Profile

Dr. Vanessa Turner, was born and raised in Chicago. She is the eldest child of Caleb and Jessica Turner, a US Army Surgeon who met his wife whilst stationed overseas in Germany. Despite initially living in Germany, when they decided to start a family after they married, they both wanted to raise them in the USA, so returned to American soil when pregnant with their first child and their only daughter. Following Vanessa came Alex, Peter and then, much later, youngest, Jace.

From an early age, Vanessa (and her well-off family) always assumed she was destined for Ivy League college and she originally wanted to study Psychology. However, when she was fifteen, she started dating wayward teen rebel (in the year above her at school), Andrew Pearson, much to the disapproval of her parents and brothers, who only wanted the best for their children (or Alex and Peter, at least - Jace was too young at 3 to understand anything). Andrew was the sole cause of Vanessa falling into the 'wrong crowd' in high school, but she was head-over-heels in love with him as her first boyfriend. Things between them continued, and although reckless, Andrew never put her in danger. Until one night, things took a dramatic turn and Andrew got himself blind drunk and high on a bad cut of Ecstasy. He got behind the wheel of a car without a license with Vanessa in the passenger's seat equally as drunk but too scared to try hard drugs. It was only two blocks to the rave party they were headed to, but Andrew's drugged lack of judgment caused him to wrap the car around a tree.

Vanessa escaped with only a few cuts and bruises, but woke up trapped in the car beside Andrew, who was unconscious and so badly hurt, she assumed he was dead. But he miraculously survived, suffering a coma-inducing head injury and a ruptured spleen. She learned that he did survive and recover, however she never got the chance to see it with her own eyes. Her parents, furious at her lack of responsibility and judgment of getting in the car with Andrew, sent Vanessa away to live with her uncle and cousin, Logan in New York. Vanessa was heartbroken and even though she was angry at Andrew, she missed him terribly and it took her a long time to get over the ordeal of both the accident and losing her high school sweetheart.

Working hard to get her life back on track, Vanessa threw herself into her studies and made the dramatic choice to ditch Psychology and go to Med School. Her grades got her accepted into Yale and much to her surprise, she fell in love with a fellow medical student, Jacob, and after a whirlwind romance, married him in a small ceremony with only their families present. The marriage didn't divert their focus on their studies, but the last year of college for Vanessa would turn out so tragic, it was a miracle she managed to graduate at all. First, Jacob fell ill after a period of prolonged headaches. One day, what he thought was a migraine rendered him bedridden, and he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour, given three months to live. He died one week later due to complications with chemotherapy. Vanessa was in shock and still locked in grief when she got a terrible phone call from her father telling her that Jace had been hit by a car and nearly killed. She never made it to her graduation ceremony because she rushed home to be with her family, all thinking Jace wouldn't pull through with how bad the accident had been. Vanessa soon moved home to live with her parents in Chicago because she needed to be close to her family.

Now, after Jace ultimately woke up, though with a acquired brain injury and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy with Complex Partial Seizures, Vanessa has made a success of her life. She eventually recovered from the tragedies and grief with a renewed determination to succeed as a doctor and was offered a Residency specialising in Edocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, at a local hospital in Chicago. However, with Alex and Jace now living in New York, and Peter in San Francisco with his family, Vanessa decided to uproot to New York also when she accepted a job with the Longone Medical Centre, which is a division of New York University School of Medicine. As a diabetic from childhood herself, Vanessa decided it was best to stick with what she knew and she has now been offered a fellowship to study Diagnostic Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center on a team along with Lachlan Campbell (Hematologist), Sam Campbell (Cardiologist), Colby Knight (Emergency & Trauma Medicine) and her brother, Alex.

Beyond her career and ambition, Vanessa is an average girl with a somewhat reserved nature which came out after the shock of the accident in high school and subsequent near-death of her baby brother. She's not much of a risk taker and errs on the side of caution more often than not. Losing a husband, she was tempted to hide away but she wanted to honour Jacob's memory and his passion for medicine, rather than never recovering from his loss. She is friendly and approachable with a great bedside manner, but she remains single, never managing to regain the courage to get back on the relationship horse after losing the two people she fell in love with. She's completely career-oriented now and it would only ever take someone really special to break through that façade she has built up around herself over the years, and she has often just assumed she wouldn't bother trying again, fearing the heartbreak she could face at losing another love.

Despite that, Vanessa soon met Adam Morgan, a police detective from London and now based in New York City, eldest brother of a young surgeon at the hospital, Liam Morgan. She fell head-over for him and soon Adamn proposed to her in Central Park and she happily accepted.