Petra Nicholson
Petra Nicholson Born: 22 November 1974 Embrace: 18 November 2008 Apparent Age: Mid 30's
Married to Malcolm Nicholson 29 March 1994 Daughter, Plaxy, born 12 May 1996 Son, James, born 18 February 2000 Divorced from Malcolm 9 November 2008
Petra was always intrigued by the human body and the natural world, even as a young child. Everything seemed so interconnected in a vast complex web with rules that were both strict and conditional. A baroque comedy of errors where the only constant was change. Everything is changing from one thing to another. A relentless play with no curtain calls. Life, to Petra, was as much scientific laws as art.
Why did she become a doctor? Not so much out of a desire to heal, rather the function of the body is fascinating to her. It can recover from fantastic injury yet is tremendously fragile in other ways. Saw herself more as an artist and the body was her canvas, this was her part to play in the ensemble of life. A poet with a scalpel.
During her tenure in Charlotte, she repeatedly got into trouble experimenting with new theories or using untested drugs on patients. She was always careful to cover her tracks and have the proper consent forms signed but she still faced reprimands and civil action suits. Her record of healing people remained very strong and she managed to avoid the more serious penalties for most of her career.
Transplant surgery was particularly attractive to her and the study of blood as well. Taking an organ from one person and seeing if a host will accept it or not is part science and part hope, very mystical to her. She spent most of her career as a transplant surgeon and enjoyed the urgency of that work. Time screams at you and bodies slowly grow quiet until her hands force life rushing back into the body.
She found the organ black market to be particularly attractive since the legal injunction against selling organs is perversely bizarre. Only people who donate completely unselfishly with absolutely no payment being allowed to do so stands in stark contrast to human nature. People want to live and people should be compensated for losing part of their body. That's healthy psychology and business, Petra reasoned. She made good money doing this on the side and also made many contacts with both criminals and politicians.
Her marriage began to dissolve when her oldest child, James, was diagnosed with leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. He lingered on the list due to the ways lines were drawn on the map and prospects looked dire. Petra went to her people and they procured a donor and she performed the operation and saved her son's life. Later it came out that the donor was not so altruistic and Petra's husband, Malcolm, suddenly got a case of conscience. He couldn't reconcile that Petra could be so callous (she kept her illegal dealings pretty quiet) and they had a heated argument.
An investigation into the bone marrow donor came up and Petra lost her medical license but avoided any sort of fine or incarceration. Her marriage broke-up and Malcolm left and took James and Plaxy and the courts were none too friendly towards Petra. Furious, she dove into work and could not understand why she was being demonized for saving her family She felt nobody was on her side. Any rule that would force her son to die was not a moral rule.
This is when she became a freelance surgeon and donor locator. She also gained employment from various drug companies looking to run trials. Her work with blood and ability to find licks made her a valuable ally to the Kindred and her sire played on her rage, frustration, and loneliness. Petra was in a bad place mentally and emotionally and acquiesced to the Embrace.
After becoming a vampire, Petra continued her work and found that being a vampire made the work much easier. She began to detest hypocrites and those who hide behind bureaucracy and refuse to make decisions. If anything, she began to see herself as a heroine, somebody who is willing to make hard choices for the greater good. Her cynical nature has made her a bit more mercenary in her attitude and while she is not needlessly cruel she sees most people as too dumb or asleep to be trusted to safely make their own choices. Her antipathy towards Malcolm and other Kine has grown harder over time.
When she heard that her ex-husband had moved to New Orleans (he works in construction), she followed him. Even when they were both in Charlotte, SC, she kept an eye on her family but never let herself be seen. For all intents and purposes, she dropped off the map though she would send presents to her children and kept in secret contact with them but not Malcolm. Learning that Malcolm had remarried made her particularly angry and jealous. That bitch, Cornelia Adams.
Now, Petra has been in New Orleans for a few years. Her underground clinic, Renewal, sees a brisk business with the various contracts she has with criminal elements in the city. Healing people is still dear to her heart and medicine has lost none of its majesty and mystery. Her research into vampirism has almost completely pushed aside other research projects and she stays busy either in her clinic or her laboratory. She continues to watch her family closely. Plaxy is now a junior at Tulane University and James is a junior in high school. Malcolm's construction business seems to be going well.
Intelligence 2 Wits 3 Resolve 2 Strength 4 Dexterity 3 Stamina 2 Presence 2 Manipulation 3 Composure 1
Medicine (Surgery) 3 Science 1
Athletics 1 Brawl 3 Larceny 1 Stealth 2
Empathy (Motives) 2 Intimidation 2 Persuasion 2 Socialize 1 Streetwise 2 Subterfuge (Lying) 2
Obfuscate 3
Resources 3 Haven 1 Allies 2 Contacts 1
Size 5 Speed 12 Defense 3 Initiative 4
Nosferatu Appearance/Clan Weakness: Petra's fingers, naturally long and dextrous, have grown longer since her Embrace and all her fingers are the same length and a little too thin. Furthermore, she exudes a faint but unmistakable odor that follows her wherever she goes. Its nature depends on who's smelling it, but it's always a smell with unpleasant connotations or linked to unhappy memories. To a person whose family died in a car accident he might smell of burning rubber, for example, or to someone with a history of long illness he might carry the odor of powerful disinfectants over the lingering hint of blood and urine.
