Freeze Frame

A troubled boy. A mysterious past. An ever-changing reality.

Will Horner escaped his former high school for a fresh start, but the past has a habit of repeating itself. Being an avid filmmaker, Will is thrilled to join the historic arts school, Pinehurst Academy. However, since the incident, Will hasn’t made any films. He’s been living them. When his emotions take over, Will’s world transforms into a new reality: a living, breathing movie. Believing these visions were triggered by filmmaking, Will’s father made him hang up the camera long ago. But, when a new group of friends recruits Will to direct a movie for a life-changing prize, Will must decide if the film is worth the risk. With the help of his new friends, he will push the boundaries of reality and fight back against the horrors of his past. Can he escape his past, or will he be forced to relive it?

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It may surprise you to learn I never intended to publish this book. In fact, before Freeze Frame, most people in my life didn’t even know I was a writer. I started writing when I was little as a means to escape waiting rooms. You see, I was a long-time pediatric patient hopping around research clinics for answers. Trust me, there was a lot of time spent wanting to be anywhere else, especially if that “somewhere else” could be a world of my creation.

But life is funny. Not before long, I found myself falling in love with medicine, the field I had spent my childhood writing to escape. While I didn’t know how at the time, I knew I wanted to bring the worlds of writing and medicine together. Soon, I was starting medical school in the midst of a pandemic. Between studies, front line tragedy, and living in a windowless bedroom, I needed another world to escape into.

Throughout the pandemic, I saw too many kids and adolescents struggle with their mental health. Of those who bravely spoke about their battles, nearly all remarked how alone they felt in fighting. If only I could open up all the patient rooms and have these kids see they are anything but alone. That’s where medicine has its limitations. Stories, however, can go where medicine cannot. 

With Freeze Frame, I wanted to tell a story about a vulnerable boy overcoming trauma while highlighting key issues of youth mental illness today: social media, peer pressures, coping with anxiety and depression. Our youth are surrounded by social pressures very few of us can even fathom, and social media plays a large role in that. I want to be clear in that social media isn’t inherently awful. In fact, when used properly, it has the power to be our saving grace. A hammer isn’t inherently bad. It can build a house, but it can also end a life. Anything with power can be destructive. Sometimes, we don’t think about just how much power a child with a phone wields, and neither do they. Hopefully, this story can bring light to that.

Five years ago, I began writing this story from a windowless bedroom, mid-pandemic, in the trenches of medical school. Thanks to The Hippocratic Collective, I can finally bring forward the version of this story I always dreamt it could be. This story is an example of the kind of love and humanism The HC is fighting to bring back to medicine. I am beyond grateful for the lives Freeze Frame has connected me with, and I can only hope this edition will continue to do the same. If you are a future artist, a future doctor, or a future unique combination of your own, this story is for you. Be unapologetically passionate about all that you do, and no matter where the road takes you, always take pitstops to stay human.