T H E C H A R A C T E R
Full Name: Roderich Edelstein
Age: 34
Birthday: October 26th
Gender: Male
Hometown: Vienna, Austria
Appearance: Roderich is somewhat short in stature (5’7) and very thin and bony in frame, though over the years he’s learned to carry himself in such a way as to make it less noticeable. His brown hair is thick and a bit unruly, and his violet eyes are dark and rather severe. He’s farsighted and wears thin-rimmed glasses to correct that, and has an oval-shaped face and a mole to the left of his normally unsmiling lips. All in all he tends to appear stiff in posture and aloof, radiating serious composure.
Personality: Roderich is, in a word, professional. Due to the fact that he isn’t the most strong or masculine-looking man (a fact that teasing he’s experienced has made him painfully aware of), while at work he tries his very best to put on a stern, no-nonsense front in order to ensure he is taken seriously. He is not someone who treats his job lightly—when tasked on a patient, he’ll typically try to be as thorough as possible when it comes to testing and possible diagnoses, to ensure that nothing catches him by surprise. He can be a bit short and snappish towards his colleagues as he gets wrapped up in his patients’ problems, demanding for things to be done immediately to help them. He hates the feeling of not having control over a situation—especially of being at a loss as to what to do next.
While outwardly he comes across as somewhat selfish, inwardly he is a person that really does care deeply for others. He is very gentle, compassionate and attentive to patients’ less vital concerns, such as modesty. His bedside manner is calm, clear and polite to a fault, though he prefers to not have to break bad news to patients due to the fact that such a situation makes it easy for him to become emotionally invested in them. Getting to know his patients on a personal level has brought a lot of pain to him in the past, so he tries his best not to get too close to them, especially if their illnesses are severe. Despite this necessary distance, he is able to take a lot of pride in his work, even though he feels that it is better to keep moving forward than to dwell for long on his accomplishments.
Placing full trust in others can be difficult for Roderich. He can be prone to suspecting others do not care as much or work as hard as he does and has been known to not take colleagues at their word even if he knows them well, pestering them until he has the test results and reports he wants in his hands. He knows that with much of his work he cannot have certainty, but longs for it all the same. The patients he has failed to help in the past weigh heavily on his conscience, prompting him to exercise caution to the point of being downright anal.
During his free time, Roderich’s primary means of enjoying himself is music. Due to the fact that he’s a specialist and tends to work shorter hours, he was able to become involved in a community orchestra, where he plays piano and violin. He expresses himself best through his instruments, often using them to de-stress, and can become very pissy very fast if an emergency cuts into his usual practice time.
Position: Doctor
Experience: Four years
Expertise: Infectious disease specialist
Other Notes: Due to his profession and his personality in general, Roderich is a cleanliness freak. He does not go anywhere without hand sanitizer, latex gloves or his Control of Communicable Diseases manual, and has on more than one occasion, upon witnessing someone failing to wash their hands, thrown a fit capable of scaring the living daylights out of everyone watching. His office is probably one of the neatest in the hospital.
History: Roderich was born to a wealthy family in Austria. His father was a rheumatologist and his mother a homemaker, and while he was closer to his mother, he had great admiration for his father, who was very talented and renowned in his field. Roderich went to private schools up until his undergraduate years, when he attended a public university in Vienna. He went through a brief period in which he considered majoring in music but subsequently decided he would have a better likelihood of finding well-paying work in medicine.
He moved to the United States after receiving a scholarship from a prestigious graduate school and proceeded to finish his education there. Axis Memorial Hospital is the first hospital he has worked at under his current title, though he did work at two other facilities while completing his training.
During his many years of schooling, he fell in love on two separate occasions. The second time, he went so far as to get engaged, but the engagement fell through after his fiancée developed feelings for someone else. To this day, Roderich blames himself for that, and is very hesitant to get romantically involved with anyone, figuring that he cannot be emotionally open enough to sustain a relationship.
