REFUGE

SPOILER WARNING: The following (work in progress) background text may reveal some details about the character that readers might be more interested in discovering on their own later on, so please only read on if this is not a problem for you.

In 1983 Daniel Dents, a US Army radar technician stationed at Mannheim Germany, Married a local German teacher Lena Kappel and Sam Dents was born two years later. He lived a somewhat solitary life but both Sam's parents cared deeply for him, until in 1991 when Sam's mother Lena was suddenly diagnosed with AIDS two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Left with only his father, some years after his mother's death boys at school had begun mocking the shy Sam, claiming he was gay or that his father was, and that was why his mother killed herself. For a while Sam endured the poor treatment but as it got worse and worse one day a teacher caught him carrying a knife to school. Later his father got Sam to take archery lessons as a way to let off some steam without hurting someone. Sam took a real interest in this, but was later diagnosed with HIV and had to undergo treatments. The treatments slowed down the virus but never eradicated it, so Sam began looking into the condition on his own in his spare time. In 2003 at age 18 he was finally diagnosed with AIDS and more drastic treatments followed.

Eventually the two moved to Georgia in the US in 2006 to be closer to Sam's estranged and elderly grandparents, and for him to undergo a new cutting edge treatment. This treatment involved a small experimental automatic injection system being attached to Sam's spine to help prolong his life with regular antiviral injections until a real cure could be found. Since 2007 Sam had gone to medical school to look for a cure on his own but with only limited progress. He took residence in the university dormitories but since the grandparents' recent deaths he had repeatedly visited his father who continued living alone in their old house. Approaching retirement his father had gotten a minor technician's job with the military and both of them were earning enough to make a living independently, but they both always looked forward to Sam's regular weekend visits.

During the final years before graduation from medical school Sam began to suffer from school burnout, with his capability for learning declining rapidly. Archery, running and computers began taking up more of his spare and school time, a somewhat unfortunate turn of events with the exams moving ever closer while his exam project was far from ready. Sam had started his project together with a group of other students but later on the group had disagreements on which direction to take it, resulting in Sam continuing his idea of the project alone. This had started out fine in the beginning, but finishing a project on his own began taking its toll on the solitary medical student. Although Sam was struggling to keep up in medical school and often drifted into brief moments of depression over his situation a weekend trip to the grandparents' house or the local archery range often helped set him back on track, combined in no small part with the constant encouragement from his father to live on in spite of his disease and achieve something great one day.

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