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Patients she would always have, if she toiled at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and forgot why she went to California.
Patience she had, but it was dwindling as writer Erica Anderson spent seven lean years trying to break into television.
Then the CBS show "Cold Case" snatched her out of obscurity: Her first credited episode runs Sunday at 10 p.m.
And what did she do when she got the news? "I screamed," says the 30-year-old former Charlottean. "I was in a stairwell at Cedars, screaming. Then I left."
"Cold Case," which has been running for seven seasons, stars Kathryn Morris as a Philadelphia police detective who revives dormant mysteries the cops have given up hope of solving. So the irony here - that her new job revived a dormant writing career Anderson was losing hope of achieving - wouldn't be lost on the writer.
"The struggle of the artist is to keep writing with no hope of reimbursement," she says. "Many times I said to myself, 'Maybe I should go home. Maybe I should do something else.' But what? Be a teacher? Would I be happy doing that?
"I didn't have kids. I didn't have to take care of someone else. So I thought, 'I have to see this through.' When the door finally opened in the magical way it did, it was heavenly."
Not that life had been hell, though her worst job since graduating from the University of Southern California - stuffing envelopes in a windowless basement for $5 an hour - was hellish for her active mind.
Amid the darkness of temp work had come flashes of light. Anderson was hired as a production assistant to writers on the short-lived Fox show "Reunion," where she got a crash course in the TV industry.
And when she needed a steady job to pay bills and student loans, she found it at Cedars-Sinai, first as a temp and later as a patient liaison in the pain center, making sure folks treated for chronic pain were seen on time and satisfied.
Yet steady employment took her no closer to the dream she'd had since attending Cotswold Elementary School:
"In fourth grade, we wrote a descriptive paper about animals who came alive in a town, and I knew then I had an interest in being a writer. I thought I could write a soap opera, like the ones I'd watch with my grandmother over summers."
Movie screenwriters can go years between projects, but TV writers have a 9-to-5 job for as long as shows and contracts last. So when "Cold Case" called, she warmed to the idea.
"One of the show runners (the producer responsible for day-to-day operations) had worked with me on 'Reunion,' and I'd sent her a spec script (styled upon the serial killer series "Dexter") to get some feedback. A year went by. Then I heard from her out of the blue last May, asking me to write a pilot with an original idea, to see if I had my own voice."
Multiple meetings later, Anderson found herself in the writing room for "Cold Case." In TV, an individual writer comes up with an idea, pitches it to the show runner, breaks down the story and takes it to the writers' room, where members of the 10-person staff give it color by making suggestions.
When that process is over, one writes a script - in Anderson's case, a drama about the 1991 murder of a 14-year-old foster kid and aspiring rapper.
That shoot went remarkably smoothly: Writers are key players on a TV set (unlike movies); director Kevin Bray, who has done many episodes of "Cold Case," treated her as a full collaborator. Jeff Moonie Jr., a friend and fellow former Charlottean living in L.A., wrote two hip-hop songs for the show. On the day Bray shot outside the studio, he picked the exact block of the rough neighborhood where Anderson lived while attending the University of Southern California.
She's now about as close to security as writers get in show business: Her contract entitles her to work on 22 episodes, whether or not she gets credit.
So what would she say to all the Ericas in school right now?
"When I graduated from USC, I thought people would be beating down my door, but I don't know anyone (who succeeded) right away. When you come out of school, you'll take jobs you hate from people you never thought you'd work for.
"But my parents always told me you can do anything you put your mind to, if you put God first. When I was broke and sleeping on somebody's floor, I thought about that.
"Life experiences made me tougher and a better writer: I couldn't have given my characters depth without (living) the last seven years. A little pain has to happen before you can touch the human condition."
