John Locke: Bad Doctor

I was right.

Because when I yelled, “Fine! Die on me, you little shit! I’m going to throw you in the trash and feed you to my dog for supper!”-her heart started beating.

From that day to this, I cussed every nurse, anesthesiologist, surgeon, robot, and child who entered my OR. The doctors and nurses don’t care for it, but the kids seem to respond.

Eventually.

Shelby Lynn responded, and now here she is, alive, standing before me, a valedictorian. She’s winding down her speech. There’s her smile, and her final words, “Thank you!”

A split-second pause occurs.

In that quiet moment after the end of her speech, before the audience rises to give her a standing ovation, she spots me in the back of the auditorium.

We lock eyes.

In that scant second of time I see her little mouth break into a grin, and suddenly my view and hers is blocked by three hundred cheering adults.

I don’t want to take the spotlight away from Shelby, or piss off her parents, who at one time threatened to kill me. I wouldn’t have come if they invited me, but it was Shelby who wrote the letter, and that made all the difference. Seeing her letter in my hands made me realize something important.

If I had allowed the other surgeons to pronounce her dead seven years ago, the world would still be spinning, but it wouldn’t be as special. Someone less deserving would be delivering the speech today, and someone else would marry the man Shelby’s meant to marry, and no one on earth would be here to create the amazing kids Shelby would have birthed.

Shelby lived.

And someday she’ll have children of her own, and her children will have children, and…

Yes, I’m a shitty person. I break into houses and fuck lap dancers and no one likes me, and yes, I poked five-year-old Shelby’s dead body around the table and slapped her feet and threatened to kill her parents and cussed her till my voice went hoarse.

But I saved Shelby’s life, and she’s going to make the world a better place to be.

I slip out the back and rush to my car before anyone else recognizes me.

Shelby’s right, she is lucky to be alive. But the stress and pressure of saving her nearly did me in. I went on a drunk fest and woke up three days later in a stranger’s garage, with a cat licking blood off my forehead.

I’ve got issues.

In the early days, I only got one or two impossible cases each year, so the stress was spaced out. Now that I’m internationally known, I’ve become the St. Jude of pediatrics, the surgeon of last resort, relegated to hopeless, desperate causes.

While I sometimes go weeks without operating, every morning I wake up knowing I could face an emergency situation. You’d think every day without one would be a day of relief, but I never know if a day’s over till the next one dawns, because emergency surgery often requires me to be ready on an hours’ notice. It’s the reason they placed my OR near the maternity ward.

When I don my scrubs I walk a tightrope of perfection. The slightest twitch, the smallest bead of sweat that hits the corner of my eye…can kill a child. I’m stressed like a postal worker on steroids, with an Uzi in one hand and a pink slip in the other.

Multiplied by ten.

To cope with this debilitating pressure, I’ve become an adrenalin junkie. It’s why I do insane things, like take off from work, fly to Cincinnati and break into some guy’s house, a guy so stupid he posted his vacation itinerary on Facebook!

It used to be enough to fly to Atlantic City for a few hours and drop five thousand dollar chips on numbers seventeen and twenty on the roulette wheel every spin until I’d won or lost a quarter million dollars. Win or lose, I’d relieve enough stress to handle a few more weeks of forced perfection.

But the rush from gambling faded.

I went through a phase where I’d break into homes and pretend I’m someone else for a few days. I’d go through their belongings, their mail, try to tap into their computers, view their photos and videos.

It’s a thrill to know you’re in someone else’s house illegally.

A friend or relative might swing by unexpectedly to check on the place, a neighbor might see lights or movement…

It happened to me once. During a routine check, the neighbors found me in Mike and Chrissy’s house. I gave them a bullshit story about how Mike and Chrissy called me at the last minute and asked me to stay there till they got back on Sunday, and how Chrissy’s sister, Ethel, was married to my brother, Mark, and so forth. I invited them in for coffee, and by the time they left, we were best friends.

Of course, I hauled ass out of there before they had time to call Mike and Chrissy!

My condition’s getting worse. What’s really scary, I’m developing a death wish.

This time it wasn’t enough to break into Chris Fowler’s house and pretend I’m him. This time I found myself in a biker bar, buying premium drinks for a primitive redneck named Bobby Mitchell, who told me all about his beautiful girlfriend who gives lap dances at a strip joint downtown on Barmeade. He said his girlfriend, Willow, has only been with one man in the world, and I was looking at him. Said if Willow ever decides to stray, he’ll hunt down the bastard that did her, cut his dick off, and sew it into Willow’s mouth.

“It wouldn’t be the first time I killed a guy,” he said, winking, and I believed him.

At that moment the only important thing in my world was Willow.

I had to meet her, had to have her!

It was a case of fuck Willow or go insane.

Now that I’ve made my conquest and cheated Bobby Mitchell out of killing me for fucking his girlfriend, I’m recharged, rejuvenated, and ready to head back to Manhattan to save some more lives.

I fire up the rental car and wonder how many of the kids I save will grow up to be like Shelby, and how many will grow up to be Willows or Camerons? How many will grow up to be Bobby Mitchells, Chuckies, or Dr. Gideon Boxes, for that matter? As long as the kids I save turn out better than me, I’m earning my keep.

I fish the two thick envelopes from the side pocket of my suit jacket and look at them. Each envelope contains sixty hundreds. My plane isn’t scheduled to leave for hours, so I’ll swing by the strip club and leave these envelopes for Willow and Cameron. It should more than cover what I owe, including the blow I forgot to flush down the toilet.

The club looks twice as filthy by day, and there are two cars parked by the front door. I go inside and hear a vacuum cleaner running, but it’s so dark I can’t see who’s operating it. I stand in the doorway and wait for my eyes to adjust.

The vacuum cleaner stops.

From across the room a woman’s voice hollers, “Sir? We don’t open till four.”

“Is the manager in?” I yell.

“Hang on a sec,” she says.

By the time the manager comes out, my eyes are working again.

“What can I do for you?” he says.

“If I give you something to hold for two of your dancers, will they get it?”

He sizes me up.

“You’re the guy from last night.”

I don’t respond.

He says, “Willow and Cameron.”

I shrug.

He says, “You can’t see the girls outside the club.”

“I know. I’m leaving town and wanted to give them a gift.”

He holds his hand out. “Give it to me, I’ll see they get it.”

Something in his manner tells me the girls will never see the money, and something in his look makes me very uncomfortable. I hear the roar of a motorcycle outside, and realize I’m standing in a strip club holding two envelopes containing twelve thousand in cash, and no one on earth knows I’m here.

“That’s okay,” I say. “I’ll give it to them next time.”