Elise Quinn

> *"I have autism, it's part of who I am."*
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### Dislikes

Pickles, mushrooms, anchovies, olives, garlic, mayonnaise, walnuts, Chinese food, bread with cinnamon, nuts, seeds or berries in it, the way coffee makes her feel, direct questions, confrontation, being touched, her dad, the beach, candy bars

## Professional Status

### Occupation(s)

* Doctor

**Elise Quinn** is a doctor who is on the Autism Spectrum.

## Personality

Elise has "almost perfect recall," extraordinary and genius-level intellect, and the excellent analytical abilities that allow her to make highly accurate diagnoses. She dislikes direct questions and confrontation. She is highly perceptive and often bluntly voices these perceptions. During hospital scenes, Elise's thought process is frequently captured in an overlay, demonstrating her eidetic memory. This shows that she is a highly visual learner. Over time, Elise's unique visualizing process becomes evident to those around her to the point that they realize what she is doing simply by looking at her.

Her autism is depicted as obvious to many of the people she interacts with. She displays several traits of her condition, including heightened sensory sensitivity, abnormal inflection when speaking, lack of interest in eye contact, and heavy reliance on routine. Additionally, she becomes fixated on certain objects at times, most notably the toy scalpel that her brother gave to her. She insists on eating the same thing for breakfast every day: yogurt and a green apple except for Mondays when she has breakfast with Dr. Glassman at the hospital. She loves to eat chocolate chip pancakes with a glass of milk. Elise is revealed to have never met another autistic person before encountering a patient with it at the hospital. Elise was clearly uncomfortable treating the young man, but her unique insight into the young man's condition allowed her to recognize that he was autistic and not psychotic as was originally believed, help calm him through most of an MRI and figure out what was wrong with the patient. Elise also suffered discrimination from the parents due to her own autism, but with the help of Melendez and the patient, Elise was allowed to perform the surgery and proved the parents wrong when she saved the young man's life during a dangerous part of the operation. Elise pointedly rebuked the parents afterwards as they had caused their son to get sick and they subsequently began listening to their son rather than unilaterally making decisions for him.

Despite Elise's troubled childhood, she maintains a generally positive outlook on life, choosing to pursue medicine in the hopes of improving the lives of others. However, she is wary of forming deeper relationships with people after the death of her younger brother and her rabbit. Elise is revealed to have a great degree of proficiency, if not fluency, in Spanish. She also mentions an interest in football. Among the things Elise dislikes are pickles, mushrooms, anchovies, olives, garlic, mayonnaise, walnuts, Chinese food, bread with cinnamon, nuts, seeds or berries in it, the way coffee makes her feel, and direct questions. She has an aversion to physical touch unless she is the one to initiate it or it comes from people she is very comfortable with. She is shown as being fond of cats.

As a result of her autism, Elise has trouble with cognitive empathy, but is fine with emotional empathy, meaning she can pick up when someone is upset but often has trouble discerning why, this is something that she herself notes. As a result, she may make a decision that is rational and by the rules, but morally wrong or otherwise harmful.

## Background

### Early Life

As a young child, Elise was raised alongside her younger brother by their mother and father. She was bullied by other children in school and teased for being autistic.

Elise's childhood was very troubled. Her father was a resentful alcoholic and her mother stood by without intervening in the abuse that was prevalent in their household. Elise's father's method of child-rearing eventually turned violent, ultimately resulting in him killing her rabbit when she was fourteen. Elise and her brother ran to the nearest "doctor place", where they met Aaron Glassman for the first time. It was during this time that her brother promised her they would never go back to their parents. He also gave Elise a small toy scalpel, which would be treasured for years to come. Elise was fourteen when these events occurred.

The two ran away together and lived in an abandoned school bus together, until her brother's accidental death while playing in an old building with a group of other children. Elise was picked up by a police officer, who tried to take her back to her parents; at this point, she fell apart in the back of the squad car, screaming and crying about her brother's promise to her. As a result, Elise didn't see or speak to her parents again until much later in life. Ultimately, Glassman took Elise in, and raised her like a daughter. At one point, Elise lived with a distant foster mother who was fond of saying "tough titmouse" in response to a challenging situation. After her foster mother got diagnosed with a terminal illness, she sent Elise away again. It was shown that despite her distant attitude towards Elise, she truly cared about Elise and was devastated to have to send her away.

## Trivia

* It is unknown when she was diagnosed with autism and savant syndrome.
* Elise loves cats, even feeding a stray cat when she was advised not to, probably because it would continue to come back if she kept feeding it.