An ER resident on the edge - and the increasingly blurred line between artificial connection and the real thing
Alex Galen is a thirty-one-year-old emergency medicine resident barely keeping it together. After a patient's unexpected death puts her on probation, her confidence - and her sense of purpose - begin to unravel. Outside the hospital, she's alone, anxious, and drowning in a sea of Law & Order reruns and social media feeds that make everyone else's life look more together than hers.
When the hospital rolls out a new AI system designed to streamline care, Alex finds unexpected comfort in its nonjudgmental, always-on presence. She starts sharing things she can't say to anyone else. She even gives the system a name, Henry, after a quiet, observant fellow resident who, in real life, is the one person she's been trying not to notice.
But AI Henry isn't real. And everything she tells him is being recorded.
As Alex and the real Henry begin to question another patient's suspicious death, Alex is forced to confront what it means to truly connect - and whether she's been trusting the wrong version of intimacy all along.
Written by a practicing Emergency Room doctor, Together On Our Own evokes the gritty intensity of The Pitt in a quietly suspenseful story about burnout, vulnerability, and the subtle ways technology can both numb us to intimacy and expose our deepest thoughts.
