from God.
Little Shelby and I have a connection. It’s why I’m standing here, transfixed by her presence. She’s the reason I traveled all the way from Manhattan, where I live and work.
I wanted to see her.
Had to see her.
Shelby’s the first kid I saved, and the least likely to survive.
After eight hours of what can best be described as a surgical cluster fuck the two surgeons charged with assisting me attempted to pronounce Shelby dead.
I told them to fuck themselves. One gave me a stern warning, the other left the room in a huff.
But I was on a roll.
I cursed the surgeon who left and the one who remained equally. I cursed the nurses and called them terrible names. I even cursed Shelby Lynn, the little dead kid on my table. I made fun of her blue body and rotten internal organs. Called her a freak, a monster, and every other horrific name I could think of. I cursed her parents, her friends, relatives, and ancestors.
After calling her every name in the book, I yelled, “Don’t die on me, you little muff-munching bitch. If you even try to die I’ll set your parents on fire! I’ll kill your friends! I’ll celebrate your birthday each year by bludgeoning a child to death.”
You know, stuff like that.
Before you get all bent out of shape, remember, she was only five. There’s no way she could know what bludgeoning meant.
But the medical staff thought I was suffering a meltdown. They stayed in the room to chronicle my behavior so they could report me later. That changed when I poked Shelby’s dead body and slapped the bottoms of her feet while screaming at her. At that point the room cleared, save for the gas guy and a nurse, both of whom were yelling their own threats at me.
I didn’t care. This kid was simply not going to die on my watch.
I felt it.
I knew it.
I just figured I hadn’t put together the right combination of words yet.
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.
9
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.
