Esme Ortega

Esme Ortega, a character in the Open Heart series, is Your Character's intern at Edenbrook Hospital during your second year. She makes her official appearance in Book 2, Chapter 1.

Appearance
Esme has brown eyes, shoulder-length wavy hair, and tan skin. Her hospital outfit consists of blue scrubs. Her casual clothes consist of a black sweater under a green jacket and hood, with silver chain jewelry.

Personality
Esme appears to be a woman of a few words. She is also hotheaded and doesn't allow others to push her around, as shown when she breaks Dr. Thorne's hand after he harasses her at Donahue's.

If you take her with you to do your diagnostics work in Chapter 2, she mentions that she spends a lot of time on people's bad sides and is used to being bailed on, so it is possible she keeps others at a distance as a way of protecting herself.

Background
In a premium scene in Book 2, Chapter 7, Esme reveals that her parents were undocumented immigrants from El Salvador, although she herself was born in Arizona. When she was 14, she returned home after school one day to find out that her parents had been seized by ICE and taken away. Esme says she has not seen her parents since then.

After her parents' deportation, she lived with her neighbor, an old lady named Julia. She says that she 'learned to' like Julia's hands-off approach to raising her, claiming that it made her stronger.

Book 2

 * Chapter 1: Prognosis
 * Chapter 2: The Interns
 * Chapter 3: What's Done Is Done
 * Chapter 4: Blind Spot
 * Chapter 5: Influence
 * Chapter 6: Buying Time (Mentioned)
 * Chapter 7: Wake-Up Call
 * Chapter 9: Undetected
 * Chapter 10: The Senator
 * Chapter 13: Time Bomb
 * Chapter 14: Snowball
 * Chapter 15: Do No Harm
 * Chapter 16: The Kindness of Strangers
 * Chapter 17: Hopeful Hearts
 * Chapter 18: Inevitable
 * Chapter 20: Picking Sides

Book 3

 * Chapter 4: Power Struggles
 * Chapter 7: Team Players (Mentioned; Physical Appearance Determinant)
 * Chapter 14: Against the Boards (Mentioned)
 * Chapter 16: Moving On (Mentioned)

Your Character
You first meet Esme at Donahue's, where she is shooting down advances made by Dr. Garrett Thorne. You can either try to help her or stay out of it, but whichever you choose, you follow her out to help her clean her wounds. If you tell her that Dr. Thorne got what he deserved, she relaxes a little; if you tell her to be careful, she remains on guard and you explain that he could make her life miserable. After your first meeting with the Diagnostics Team, you meet with the other hospital residents and find out that she is the intern that is assigned to you.

When she is involved in the death of her patient Levi Coates, your relationship with her becomes scrutinized. You can choose what to say to Dr. Naveen Banerji and the hospital board, and you can choose to believe that it was an accident or that she overdosed him deliberately. You can also tell her one thing and switch sides when you face the board.

If you tell the board that it was an accident, you give her the benefit of the doubt and side with her. In Chapter 20, she tells you that with Leland Bloom's acquisition of the hospital, Levi's parents settled out of court for several million dollars.

If you tell the board that you believe Esme did it deliberately, she tells you that the police went through her life with a fine-tooth comb but the district attorney has dropped the charges against her. She and the Coates had a private conversation about Levi's death and in the end, the Coates dropped their civil lawsuit against her. She tells you that what she and Levi's parents talked about is just between them and that you have made it clear how much she can trust you.

Depending on whether you sided with or against her with the board changes your relationship with her. In Book 3, if you remain friends with her, she will act as a look-out in Chapter 4 if you decide to snoop around Bloom's office with Jackie. In Chapter 7, if you decide to join Jackie and the interns in their team-bonding exercise and choose to partner with Esme, you two exchange pleasantries about her second year.

If you do not remain friends, in Chapter 4, she will walk away from you and Jackie when you to decide to snoop in Bloom's office. She expresses her self-preservation skills and dislike for you, and doesn't want to get caught up in your antics. In Chapter 7, she will be annoyed if you choose to partner with her and tells you that it's good for you that she is competitive and likes to win or else she would drop you on your butt.

Dr. Garrett Thorne
In Book 2, Chapter 1, Garrett Thorne is seen making a pass at Esme at the bar. When she shoots him down, he tries to charm her into having another drink and puts his hand on her back. That makes her wrench his hand off her and slam it into the bar, breaking it. He shoves her and she falls back, bottles breaking and shards gashing her leg. He angrily says he will sue her but is pushed out of the bar by Ethan.

In Chapter 10, he becomes her patient but he doesn't recognize her at first. He is mad when he learns that an intern has been assigned to treat him and he demands to be prescribed alpha blockers. If you tell her to trust her intuition, later that day, you find her performing a spinal tap on him. She says he threatened her with legal action sixteen times within the last hour but she assures you that she has ruled out everything else beforehand. She discovers he has transverse myelitis caused by normal pressure hydrocephalus. Esme tells him that he is lucky that it caused the transverse myelitis and has not presented itself as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's as it is more common. After you tell him to apologize to Esme, he thanks her and apologizes to her. Her answer triggers his memory so he starts to recognize her the moment you both leave. In Chapter 13, they meet in the hallway and they nod in greeting. Esme reveals that he "has been way less of an ass ever since I saved his life and career." He even once came to thank her for standing up to him and to apologize for what happened at the bar.

If, however, you tell her to "not make it harder than it has to be" and to follow Garrett's self-diagnosis, she does as he asks and prescribes him alpha blockers. She also discharges him from the hospital. In Chapter 12, Esme tells you that Dr. Thorne nearly maimed a patient, that it wasn't B.P.H. (benign prostatic hyperplasia) after all, and that he had hydrocephalus induced dementia. Because of this, he had to resign.

Zaid Mirani
Zaid Mirani is the chief resident at Edenbrook when Esme starts. In Chapter 3, you catch him yelling at her for ordering an incorrect medication for a patient's urinary tract infection. Later, she catches his misdiagnosed aortic dissection, which he thought was an acute coronary syndrome; Ines and Sothy were both impressed by that. In Chapter 13, he and Esme argue about different movies and yell at each other because it's fun. He thinks A Clockwork Orange is a masterpiece, while she thinks Eyes Wide Shut is better, which he thinks is Kubrick's worst film.

Trivia

 * She shares her first name with the Fire Source from The Elementalists series and the jeweler from Red Carpet Diaries, Book 3.
 * The name Esme is of Old French origin and means "esteemed, beloved". It's the short form of the Spanish name Esmeralda, which itself means "emerald".
 * In Book 2, Chapter 17, you decide whether you tell the board of directors that Esme killed Levi Coates on purpose or if it was an accident. This will determine your relationship with her for the rest of the series.
 * She shares the same last name as Zig Ortega, Sophie Ortega, and Linda Ortega from The Freshman et al series.
 * The surname Ortega is of Spanish origin and means "dweller at the sign of the grouse" or "nettle".