John Locke - Bad Doctor

Im Dr. Gideon Box.

If youre coming after me, dont do it in a hospital.

Thats my domain.

And dont piss me off in the real world and expect a smooth hospital stay in the future, because I have a long memory, and no one is exempt. If youre not a patient but your loved ones are, Ill harass them.

Before you bully me in a bar, embarrass me on a date, or refuse to replace the shitty car you sold me, think about this: youll never be more vulnerable in your life than when youre spending the night in a hospital. Youre out of your element, drugged, and totally dependent on our schedules and personnel. When youre here, youre not family. Youre prey!

Your wife just had a procedure and needs her sleep?

Good luck with that.

Ill swing by the nurses station, make a notation on her chart. Every two hours someone will be in her room, waking her up, changing her IV, moving her around. If youre not guarding her closely I might slip in her room, flip her on her side, lift up her gown, check out her ass. Or maybe Ill feel her up while pretending to listen to her heart with my stethoscope.

Dont get me wrong. I have no interest in your wifes nude body. Id only view or touch her because I can, and because its another way to beat you.

You get what Im saying?

Dont fuck with me.

I didnt kill Joes mom last week.

I could have killed her, but one glance at her chart told me the hospital didnt need my help. Her catheter should have been removed a day earlier. Since it wasnt, I figured the nurses forgot it.

I was right.

Like ventilators, catheters are breeding grounds for infection. Sixty-five thousand patients a year die from infections caused by these two pieces of equipment.

I never knew Joes mom, but thirty years ago Joe and I were on the sixth grade track team. A half-dozen of us were in the showers after practice the day Joe smacked my ass with a wet towel. I ignored it, but he kept smacking me. The others taunted me to do something about it. When I confronted Joe, he beat the shit out of me.

Picture me in a fetal position on the floor, clutching my stomach in agony. Now picture Joe and his friends pissing on me as a group, drenching me from head to toe.

Laughing.

Like I said, I didnt know Joes mom, and didnt kill her.

But I let her die last week from an infection I couldve prevented.

Im not an angel of mercy. I dont kill random patients.

Ive got a list.

If youre on my list, it means youve done something I refuse to forgive. Its probably something minor to you, something you forgot long ago. But like the Stones said in the second best song they ever recorded, time is on my side.

Like everyone else in the world, you and your loved ones will eventually get sick or have an accident. And when you do, you better not come to my hospital, because I can kill you, maim you, infect you, humiliate you, frighten you, aggravate you, and generally fuck up your life in a thousand different ways.

Want an example?

I bet you didnt know that every year three hundred hospital patients burst into flames during routine operations.

Three hundred!

You think all those are accidents?

Thirty-six items in a standard operating room can explode under the right conditions. What Im saying, I can turn your chest into a fireball using nothing more than an alcohol swab and a hot cautery device.

So dont piss me off.

And tread lightly, because Im tightly wound. Every day it takes less and less to piss me off.

Im the last guy you want to meet in the hospital-and not because Im a vindictive son of a bitch.

I am a vindictive son of a bitch, but the reason you dont want to meet me is Im your childs last hope for survival. When they wheel your kid into my operating room, it means his problems are so severe no one else can perform the surgery.

Thats because Im the most technically gifted congenital/cardiothoracic surgeon in the world.

Thats right, in the world.

Think Im bragging?

Im not.

I take no pleasure in being the worlds greatest surgeon.

Someone in the world makes the best flapjacks. Someone else is the best seamstress. And someone owns the worlds biggest ranch, truck, or penis.

Id rather be any of them.

Especially the guy with the biggest penis.

But its my job to be the best surgeon.

My skill is my curse, and forces me to work in hell, under excruciating pressure. I say that and you think, yeah, there probably is a lot of stress in what I do, operating on infants and children.

No.

You think you know, but you dont.

You have no idea.

Want a glimpse into my world? Thats me in the operating room, standing in the corner, crying silently so the others wont know. They think Im psyching myself up for the six-hour procedure Im about to perform.

See that tiny blue object on the table, surrounded by two highly-skilled nurses, a pediatric anesthesiologist, and assisting surgeon?

My patient, Lainey Sue Calfee.

Five pounds, less than a month old, structurally abnormal heart. It would take five minutes to tell you whats wrong with her, but shell be dead by then. And anyway, those are only the problems I know about. You can bet Ill find more bad news when I open her chest in a few minutes.

I always do.

What you need to know about Lainey is shes not going to make it.

Its okay, I already told her parents.

Thats me an hour ago, approaching the conference room to meet Laineys parents, Jordan and Will Calfee.

Of Calfee Coffee.

As I enter, Jordan and Will are on the sofa, grim-faced, holding hands. Nurse Sallys in the straight-back chair, giving me the evil eye. Security Joes standing at the doorway.

As always, I nod at Security Joe and say, Are you feeling okay? Because you dont look so good.

As always, he ignores me.

Jordan and Will jump to their feet, searching my eyes.

If my eyes could talk, theyd say Im dying inside, thinking how the Calfees lives will change forever when I kill their kid on my operating table.

Nurse Sally hates me. Shes black, two hundred fifty pounds, her age a complete mystery. Could be forty, could be sixty. Shes a wonderful, caring person, my polar opposite. She visits the parents before they meet me, warns them about my notoriously foul bedside manner, and attempts to calm them down after I leave.

Security Joe is early-forties, former Marine, big, tough, freaky quiet. The kind of guy youd expect to see guarding the president.

Joes chief of security, here to guard me from possible assault. He blends into the background, always ready to step between me and an angry parent. While Joe couldnt care less if I offend the parents, Sally constantly wants to slap me up the side of my head for doing so.

Id love to have Nurse Sallys attitude, and probably would, if I had her job.

Or any other job.

Im not asking for sympathy, but imagine if your job required you to do something that made you physically and mentally sick every time you did it. I know you cant relate, and there are no good examples, but you know that chalky stuff you have to drink the day before getting a colonoscopy? It tastes like hell and makes you shit for twelve hours straight?

Lets say your job was to drink that chalk every day of your life.

Youd like to quit, but youre the only one in the world who can do it, and every day you dont drink the chalk, a child youve met will die.

Thats a lot of pressure.

After a few years, it gets to your head.

Makes you do crazy things in order to cope.

So thats what I do, perform one or two of these horrific, impossible operations, then go bat shit crazy and run out into the world and do stupid, dangerous things, like breaking into peoples houses when theyre on vacation, and assuming their lives.