Rafael Aveiro

Rafael Aveiro, a character in the Open Heart series, is former paramedic turned physical therapist at Edenbrook Hospital and one of your love interests. He is first seen in Book 1, Chapter 4.

Appearance
Rafael has wavy brown hair, brown eyes, and tan skin. He wears a dark blue paramedic uniform with his last name on the right. Dolores Hudson, the pregnant woman he saved from an office fire, called him a total hunk, implying a muscular physique. Sierra says he looks like he could lift a bus.

Outside of work, he wears a green jacket over a black t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans.

Personality
He is a brave and selfless guy as he chose to save Dolores Hudson from a fire and chose to save a little girl from being crushed to death in a train wreck at risk of his life. After the Maitotoxin attack in Book 2, he realizes that he was getting addicted to the risk taking of being a hero, which clouded his original purpose to help people.

Book 1

 * Chapter 4: Dolores
 * Chapter 5: Relief
 * Chapter 7: Patient X
 * Chapter 9: The Pita
 * Chapter 11: Whatever It Takes (Determinant)
 * Chapter 12: Panacea (Determinant)
 * Chapter 13: Admission (Determinant)
 * Chapter 14: Triage
 * Chapter 16: The Curious Case of Dr. Banerji (Off-screen; Physical Appearance Determinant)
 * Chapter 17: The Oath

Book 2

 * Chapter 2: The Interns
 * Chapter 3: What's Done Is Done
 * Chapter 5: Influence
 * Chapter 6: Buying Time
 * Chapter 8: Fair Game
 * Chapter 9: Undetected
 * Chapter 10: The Senator
 * Chapter 11: Countdown
 * Chapter 12: Control
 * Chapter 14: Snowball
 * Chapter 15: Do No Harm
 * Chapter 16: The Kindness of Strangers
 * Chapter 17: Hopeful Hearts
 * Chapter 18: Inevitable
 * Chapter 19: One Last Case
 * Chapter 20: Picking Sides

Book 3

 * Chapter 1: Edenbrook 2.0
 * Chapter 2: More Than Meets The Eye
 * Chapter 3: Look on the Bright Side
 * Chapter 4: Power Struggles
 * Chapter 5: Too Late
 * Chapter 6: Checks and Balances (Mentioned; Physical Appearance Determinant)
 * Chapter 7: Team Players
 * Chapter 8: The Die Is Cast
 * Chapter 10: Ceasefire
 * Chapter 11: Wedding Belles
 * Chapter 12: Steady Hand
 * Chapter 13: Building Up
 * Chapter 14: Against the Boards
 * Chapter 15: Day in Court (Determinant)
 * Chapter 16: Moving On

Your Character
You first meet him in Book 1, Chapter 4, when he brings your patient in the ambulance. In Chapter 5, you meet him when he takes the injured baseball player to the hospital by helicopter. In the premium scene in the same chapter, you can choose to be either friendly or flirty. If you flirt with him, he tells you he would like to have a drink with you another time. When he lands at the hospital you can choose to hold his hand or let it go. If you hold it, he smiles at you and apologizes. You can choose to kiss him in a premium scene of Chapter 7. In a premium scene of Chapter 9, you can choose to let him show you where he lives and meet his grandmother. He also tries to teach you some samba. In Chapter 11, he will join you and your friends when you go skydiving with Kyra. You can choose to fly towards him and kiss him. In Chapter 12, he appears at Teresa Martinez's going-away party. After her death in the same chapter, you can choose to tell him everything and let him comfort you.

In Chapter 13, you can choose him to comfort you during your breakdown, and also become intimate in a premium scene. Either way, he encourages you and tells you that you are a good doctor despite your insecurities. In Chapter 14, he is critically wounded during work and you can either assist in his surgery in a premium scene or wait in the waiting room. You later tend to him when he wakes up and can choose to stay in a premium scene. If you do so, you watch a telenovela together and when he doesn't like the hospital food, you order something from a delivery service. You can tell him that you have feelings for him or that you consider him a friend. In Chapter 16, if you decide to spend time with him in his hospital room, you can choose to become intimate with him or watch a Korean soap opera with him.

In Book 2, Rafael has begun dating his childhood sweetheart, Sora, putting a roadblock in a possible relationship with you. It is up to you on how to respond, but you feel sad when he tells you later that he is planning to move to Brazil. He has never lived anywhere besides Boston and is excited to experience some place new. He plans to crash on his cousin's couch there while he figures stuff out. Being suspended gave him a lot of time to self-reflect and he felt directionless. He thought Brazil felt like the right move to make.

In Chapter 11, after you both are attacked with Maitotoxin and almost die, you overhear Sora and Rafael break up. Sora asks if he still has feelings for you which he confirms if you have romanced him in the past. He tells you that after this event, he has changed his mind about moving. He thought it would be a new frontier for him, but he realizes that maybe he was just running away. He wanted a change and he got one, just not one that any body could expect.

