Salem Hickory (D2)

Salem has straight, light brown hair that reaches just around his jaw line, and dark brown eyes--both traits were clearly inherited from his mother, since his father has curly black hair and green eyes. He's somewhat pale and stands at about 5' 8", which is short compared to the rest of his family who are pushing 6'. Though he has a leaner, slight build, Salem is by no means weak, and has built up some muscles from having to help lift and take care of patients in his family's clinic.

When he isn't helping around the clinic, Salem enjoys taking walks through District 2. He likes to wear comfortable button-up shirts, and tends not to accessorize much unless he's dressing for a special occasion. Seeing as a lot of his time is spent around patients where he's not supposed to wear jewelry, Salem doesn't really go out of his way to put anything on only to have to take it back off not too much later. The accessory he almost always wears, however, is his favorite silver watch.

Salem is the type of person who's fairly easy to overlook in a crowd--he doesn't dress as flamboyantly as others might, he's not incredibly tall, and he's generally quiet (though he is certainly not shy).

Because of the stress of trying to be as successful as his two older brothers and doing his best to get positive recognition from his parents (who are far too busy doting over his brothers, prepping and grooming them to take over the clinic), he has devoted most of his life to studying medicine and preparing for his future. As a result, he doesn't exactly have 'friends'.

After working with many different people, Salem has found that for patients it was particularly easy to read his expression when something wasn't going right... and they immediately got on his case, panicking that the sadness on his face was directed toward them. So instead of making others worry about anything, he does his best to just smile pleasantly regardless of where he is, worried about what might happen if people accidentally read the wrong emotion. Salem also tends to sugarcoat things when interacting with others around town for the same reason. The only time he really lets his facade slip is when he's alone. He has a lot of time to himself at his house since the rest of his family are at the clinic so often they usually just "visit" home.

All in all, Salem is smart, dependable, and does his best to be well-mannered and polite... despite what might be going through his head.

Born into a long line of doctors, a passion for medicine runs through Salem's veins. He has lived in District 2 his whole life, where his parents and two older brothers run their own clinic. Like all of the other men in his family, Salem plans on becoming a doctor alongside his brothers and inheriting the clinic with them when the time comes. At the moment, however, he acts as more of a nurse since his father says four doctors working the clinic is enough for the time being--he would just get in the way if he was anything more than an 'assistant' and is that paperwork done yet, it's been sitting on the desk for days--but Salem thinks he's just making up excuses.

Salem has always been more of an afterthought to the rest of his family, a mere shadow behind his brothers. He never really got the attention and praise, or even acknowledgment, that his brothers did. Being the youngest of the three, Salem has always had to work his hardest in order to get noticed by his parents. Even then, the closest thing he ever got to a compliment was, "You still have a long way to go." That came from his mother. His father was too busy working to spare him much time.

Ever since he was young, the only time his family really gathered together to watch the Hunger Games. He didn't think much of it at first because he was too little to understand the concept of death, and that most of the people he was watching were never coming back. Some of the tributes even wanted to be there, so he couldn't think of any reason to worry. His brothers trained a little in case they were ever chosen (though nowhere near as intensely as other kids in District 2 did), but Salem's parents never pushed it on him. As a result, the games just drifted to the back of his mind.

It wasn't until he turned 14 and began helping around his family's clinic that reality finally sunk in... a group of patients came in as an emergency after being involved in some kind of accident--their clinic was the closest facility. Salem has never forgotten the look of fear on their faces as they lay helpless and bleeding to death on those tables, or the desperate screams that will forever echo in his head, or even the chaos as every one of them wanted to be the first one taken care of. Since that day he has flashbacks to those scenes every time he watches the Hunger Games. That kind of hopelessness, constant fear, and desperation to survive is something Salem would never wish on anybody.

And so unlike his father and brothers who see patients primarily as money, Salem genuinely wants to help others--regardless of who they are, or where they come from--because life is precious to everyone.

It's been a while since I've really roleplayed, but a couple of friends of mine who introduced me to this site have been helping me. Also, I might take a little while to respond (especially to longer posts) sometimes because some days are busier than others. Hopefully it won't be a big problem.