Page 10 of Free to Fall

I’m huddled beneath a blanket in the chaise lounge in my parent’s backyard in a stage of grief that makes the concept of being numb a goal to attain rather than an acknowledgment of my state of mind.

Whatever pain radiates from the wound on my shoulder is forgotten. Wind whips harshly against my face as if the early spring weather is not-so-gently punishing me for the fact I’m alive and my friends, colleagues, and random strangers I was ready to treat in the ER that night are dead.

Because of me.

What if I’d found Aldo Tiberi’s knife wound a moment sooner? I question myself for what must be the millionth time. Could I have given the surgeons a few more minutes to repair the damage to the artery before he died on the table?

Could I have prevented the massacre in my ER?

My hands shake as I replay everything in my head from the moment I walked up alongside Tiberi’s body. Worse than any morbidity and mortality review, I pick apart every second I assessed his injuries in the trauma room. Did I take too long trying to reassure him? Was there some small delay in my diagnosis? Why didn’t I think of a secondary wound sooner?

The pain in my stomach almost causes me to cry out when I recall gossiping with Karimat. From the moment I stepped away from her and replay how I approached the Tiberis, that’s where I was supposed to have full control.

My patient.

My ER.

Emotionally, I feel like I failed them all as surely as if I’d held up the gun and shot them myself. Dispassionately, I conduct an assessment as if I were rating a first-year resident. I was compassionate, but then I question how my words came out. Did I not sound empathetic? Did I come across as dismissive? Weak? Obviously, to men who were hardcore killers, I am weak.

Moser, after he got out of his hospital bed from taking the bullet that passed through me, ordered me face-to-face, “Do not step one foot back in my hospital unless it has to do with your mandatory psychological and physical therapy appointments, Gore.”

I whispered the God’s honest truth, “You don’t have to worry about that.”

Something in my tone must have set off clanging bells. “Why’s that?”

“Because I’m not certain I want to be a doctor any longer,” I rasped before turning away, despite him calling out my name repeatedly.

It doesn’t matter the police killed Paulie Tiberi. The blood of everyone in that ER is on my hands. He ensured it when he got inside my head.

I just can’t manage to work him out.

Lying awake night after night in my childhood bedroom, I fight for the ability to breathe as I replay everything over and over in my mind.

Why me and not them? Why was I spared?

Why am I alive?

Why was I saved?

Why not the mother of two bringing her babies into the ER because of a stomach virus?

Why not the young med student who got his first-choice match?

Why not Karimat, who had just accepted a marriage proposal from the man she was head over heels for?

A tear falls from the corner of my eye and tracks down the inside of my cheek until it brushes against my lips.

Staring blankly ahead, all I can think is I failed. I took an oath to save lives, and I failed.

How am I supposed to absorb that body blow?

No answer topples on me like a ton of bricks nor insidiously worms its way into my thoughts. I am, for all intents and purposes, banished into my own nightmare when I truly believed I’d be helping rescue others from theirs.

It just goes to show what can happen to a lifetime of dreams—they can be shattered in one single night.

Dragging my knees to my chest, I stare blindly over the lake. Due to my state of shock after I was discharged from the hospital, my parents whisked me back to their home. Those first few days, I don’t recall much of anything except forcing myself to remain awake for fear awaiting me when I slept. I refused pain medication, punishing myself with physical pain.

If I was going to live, it would be with the reminder of those who died.

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