Other Important Info:~One of Roderich’s pet peeves is being addressed by his first name. Unless he knows you very well, he is Doctor Edelstein, thank you very much.
~He learned English well before coming to the United States, so his English is practically flawless. He does have a slight accent if one listens for it, though.
Roleplay Sample:“I don’t have time for this,” Roderich muttered, checking his watch. “I need to be in the ICU in five minutes.”
“Please,” the young nurse pleaded. “It’ll only take a minute. You could tell her much better than me.”
Roderich sighed, glanced into the room, and then back at the nurse’s earnest features. “Fine. One minute—time me.”
He strode through the doorway and around the patient’s bed, hands in the pockets of his labcoat. The patient, a good-looking woman whose only blatant sign of illness was the reddish, symmetric lesions beneath the bandages on her hands, had fear in her eyes. Roderich only regarded her face briefly, fixing his gaze on a point above her head after that fear took a stab at his heartstrings.
“Good afternoon,” he greeted levelly. “Your test results just came back, and it seems my suspicions were confirmed. The infection is parasitic—multibacillary leprosy. I suspect you contracted it as a result of the volunteer work in Africa you mentioned before.”
“Leprosy?” the patient echoed, and he could hear her voice jump in pitch. “You mean to say I have huge amounts of bacteria eating my—”
“It’s treatable,” he quickly assured her. “Very much so. We’ll have you on a three-drug regimen starting today and let you go home within a week. The regimen will take about a year to complete, but once you begin the treatment and we’re certain—”
“A year? I’ll have this for a year? This parasite—”
“Most of that time is only to make sure that the parasite is completely taken care of. The lesions themselves should disappear within—”
“Doctor,” she interrupted again, and he glanced at her, feeling another stab of pity, “If you hadn’t caught this—would my fingers have started dying and coming off?”
“No,” he said. “Absolutely not. That is the result of other diseases acting on the afflicted flesh. In modern times, at this level of cleanliness, there is no way such diseases would be left to progress to that degree.”
“What could have happened, then? If you hadn’t found out what it was?”
Roderich massaged his forehead with his fingers. This was exactly the question that haunted him late at night when he had finished with his music and his dinner, when his apartment was quiet and he was alone. This was exactly the thing he considered when the answers were just out of reach, when that icy fear gripped him, so much like the fear he saw every day in the eyes of patients waiting to hear what kind of sentence they’d been given. There was always that pesky ‘what if’, that little chance of failure, that nightmare that had come to pass just enough times for the possibility to cling to him like a heavy weight, pulling at his straight posture and the head he tried his best to hold high.
“Scarring and nerve damage,” he said simply. No need for details.
“So it’s good that you caught it now,” the patient replied, looking, for the first time, a bit relieved.
He nodded and looked towards the nurse, who was pointing repeatedly at her wristwatch. “Yes. Well, I’m off, Ms…”
“Furney.”
“Ms. Furney.” It was just another name, a name that he forced himself to connect with lesions on hands, rather than to a pretty face and scared eyes.
She forced a smile. “Okay. Thank you.”
Another stab at his heart—he wasn’t doing well today at all in the empathy department. He’d have to practice extra time tonight, play the sweetest piano pieces he knew, and get all those feelings out of his system. It was no good to walk around with them, especially not when he was headed to a barely conscious, intubated flu patient three floors above.
“You’re welcome,” he murmured, hastily forcing the slight smile from his face as he left.
O O C I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: Amberspike-Sama
Timezone: Eastern Standard Time
MSN/AIM;etc: PM me to ask.
You read the rules, right?: Black :3
Anything else?: I’ve been roleplaying online for a good couple years now (and longer in real life) and I tend to be very open-minded in terms of who my characters interact with. If you want a thread with me, don’t be afraid to ask—I really doubt I’ll refuse.
I'm also a biology major with a medical bent, if you can't tell. XD Just in case anyone was curious.
