It's Nothing Personal (46 page)

CREDITS

Editor
Liz Parker
 

Cover
Design by Ryan Jarvis, all rights reserved

Photography
by Tricia Turpenoff

Contributing
Editor Kimberly Dickson

Contributing
Editor Don Dennis

ABOUT SHERRY GORMAN, MD

Sherry Gorman is a
physician, specializing in anesthesiology.  In late 2009, Sherry was
plunged into a painful battle in a high profile, medical malpractice suit.
 The calamity that ensued nearly destroyed Sherry and her family.
 After the suit ended and the wounds started to heal, Sherry was urged by
close friends and co-workers to document her experiences.  The words
flowed, and
It’s Nothing Personal
was born from Sherry’s journey through
her temporary hell.

In her second book,
In
Good Hands
, Sherry tells a moving, gripping, and tragic story of an
anesthesiologist who dispenses her own version of justice after being the
innocent victim of a brutal crime.
 
In
Good Hands
will be released in June of 2013.

Sherry currently resides in Colorado with her
husband and their beautiful daughter.  In her spare time, she enjoys
running, writing, reading, and spending time with her family.  Her family
vacations are always spent in Hawaii, a place that Sherry and her family hold
dear to their hearts.  Having lived on Oahu while her daughter was young, Sherry
and her family relish the day when they can return to the islands permanently.

**********

Visit
her website at
http://www.thewritemd.com

Coming summer 2013

In Good Hands

Marcus

A sharp, stabbing
pain rips through me.
 
Warm fluid
flows down the side of my belly and pools under my back.
 
For several minutes, I can think of
nothing else but the flames burning a hole inside me.

Where the fuck am I?

Everything is
black.
 
My eyes refuse to open.
 
Or maybe they are open, but I can’t see
anything in the darkness.
 

I have to get out of here.

My legs won’t
move.
 
Neither will my arms.
 
My mind screams for help, but my mouth
is frozen.
 
I try to lift my
head.
 
It won’t budge.
 

What’s going on?

Squish.
 
Air is forced into my lungs, and my
chest blows up like a balloon being overfilled.
 
My lungs are about to burst.
 
Swoosh
.
 
The air rushes out.
 
The cycle repeats, over and over
again.
 
I try to suck a breath in on
my own.
 
Nothing happens.

Something fills my
mouth, pressing against my tongue and going down my throat.
 
With each blast of air moving in and out
of my lungs, the thing vibrates, and I can feel the tip from deep inside my
chest.

My heart beats so
fast, I know it’s going to explode.
 
A machine near my head beeps as fast as my heart.
 
They are in rhythm with each other.
 
The sound reminds me of when my old man
used to take me to the racetrack when I was a kid.
 
Like the hooves of a racehorse galloping
through the dirt, each beat is nearly on top of the one before it.
 
A high-pitched alarm sounds.

“Patient is
tachycardic, heart rate in the 150s,” a woman standing near my head calls out,
her voice filled with urgency.
 
My
left wrist burns and then a rush of coolness spreads up my arm.
 
Seconds pass, and the pace of the
beeping from the machine slows.
 
At
the same moment, the hum of blood whirling through my skull suddenly stops.
 

Am I the patient?
 
Come on Marcus, focus!

I listen
hard.
 
Strange sounds come from
every direction.
 
On my left side, I
hear metal clanking.
 
All around me,
there are muffled sounds of bodies rustling and footsteps.
 
Slowly, my mind begins to clear.
 
I am lying on my back on something hard
and scratchy.
 
My arms are out to my
sides, like I’m Jesus on the cross.
 
Panic sets in.
 

What kind of sick, twisted shit is going on
here?

 
“How far up the abdomen do you want me to
prep, Doctor?” asks a woman with a raspy voice.
 
She sounds like she is standing right
beside me.

“To the nipples,”
calls out a deep, male voice that seems further away.

Something cold and
wet splashes across my belly and chest.
 
I want to reach up and wipe it away, but my arms are dead weight.
 
There is no escape.
 
I am trapped in my body, at the mercy of
strangers.

A scratchy pad
touches my belly button.
 
It moves
outward in bigger and bigger circles all across my stomach.
 
Whoever is doing this to me is being
rough, pressing hard, and scraping up my skin.
 
My entire stomach stings, like I fell
into a bee hive.
 
Even though I am
chilled to the bone and I should be shivering, I’m not.
 
Finally, the circles reach my sides, and
the scrubbing stops.
 

Music plays in the
background.
 
I don’t recognize the
song.
 
It’s nothing I would listen
to.

Think.
 
Where am I?
 
Think.
 

My chest blows up
with air again and then empties.
 

In bits and
pieces, things come back to me.
 
I
remember being at Freddie’s party and getting really messed up.
 
In the back room, I did a couple of
lines with the guys.
 
When I walked
out to the kitchen to grab a beer, Lacey was standing by the door with some
guy.
 
She looked right at me, tossed
me a nasty little smile, and then started making out with him.
 
He grabbed her ass, and she grinded her
body into his.
 

She’s only with him to piss me off.
 
Fucking
whore.
 

Again, my chest expands
against my will.
 

My mind drifts
back to the kitchen, with it’s stained, cracked linoleum and paint chips
peeling from the walls.
 
