Roses in December by Mark Gibson

Author:Mark Gibson [Gibson, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hamilton Press
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

December 2001–March 2002

It broke Becca’s heart to see James suffering and, so much more so, knowing that she was powerless to help. Had James been anyone else, she would’ve assured him that time would deaden the ache in his soul—as it had for her after Jimmy died—and someday, the hurts would heal. Sadly, “tincture of time” was an unguent denied to someone like James, whose memory would not allow him to forget. Curse his goddamn perfect memory! All she had to offer her son was her unconditional love and support and, perhaps, religion. Neither of which did anything to assuage his grief.

James appreciated his mother’s efforts and loved her all the more for wanting to help. He thought she shouldn’t feel too badly—nothing else worked either. No matter what he tried, the picture-in-picture remained unabated and unendurable. He jumped out of airplanes. He nearly killed himself rock climbing. He was arrested—but later released—when he got caught trying to base jump from the St. Louis Arch. James drove his sportscar at dizzying speeds at a local speedway and nearly lost his license trying the same on local highways and back roads. He began hanging out in local bars and experienced a dizzying series of one-night stands. Nothing gave him any relief.

Out of desperation, he once even tried ketamine. It temporarily suppressed his mental playback, but if possible, he found the experience even more disturbing than watching the towers fall. And, within an hour of awakening from the drug-fueled nightmares, his usual nightmare returned to the video screen of his consciousness.

In spite of his best efforts to find a means of suppressing the constant video feed from his overly developed memory, James seemed to be getting worse rather than better. His sleep pattern, already suboptimal due to the nature of his job, became even more fragmented. His affect and patience when dealing with others, already strained, became even more volatile and toxic. Only the thinnest of veneers protected the world around him from the seething cauldron beneath. Errant staff members considered themselves lucky only to be dissected by his acerbic wit after a miscue in the operating room or ICU.

Finally, the director of Human Resources had had enough. The straw that broke the camel’s back was James’s particularly vicious flaying of a surgical intern that had prompted the intern’s subsequent resignation from the training program. The intern, sleep-deprived after working a double shift, had administered an antibiotic to a patient recovering from surgery for uterine cancer. Her chart clearly stated that she was severely allergic to that particular antibiotic, but the intern gave it anyway. The patient suffered an anaphylactic reaction and, had James not happened to be walking through the ICU at the time, would’ve died.

“Dr. Hamilton, you simply must get your anger under control. You’re a gifted surgeon, but we cannot afford to have you out there running off our house staff.”

James had always found the HR director’s nasally voice annoying. He replied, “Running off our house staff? Siracuse, you’re joking, right? That intern—”

“You may refer to me as Doctor Siracuse, Dr.

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