CIVILIAN. GAZNAYEV, KOL

Nikolay Gaznayev.

Intelligent, Light-hearted, Terrified.

Kol

Twenty-Seven

September 12th, 1985

Male

Bisexual, although he hasn't had a longterm relationship in a while.

Civilian

Surgeon

Personality

Kol has two different personas, depending on where he is and the people he's with. In the company of others or during work hours, he's cheerful and polite, never raising his voice and always prepared to wait patiently for things. Kol has an excellent bedside manner; bad news doesn't sound as bad coming from him, mostly due to his humility and empathy.
Kol's gentle attitude and seemingly boundless knowledge have made him quite popular at the hospital; although he still exhibits bouts of shyness and is very easily embarrassed, Kol never seems to get upset with people other than himself. He's happy to quietly correct somebody if something is wrong, but does so in a personable and cheerful fashion.
Kol is normally the first person to laugh at a joke, except when the joke's punchline is making fun of somebody else. Kol has a strong ethical stance that a punchline that is designed to hurt anybody is not a punchline at all, and has no qualms with stating that opinion. He believes in equality of life, and treats almost everybody with the same degree of respect.

On his own or with people he trusts, Kol is a completely different person. He comes across as disheveled and withdrawn, and is surprisingly unwilling to make eye-contact with people. His insecurities control his life, although he never discusses his family situation with anybody else as he knows that whatever he says will come out badly and garner pity. Kol doesn't actively seek sympathy or pity; he was raised with a mentality that states that no matter how grand an obstacle is, it can be surmounted easily enough if you know the proper techniques. As such, Kol normally carries around at least two textbooks when he's not working, both as a source of knowledge and a form of escapism. It's not that Kol doesn't like other people; given a little more self-confidence he would happily be going out and partying with friends, but books don't have expectations that he has to meet. Kol endeavors to get enough sleep every night, but it's a well-known fact that he doesn't get as much as he should. Most people attribute it to his rigorous study habits, but Kol is kept awake by night terrors and studies to try and block out the visions of Dina that he has.

Two years ago, Kol began having hallucinations. They started off as comparatively mild; sometimes he would see something out of the corner of his eye that wasn't there, or smelled something that nobody else could have smelled. As time went on, the hallucinations have grown slightly more severe in nature. Kol now suffers from nightmares as a result of his delusions; they prey on his natural insecurities and often manifest themselves as a fully adult Dina watching over him and judging everything he does. Kol has only told a few people about the hallucinations, and is currently on quite strong medication as he is terrified that this could be the onset of schizophrenia. As a result, he seems a little less observant than one would usually expect of a surgeon, although his intellect is still razor-sharp and honed to an edge.
Until Kol gets his hallucinations sorted out, a longterm romantic relationship is out of the question. He worries for the person he could potentially end up in a relationship with, and feels that the better option is not to see anybody (as opposed to see somebody and then have the delusions spontaneously turn violent).

Lineage

Kol was born in Russia and lived there for eight years until his parents emigrated to the United States, their heads filled with grandiose ideals placed of the 'land of the free' and their son being incredibly successful and making them proud someday. As such, they led an incredibly frugal life until they had accrued enough savings to comfortably move to Los Angeles and send their son to a decent school. At the time, Nikolay just saw it as somewhere that was going to be a lot warmer than a Russian winter.

Kol's parents speak passable English but he himself is fluent in both English and Russian, considering that he spoke Russian at home and English during his time in the school system. Kol's English has a slight accent to it, but it in no way belies his grasp of the language as he is perfectly capable of translating complicated concepts between the two tongues (mostly for the benefit of his parents).

History

Kol was born in the Russian town of Tarko-Sale, the only son of a factory manager and a seamstress. He was inquisitive and a fast learner, and his parents encouraged him to study hard and do them proud someday. They tried not to pressure Kol too hard, and rationalised that when their second child came along then Kol would have a lifelong friend and he wouldn't feel as pressured to appease his parents. Kol's parents took him along on playdates with other families and enrolled him in the local preschool where he flourished, all the while mentioning that he was going to be so happy when the twin lives growing inside of his mother arrived into the world, and as such he spent the fourth year of his life eagerly awaiting the birth of his new brother and sister, growing accustomed to clinics as his parents watched the development of Kol's baby siblings on the ultrasounds. After one particular checkup, Kol's parents seemed less ecstatic and more concerned. Slowly but surely, the female twin had flourished while the male twin seemed to slowly disappear. Although the knowledge that their second son had become nothing more than a 'vanishing twin' disheartened Kol's parents greatly, the female child appeared to be comparatively healthy. On one level, Kol didn't know how to feel about all the attention his unborn sister, tentatively named 'Dina,' was getting. He felt upset that his parents didn't pay as much attention to him, and sometimes wished that Dina would just go away and never bother him or his parents again.