In Book 3, Rafael becomes a physical therapist. After all the therapy he endured post-Maitotoxin-exposure, he realized how much physical therapists changed people's lives. He was able to transfer most of his community college credits from his paramedic courses to physical therapy courses and get certified.

Dr. Bryce Lahela
Bryce and Rafael were first introduced to each other in Book 1 Chapter 9 when you invited Rafael to join your dinner with Bryce and your roommates. Rafael was initially uncomfortable in the circle as he felt like he had nothing to offer to a group of doctors who went to Ivy leagues. The two did not interact much after that possibly due to Rafael's reservation. When Rafael is critically wounded in Chapter 14 while helping out disaster victims, he was brought to Edenbrook's emergency room. Harper Emery recognises her E.M.T and took Bryce as her second to perform surgery to save Rafael. After the surgery, Bryce meets you at Rafael's ward and informs you that Rafael's vitals are stable and barring any complications, he will recover soon. In Chapter 17 when your friends go to Donahue after your ethics hearing, Rafael will join you and Bryce will friendly greet Rafael saying that he's looking better. Seemingly more comfortable with the surgeon, Rafael replies that he is feeling better even though his supervisor insisted him to take another month off.

Subsequently, Rafael and Bryce's relationship seems to be much closer. They were often spotted together playing basketball in hospital compound, working out with Ethan Ramsey at the hospital gym, and Rafael would join you when Bryce needs some pick-me-up encouragements. When Bryce, Rafael, and Ethan are racing on treadmills, Bryce says Rafael is so bad at trash talking. Towards Book 3, Rafael is more comfortable in passing teasing remarks to Bryce, indicating their friendship seems to have grown closer. In Book 3 Chapter 14, Rafael and Bryce will together bring lunch for you and fellow exam goers to eat in between sessions.

Dr. Landry Olsen
With the exception of dinner in Chapter 9, Rafael only interacts with Landry on a professional level. In Chapter 14, if you spend time with him in his hospital room after your shift, Rafael tells you that he never really trusted Landry, who struck him as a selfish guy. When Rafael saw him in the E.R., he thought Landry looked like he was sizing up the patients, determining what those patients could do for him instead of what he could do for them.

Sora
It is implied in Book 2, Chapter 2 that Sora is Rafael's childhood sweetheart. Whether Your Character romances him or not, they will be in an official relationship. However, if you had romanced him in Book 1, he implies he still has feelings toward you. You can either cut short his explanation or tell him it's his loss. They break up in in Chapter 11 as Sora cannot deal with the fact that he once again threw himself into danger and because he still has feelings for you if you previously romanced him. When you ask him afterwards, he says he feels fine by the break up, that Sora was right. He wanted things to work out between them but his heart just wasn't in it.

Pedro Cruz
Pedro is the pitcher for the Marauders and becomes a patient of Rafael's in Book 3. As a die-hard fan of the Marauders, Rafael is excited to work with Pedro and the two get to know each other through therapy sessions. Pedro often gives Rafael tickets to his games, of which Rafael invites you to (except for the last game, which he invites his grandmother instead). Due to their patient-therapist relationship and friendship, Pedro offer Rafael a full time job to become the Marauders' physical therapist. While he would have enjoyed working with the Marauders, Rafael realizes that the patients at Edenbrook need him more. When he tells Pedro this and declines the job offer, Pedro is very understanding.

Other Looks

 * -|Book 1=

Trivia

 * He is shown on the cover of Open Heart: Third Year.
 * The name Rafael is of Hebrew origin, which means "God has healed".
 * His surname, Aveiro, was named after a city in Portugal.
 * He has been an EMT for about 3 years.
 * He graduated with an Associate's degree. In Chapter 9, it is revealed that he went to Beacon Hill Community College.
 * His late uncle, who had retired from the Marines, taught him how to fly a helicopter while Rafael was still in high school and also the importance of community service. He inspired Rafael to become a paramedic so he could help others. He died two years prior to the start of the story.
 * In premium scenes of Chapter 7 and Chapter 9, he speaks Portuguese.
 * In his premium scene of Chapter 7, between the choices of food, he says that Caribbean is his favorite. If you kiss him in the same premium scene, you tell him you were wondering what it would be like to kiss Superman in reference to the alias Dolores gave him. He says he is just a regular guy and you say that this what Clark Kent would say.
 * In Chapter 11, if you go skydiving and fly towards him, you tell him that he is indeed Superman.
 * When he was younger and at home sick from school, he used to watch telenovelas with his mom and his avó (grandmother).
 * The soap opera he is watching in Chapter 16 appears to be a reference to a real South Korean series. It is from 2009 and named You're Beautiful. There is also a Japanese and a Taiwanese remake.
 * In a premium scene in Chapter 8 of Second Year, he reveals that he used to be a jock in high school and was on the baseball team, which made him one of the most popular kids. He feels that the special attention he got was embarassing.
 * In Book 2, Chapter 11, he quits his job as he intends to move to Brazil.