freezer opening at a company picnic if a co-worker slapped a frozen hamburger patty in her hand and the life leaving the cow as it was slaughtered, or begin weeping and feeling the need to mourn if it was the I.V line of a recently deceased patient on a 'death watch' by family anticipating grieving.
Play By: Norah Jones

The Details

Hair Color:Simple jet black, no high lights or low lights.
Eye Color: Dark brown
Any Piercings? None
Any Tattoos? None
Any Scars?None visible. If someone would persuade her into a bathing suit, they'd see large scars on her upper right thigh, patchy and layered tissue filled in.
General Appearance: She was not an imposing woman. Eli appeared particularly benign: softened eyes, dark, and a hazy green with flecks of brown, her small body stood proud and erect at five feet and five inches tall. Eli always made sure her posture was immaculate, trying to lengthen her body and give a taller appearance.Her skin has yellow undertones, a little sallow and dark circles ring her eyes, most likely from sleep deprevation. Simple black hair is mid-back length and pulled into a messy pony-tail with fringe framing her face. Rosy cheeks were colored with natural warmth, though any smile exposing slightly coffee-stained teeth didn't last long. Small, flat moles are scattered on her face; there was one on her chin, her left eyebrow, and a few more dotted her cheeks.

Eli's collarbones were prominent in the simple blouses she wore of solid colors, along with black or brown slacks with black leather clogs. A white lab coat covered all of this, along with a neon pink stethescope around her neck when in the infirmary. Simple black leather gloves are always on her hands, unless working on paper work with her own supplies, or when giving patient care. When giving care, the standard non-latex exam gloves are on, even if she's checking a pulse.

Personality:To sum it up quickly, Eli is a mess. She's a very frazzled individual, managing the health profiles of loyal patients outside the facility as well as inside, keeping track of prescriptions, diagnoses, nurses's notes, interventions, and whatever else was on their plate, health-wise. Her phone is usually off the hook during her 'quiet time' when she finally stops talking two miles a minute, puts her Starbucks quad-shot no foam latte down (her latest addiction), and sits, just for a minute. And when she does quiet down, her gloves are cleaned and on, she's happier than a pig in mud, just escaping out of the mess called life.

Eli jumps between these two extremes: full speed and out of power. If she's brushed by an item without gloves on or exposed skin touching it, she gets twitchy, nervous, angry: whatever emotion tied with the item she felt or whatever she saw, it's translated through her, making or breaking her day. Mercurial is another way to sum this all up quickly. A mercurial mess.

Because of her ever changing moods, she may seem neglectful to those around her, often forgetting important dates, kid's names, or their names. This isn't on purpose, she's just not devoting her entire mental process to one thing at once. This doesn't mean she isn't nice, or amiable, she's both of those, very much so, often too caring or nice, and could be taken advantage of when she's more vulnerable due to stress or a backlash of her power hit her that day.

Your Vices

Likes:Pomegranates, reading epic poems (Paradise Lost is her new favorite), bocci, Fleetwood Mac, reuban sandwiches, oolong tea, nursing magazines (med-surg is her favorite), Lewis Black
Dislikes: Hard rain, lobster (she broke kosher one time to be rebellious and got violently ill), black olives, cell-phone drivers, grocery stores, libraries (the books have been handled too much), borrowing things, ponchos, kiwis.
Strengths:
-Playing the violin. She was forced into it when she was 7, and has stuck with it since. She splurged on an old violin and is slowly working on retrieving the history from it. It's more of a sanity restorer than anything.
-Her power, also a weakness. She's had enough time to master her power (since age 13 when is manifested, and a mental breakdown following it.) and slow down the transfer of memories and feelings from objects, pinpointing what she should want from it and skipping over crap. This diminishes the more she's stressed, or sick. For example, she could un-glove, grab the watch of a man passed out and at risk for aspirating on his own vomit, and find out if he overdosed on opiates or something else, instead of pushing Narcan and hoping for the best.
-Nursing: It's been her profession for 14 years, and every day she learns something new and tacks it onto her mental cork-board of caring and healing. She's efficient at nursing diagnoses and providing care, but also the empathy a patient needs, no matter how crazy Eli gets; her patients' well-beings come first.
Weaknesses:
-Managing stress. Eli has a lovely habit of completely shutting down when things get tough, like locking herself in her office, taking the phone off the hook, and staring at her pager. She'd had shut-downs like these two or three times a day working in the hospital and clinics.
-Her psychometry. She would forget to put gloves on and pick up a wedding ring, and see a domestic dispute, then the rough love-making following. Not the best image when trying to confirm a liver biopsy in a cirrhosis patient. This happened more in the past than now, but it still slips past her at times.
-OCD tendencies. She won't let anyone else touch her things, rearrange them, or be near to them. Every pen she uses is neatly arranged for certain situations, like a bad prognosis pen, or a letter to home pen, to avoid conflicting emotions when writing, or doing anything. Different plates for different meals to avoid clashing tastes, etc.
-A sob story. Eli knows she should know after being in healthcare for almost two decades that not everyone is really in pain, or actually losing their house, but it is her oath to take the patient's word on all of these. And when she's out of the hospital? She's a sucker for a crying kid, a big eyed kitten in a box, or a wounded vet ringing a Salvation Army. She, she gives, and gives, and also takes in abandoned animals, brushing against their collars and getting a glimpse into their abusive life before. It's draining her.
Fears: Developing Huntington's, like her father. Being alone the rest of her life, without children or a companionate lover.
Secret: She was married once, to a Charlie Shulman. He was her crush in Hebrew school for years, and when they got back together after college, they decided to get a quick secret marriage. This ended in an equally quick and equally secret divorce. They both agreed their Rabbis or families would never find out.