Unfortunately, Kol got his wish. Dina was a stillborn. The doctors informed his parents that the vanishing male twin had fused with her in utero without complications, but there had still been some developmental problems and Dina wouldn't have survived very long had she been born alive. Kol's parents were heartbroken, and Kol took on a very heavy burden as a result. His mother couldn't have any more children, so she began to dote on him an unhealthy amount, pressuring him to succeed in a very passive and traumatic fashion. His father spent longer hours at work, coming home very late in the evenings and collapsing straight into bed. Meanwhile, Kol harbored a great guilt over Dina's death. He held himself responsible; he had wished that Dina would go away, she had done so, and as a result everybody in his family was miserable.

Kol now understands that it was escapism that lead to his parents packing up their things and emigrating to Los Angeles, but it was the best decision that they could have made. Hypothetically, they left their dead child back in Russia and brought their living one into the new suburban environment that they felt would mold him into a paragon of society. It took some time for Kol to adjust to L.A.; it was much more densely populated and louder than Tarko-Sale ever was, he didn't speak a word of the language, and his mother still hand-made all of his clothes out of a strange mix of matriarchal love and jealous possessiveness. Quickly enough, Kol began to pick up the language and began acting as the spokesperson for his hermetic household; his mother was making expensive bridal and formal dresses for the wealthy, and his father spent most of his time playing the stock market online. It became a regular sight in the neighborhood to see Kol accompanying one of his parents to the grocery store and translating back-and-forth for them, although by the time that he turned eleven he was doing the shopping unaccompanied, riding his bike to the store and back while his parents worked from home.

Kol had few friends during primary school; he spent most of his time in the library trying to improve upon his English in the hopes that the only thing preventing him from making friends was his improper grasp of English. At least, that was what he told the prying librarians. In part, Kol liked the library because it was open after school hours and he could stay in there instead of going straight home to his parents. He still loved them, but all of their pent-up frustrations over the years had turned from an overbearing desire to push their son to strive for greatness into verbal abuse if he didn't measure up to their insane ideals. To Kol's parents, good grades were paramount. If he didn't score well enough his parents would sigh and shake their heads, letting him know that they were disappointed in him. Although they never said as much, Kol knew what those discouraged looks meant.

"Sometimes, I wish that Dina had survived instead of you. Dina could have done all this easily."

Despite this, Kol didn't resent his parents or even his dead sibling. Their disappointment simply forced him to work harder. He wanted to make them happy, even at the cost of his own happiness. By the time he had reached high school he had managed to limit his obsession with studying to a reasonable amount of time a day, and as such went through a metaphoric emergence from his cocoon. Kol's popularity soared in his final two years of high school; he was soft-spoken and friendly but unafraid to speak his mind if the situation arose, and he had a seemingly undiscovered natural affinity for soccer.

Kol went to soccer practice most afternoons a week, although when coupled with his study habits it left him very tired during the days. His parents knew about his soccer practice and supported him wholeheartedly until the final match of the season. Kol's team made the finals and was in the lead, until he fainted halfway through the match and had to be hospitalised. The team met him in the hospital when he regained consciousness; they had won the finals without him but wanted to celebrate both their win and his recovery together, as a team. Outwardly, Kol's parents were curt and supportive of their son, but inwardly they were concerned and furious. They rationalised that Kol had fainted because he had been overexerting himself, and forbade him to play soccer until he had finished high school. Kol was bitter, but swallowed his pride and quit the soccer team the next day, reverting to his shy and withdrawn library-going ways as a result of his parents' influence. The soccer team tried to get him to come and sit on the sidelines during the practices, but on the few occasions that he did show up, he would sadly bury his head in a textbook and periodically stare wistfully at the team before his longing grew too great and he went back to his books.

Kol graduated top of his class, and as a reward his parents told him that they had pooled their savings and would pay for whatever university studies he wanted to do. Kol was grateful; combining his parents' reward with his scholarship prize meant that he had enough money saved up to put himself through medical school. At this point in his life, Kol decided that as much as he loved his parents, he would rather have a dorm on-campus while he studied (in part to get away from their influence). In retrospect, this was one of the best decisions of his life. Kol was successfully balancing work and play while living in the dorm; still maintaining a very high grade point average while finding the time to socialise and play soccer at least twice a week. He left college as a well-adjusted young doctor, and soon found himself working in the surgical wing of Hope Hospital under the tutelage of one of their senior cardiologists. He's been working there for a few years, and has assisted in enough surgeries to make himself a well-known name among the hospital staff.

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