It was determined that I would be a doctor whether it was something I wanted to do or not. After all, both my Mom and Dad were doctors so they would have nothing of me pursuing any other career. As I do everything, I put my every effort into being the best doctor I could be.

I opened my own practice and hated the very essence of it. To say I had poor bedside manners was an understatement. I abhorred the never ending bureaucracy of the mountain of paperwork that took more time than my visits with patients. Due to my terrible reviews, the one and done nature of my patients, and the constant turnover of staff, I gladly closed my private practice 5 years after I opened it.

But, I was a good doctor and highly sought after by the hospitals. I bounced from one to the other, never staying in one location very long before the same complaints by the staff and patients would arise. About to finally give up on the medical profession, I finally found my place. A place where the patients looked forward to seeing me. A place where I had full reign on how I ran my operations. A place where not only were regulations overlooked, I was often encouraged to get around the system.

Today’s visit was to be like nothing I had experienced before. I knew coming in that it would be my responsibility, I never dwelled on how I would handle it when the time arose. Well, the time was now. I waited in an ante room as they brought him in, handcuffed and feet shackled. He was laid on a gurney and strapped in, his arms straight out from his sides as if on a horizontal cross. Once he was secure, I came in and deftly inserted the IV needle into his arm, just as I had done countless times in the past.

I waited for what seemed an eternity, just me and #4739862, waiting for the signal. The warden nodded to me and I matter-of-factly initiated the procedure. Less than 10 minutes later I listened with my stethoscope and pronounced him dead at 11:03 PM.

I went straight back to my office, a sterile room made of concrete, painted white. My report didn’t have to be filed for 3 days but I wanted to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. I wanted this event to be in my past. I thought it would be “just a job” but I came to realize this man was not just a number, he was a mother’s son and a little girl’s father. Just like me.

I finished my report, folded it up and put it in an envelope. Licking the flap and sealing it down was a figurative gesture of ending the ordeal. I would drop it off at the coroner tomorrow. As I drove home, the last few nights of restless sleep was catching up to me. It was all I could do to concentrate on the road as my mind kept drifting back to the events of just a few hours ago.

I didn’t see the red light. In fact, I didn’t even notice the intersection I had driven through most every night for the past couple of years. My eyelids had succumbed to the urge to rest. Just a short nap to clear my mind. Something jarred me awake a split instant before the accident. I saw the terrified look on her face, her eyes wide open and surely screaming at the top of her lungs as the night was filled with the sounds of screeching tires, shattered glass, and crunching metal.

It took a bit to understand what had happened, that it wasn’t a dream. The deflated airbag lay in my lap, the seatbelt and shoulder strap had done their job. I was alive. I grabbed my bag and staggered over to the other car. I pried open the passenger door and lifted the lifeless body of a little girl and layed her on the pavement. I used that same stethoscope from earlier to search for any signs of life from the woman behind the wheel. There were none to be found. I looked at my watch so I could record the time of death, 3:11 AM. Within the span of 4 hours I had ended the lives of 3 generations of the same family.