Family Ties

Father:Mordechai Ish-Shalom
Mother:Esther Liberman
Siblings:Ezra Ish-Shalom, Bethesda Wiezman
Any Other Important People: Childhood friend, Lisa Letty

History

The beginning stars in Tel Aviv, Israel, where two socially awkward students at Tel Aviv University got crazy, kissed, and did a few other things after dark in the parking lot in an old jalopy. Esther had always admired Mordechai's skills in discreet mathematics, and he always liked the way she did her hair, with flowers and other little things in it. They were in their last year of school, and decided to take the dive, and a few years later, took another jump and got married. Soon after, their first child was born, Bethesda, and sooner than they would've liked, Eliora was born. The three of them lived in the suburbs of Tel Aviv till her mother was offered a teaching position at the University of Vermont when Eli was nine, Ruth holding the U.S equivalent of an M.D/P.h.D for research. It was a big step, moving with their young children to the states, away from their entire family, but Mord and Ruth took it up, packing their things and leaving a few months later.
Transitioning to her new life in the states was incredibly hard, the language barrier being her hardest challenge. Going from speaking Hebrew everywhere, to English, hearing noisy streets and seeing bright lights glow from the city on Friday nights, and missing her friends took a toll on Eliora. She shut herself out from the world, staying to herself in school, struggling in class, despite the fact she was a diligent student back home. Home. That was the worst of all. Vermont was cold, unforgiving, foreign. For the first six months, she begged her parents to let her move in with zadie and bubbie, her grandparents, but they stood stalwart, reassuring her things would get better. With time, things did get better. Her English became better, with intensive tutoring and opening herself to learning at school, and teaching the other kids in Hebrew school curse-words when the teacher wasn't listening. Her little brother Ezra was born not soon after, and life was adjusting, and she adjusted to life.

Everything came crashing down, so to speak, at 13 or so. Surging hormones and growing teenage rebellion were the least of her issues. On a more chilly than usual November afternoon, Eli reached to pick up Ed's baseball on the play field during recess, and got more than she wanted. The images clashed together like reels of flim cobbled together being played too fast, as she saw Ed's father strike him down as he held the baseball, or smelling the tanning leather it was made of be stitched by a machine. She was...well. Stunned, angry, she felt the side of her face ache, much like his. Now she knew where his bruises came from, but...why? Eli threw the ball back, and ran inside, holding back tears. Everything she touched flooded her with new images and sensations, till she found herself weeping in the girl's bathroom. Eli began putting things together, and poked the bathroom wall. It happened again. In this chaos, she figured out she shouldn't touch anything. How? After pulling herself together after a while, skipping lunch in the process, she dried her eyes and pulled her sleeves down to cover her hands. She kept quiet about this, not even telling her bestie, Lisa, about it. Eli donned gloves all the time, saying she was perpetually cold.
A few weeks later, her family was approached by a man from a school, Hammel Institute. Her mother and father were...mixed about it. They had a hard time believing their Eli was special beyond her academics, and gave it some thought. After a dinner table discussion, they agreed that public school wasn't working, and that trying Hammel wouldn't be a bad idea. The school wasn't too far away, in-state at least. The only qualm was Eli being away for the High Holy days, pesach, and the shabbat. Frequent phone calls were in order, along with letters home every Wednesday.

