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BIOGRAPHY
Christopher Grant was born on May 18, 1981; the first born to a somewhat newly married couple. Joanne and Rick Grant had been trying to have a child for a few years, and they were finally blessed with Topher. When Topher was two years old, his parents moved them into a house that was right down the street from Joanne's brother's house, Topher's uncle, and as a result, the two families became extremely close. Topher grew up with his cousins, and they were more like siblings to him, only better because you didn't have to live with them all the time. It became apparent as Topher grew older that he was going to be somewhat of a goofball, Joanne was convinced he took completely after his father in that regard.
Once it hit time for him to start attending preschool, Topher's parents worried about his interaction with other children. His cousins were one thing, but they tended to rough house with each other a lot. They didn't know how he would act around other children that he wasn't related to. And it turned out their worries weren't for nothing, since Topher ended up having to go to three different preschools. He got kicked out of the first for biting, the second for cutting hair, and he managed to stay in the third one, since they punished him and taught him right from wrong a little better than the previous schools had. They worked with him and the longer Topher stayed in that school, the better his behavior became.
As he grew older and made his way into grade school, Topher had grown completely out of the biting and hair-cutting (much to his parent's relief), and he managed to make quite a few friends. His parents enrolled him in the city's baseball teams and all that fun stuff, and so whenever he wasn't in school, he was busy playing baseball, or basketball, or soccer ... all depending on the time of the year. Rick and Joanne liked to keep him busy, because that seemed to be when Topher was happiest. When he had a lot of stuff to do.
The multiple sports habit did not follow Topher to high school, though. He decided once he was in high school that he would pick one sport per season and he would use the time he wasn't playing those sports to concentrate on school work. He wasn't a bookworm, not by any means, but he enjoyed learning. It was strange, and a lot of his friends made fun of him for it, but he didn't really care. He liked learning new things. Throughout his high school years, girls were never really something Topher was all that interested in, mostly because they tended to think he was one of those dorky type kids, since he liked to learn and actually studied. He had a couple girlfriends, but nothing that was really all that noteworthy.
Graduating high school, Topher had every intention to go to school for teaching. He wanted to be able to influence children that had the interest in learning like he had, and he figured he'd be able to take some kids under his wing and help them out. He ended up attending Loyola University, and made it all the way through his freshman year, still positive that he wanted to be a teacher. That was, of course, until one day when he was walking down the street with a few friends, and he witnessed a car accident. Topher had never witnessed anything like it. It took less than five minutes for the ambulance to show up, and Topher watched, fascinated, as the EMTs pulled a lifeless woman out of her car, and then revived her. He was speechless. He knew, in that instant, that he wanted to do something in the medical field.
Luckily, his freshman year had mostly been the base of courses that he would need no matter what type of major he wanted to go into, so he hadn’t wasted too much time on courses that he had no use for anymore. After going back and forth with himself over what he field of medicine he wanted to go into, Topher settled on nursing. He figured he could get his degree in that field, and then possibly take himself further eventually. He made an appointment with guidance counselors to change his major from education to nursing, and things started to look up for him. He completed all the coursework required for Loyola, and then applied for the upper-level courses and the nursing program, eventually getting his Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN).
Having Loyola University on his resume did wonders for Topher, and he was able to get a job interning right out of his program. He started working at Mercy Hospital & Medical Center as a nurse in their Emergency and Trauma Care Center. Topher absolutely loved it. It was fast-paced (most of the time), and he enjoyed constantly being on his feet. Once his internship at Mercy was completed, Topher bit the bullet and applied for a job at Mercy. Already knowing that he was an excellent and dependable worker, he was hired onto their staff. His family was very proud of him, happy that he seemed to be happy in his field and loved his job.
The next three years were spent working long shifts and sleeping whenever he could fine the time between shifts. He was happy, but was having trouble keeping a relationship going. The women he dated were usually very interested when they found out he worked in the medical field, but then used the fact that he was always so busy and couldn’t devote every second to them as a reason to break up with him. They were more interested in dating someone who would answer their phone anytime they called, and Topher just wasn’t that person. He didn’t let it get to him, though. He’s happy, and that was really all that mattered.
When Topher was 27, his uncle was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Sitting around and watching his uncle’s health decrease while not being able to do anything about it was very hard for him to do, especially considering he was in the medical field. He wanted to be able to help him. Topher started spending any time he had researching cancer. He didn’t think he’d be able to find some miraculous cure (because if some of the most brilliant minds in the world couldn’t come up with a cure, he definitely wasn’t going to be able to), but he was trying to find something to at least help his uncle. His uncle died about six months later, but Topher had a new interest in cancer research.
Now, at 30 years old, Topher’s still working as a nurse in the Emergency and Trauma Center at Mercy Hospital. He keeps going back and forth with himself over whether he is going to pursue a higher education in medicine, but every time he talks himself into it, he turns around and talks himself right back out of it again. One day, he thinks he’ll actually do it, but he’s not sure when that day will be. For now, he’s happy in his current position.
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