You eventually learn that you were shot in the head, and the Doc fixed you up. Saving The Courierĭoc Mitchell is the first character that you as a player will come across. Mitchell decided to stay in Goodsprings so he could always be close to his wife. It is not know exactly when his wife died, but Mitchell explains that they were going to go to California, but due to his wife's weakened immune system from living in a vault most of her life, she passed away while they were still in Goodsprings.
Even later in his life still, he and his wife retired to Goodsprings, where he became the town's resident doctor. As the years passed, Mitchell eventually returned to New Vegas and married his childhood sweetheart. Soon after the vault had been opened, he left to become a travelling doctor with only the tools on his back and the nickname 'mole butt' affectionately given to him by his younger friends from his vault childhood.