She finished her studies, though her momentum in senior year began to wane as her father became restless, irritated, angry. He began with small jerking of his hands at the dinner table, they all brushed it off as the stress of work getting to him. In her sophmore year of college at the University of Vermont where her mother still worked, she decided to apply for the nursing program, after fooling around with the idea of mathematics or botany. In clinicals, despite her frantic mannerisms, she flourished, feeling her 'calling', so to speak. She considered herself incredibly lucky to find what she wanted, and what she was good at. Her psychometry was under control, keeping herself on long sleeved shirts with gloves, always claiming she was cold. It wasn't until her junior year that things began to unravel the second time.

Her father was diagnosed with Huntington's, what they described as a degenerative disease without a cure. They also mentioned it could be genetic. Eli began to split her time between school and home, helping to care for her father as he became worse, and his prognosis slipped into early death territory. And in the beginning of her senior year, her father passed away from a vicious case of pneumonia. He had refused treatment, chosing to die. A void had been made in her life, and she filled it anyway she could. She got married. A stupid, silly, and hasty decision. The marriage lasted less than three months, both of them knowing it was a sham, Eli's desperate attempt to quell the devastation. But she moved on. The pain never went away, but it subsided in time. She keeps his picture in her glove, the one he gave to her from one of those mall booths after a day of family shopping.

Eli threw herself into her work, taking extra shifts, trying to get out her anger, resentment, regrets. She did this till she just gave up, exhausted from stress, from the work-centered life she built for herself. After a long talk with the director of nursing, she cut back her shifts and reconnected with her family, going to them for the strength she needed and couldn't build on her own. After a while, she was offered a position as an on-call NP at her old Alma Mater, Hammel. She figured she might as well take it, as the work at the hospital began to take its toll. She arranged to be part-time, keep all her regular clients from the doctor's office adjacent to the E.R, and offer up her services to the metas of the future.

Roleplay Example

The pounding of her heart probably made it sound even more delicious; he had already threatened to rip it out and eat it once before. Why wasn't he speeding up to catch her? She didn't know, she couldn't even bother to think of a reason at the moment. All Ezra could focus on was the sound of her bare feet slamming the gravel, the pain building up in her chest, and the warmth of blood dripping down her face, clouding her left eye before wiping her brow of the mess. Every labored breath let James know she was getting tired and the small whimpers announced she was ready for the picking. But Ezra kept running, and he stayed a few paces behind her. The tears that streamed down her face had dried by now and her legs began to shake and give out. He treated this like sport for two weeks, and her warding charm wore off the very night she had business in Shreveport. So much for luck.

Nothing would help her now, as the beast jumped on her when her knees finally locked and Ezra slumped forward. The two rolled down into a ditch as a flock of birds sped away from the collision. Death was on top of her, and James even risked burning his hands to rip the silver chain off her neck, the sizzle of burnt flesh filling her nostrils along with the sickening smell of blood, sweat, and despair. Hungry eyes, dead eyes, looked into hers, and she could only reflect fear. This only made it more delectable when he revealed his fangs and bit deep into her exposed shoulder. No pain could be comparative as Ezra felt the life drain out of her. For a moment, she went limp, but sly fingers worked their way into her pocket while the devil was occupied: a large silver pocket knife with various Nordic runes came out, usually reserved for ritual. Ezra quickly flipped it open. The slight glimmer of flickering street lights illuminated a way to freedom. In one fell swoop, the gleaming blade slashed over his face, leaving a slick wound from eye to cheek. Ezra struck once again, stabbing him in the chest, twice over. Would she be dead before dawn? Not today. While James was weakened, the ever-vigiliant Ezra slammed the blade in once again, aiming for his heart. His body lay still. But for how long? Long enough, she concluded. In this mix of emotions, the height of the hunt, she felt the hate crash over her like a wave on the sand, and jammed the blade deep into his heart, his gut, dragging the knife down. But she didn't have a stake to properly kill him. A branch would do, right? She hoped to God it would.

So now there she was, hair sticky with dried vampire blood, hands and face, chest and thighs covered in it, a bleeding shoulder, ready to plunge a hastily sharpened stick into this man who seemed so nice a few weeks ago. How in high heaven had she gotten this far? Is this what she had become? No, no way in hell. Nobody would know, and nobody would need to know. Not a soul knew about the schism in Vermont, and what was happening now could stay buried along with that till Ezra was dead too. In a swift motion, she plunged the branch into his heart. The rest...is nothing. She walked to her car, soaked in V, and drove to the lake. There was to be nothing more of it. But some things don't stay with the dead.

What About You?

Name: Em
Age: Late teens
Experience: 5 years.
How Did You Find Us? Advert on my other site, TOTB.
Ready To Play?Yup!

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