I can see
everything so clearly, like I’m standing right there, reliving it.
 
The stereo blares from the living
room.
 
Lil Wayne pounds from the
speakers, rattling the walls.
 
I
pull my knife out of my back pocket and walk up to Lacey.
 
When I’m standing right in front of her,
I press the release button, and the shiny blade springs out.
 
Her boy toy yells, “Oh, shit!” and backs
away from the two of us.
 
Other
people scream and run.
 
But not
Lacey.
 
Our eyes are locked on each
other.
 
Then, she tilts her head
down, her blonde hair falling across her face, and looks at the knife.
 
It’s razor sharp, and she knows it.
 
After a few seconds, she looks back up,
just standing there, mocking me, with hands on her hips.
 

“Look at you, with
your big, bad knife.
 
What are you
going to do with that, Marcus?
 
Hack
me up for the world to see?”
 
Lacey
laughs at me as she spats out the words.
 
There is no sign of fear in her eyes, only disrespect.
 

Something happens
inside my head, and I snap.
 
I swing
the blade across the side of her face.
 
Now, I see fear.
 
Her skin is
completely white, and her eyes are wide and round.
 
She reaches her hand up to her right
cheek, which was slashed open in a clean, long line.
 
Blood trickles down her face.
 
The next thing I recall is pulling the
knife out of her belly, and the feeling of her warm, sticky blood trickling
from the silver and red blade onto my hand.
 

From behind me, I
hear the thunder of a man’s voice.

“Drop the knife!”

I don’t turn
around to face him.
 
Instead, I just
stand there, motionless, and stare at Lacey.
 
She’s crouched down on the floor, crying
and screaming, while she clutches the hole in her belly.
 
Blood is everywhere, soaking into the
cracks in the floor and surrounding Lacey in an expanding circle of red.
 

Her crying is too
much.
 
I can’t take the sound of
her.
 
I’ve got to make her
stop.
 
My right hand still grips my
knife, and I raise it over her chest.
 
My grip is so tight on the handle, the muscles in my arm start to
quiver.

“Shut up
bitch!”
 
Spit shoots out of my mouth
and splatters on Lacey.

Lacey continues to
wail.

Directly from my
right, “Drop the knife!”

It’s Lacey’s
boyfriend.
 
I take my sight off of
Lacey for just a second to look at him.
 
He has .38 pointed at me.
 
I
can almost peer down the barrel as he aims for my head.
 
He breathes heavily, his pupils are the
size of tiny dots, and I can see his hand shaking as he grasps his gun.
 

At first, nobody
moves.
 
Then I see Lacey squirm away
from me, and I lunge at her with the knife.

Pop!
 

My ears ring.
 
Blood starts to gush out of my stomach,
but I don’t feel any pain.
 
The
world spins.
 
I drop the knife as I
fall to the floor.
 
Then, there is
only blackness.

My chest blows up
again.

I try to remember
what happened next, but there is nothing, until now.

There are people
on both sides of me, placing some kind of cover over my legs, chest, and
arms.
 
I know my stomach remains
exposed because I can feel the icy air hitting my skin.

“Okay to start?”
asks the deep, male voice.
 

Okay to start what?

“Absolutely,” says
a woman’s voice, soft and silky.
 
She’s right by my head.
 
I
can hear her body moving around.

Fingers press on
my chest, just below my breastplate.
 
They are covered in some kind of rubber.
 
In the next instant, a straight line of agony
rips down my abdomen, from just below my ribs to just above my groin.
 
I can feel the cold metal sharpness of
the blade against my skin.
 
My
tissue pulls apart and frost hits my insides.
 

Oh God, make it stop!

The torture is so
consuming, that I nearly pass out.
 
But I’m brought back when I hear a high-pitched noise.
 
It buzzes on and then off, in short
bursts.
 
Zzzzzzzzp.
 
Zzzzzzzzp.
 
Each time, a blast of electricity sears
the skin on my belly.
 
There is a foul
odor, like something burning.
 

It’s the scent of my own fles
h.

The pain is more
intense than the highest high.
 
There is no escaping it.
 
Still, my heart rate remains steady and slow, even though my mind is shattering.

Bitter air
saturates my insides.
 
Something is
shoved into my belly cavity – something metallic and large.
 
The sound of gears cranking fills my
head.
 
With each series of clicks,
the metal thing grows bigger and bigger, stretching the hole inside me until I
nearly split in two.

Next, I feel
tugging.
 
It makes me want to
vomit.
 
There is something wet and
slippery on the skin of my belly.

It’s my guts!

Time stands
still.
 
I can’t tell if it’s been
minutes, hours, or even days.
 
The
pain never lets up.
 
I am so cold.
 
Every once in a while, I try again to
move or scream, only to be reminded that my muscles are dead.
 
Eventually, I give up.
 
There’s no point.
 
I’m starting to lose my mind.
 
All I can think about is the
overwhelming pain and what will come next.
 

This is hell.

At some point,
there is tremendous pressure inside my belly, and my guts are no longer lying
on my skin.
 
They must be putting my
parts back inside me.
 
Gears crank
again, and the thing that was stretching my belly open seems to be getting
smaller.
 
Finally, I no longer feel
the metal in my stomach.