Fair is Fair

I am a healer, sworn guardian of life, bound by oaths that cannot be broken or obscured. I am obligated to sacrifice my hours, my youth, my indecision for others. I am obligated to sacrifice time with my own child to serve another, and another, and another.

There is honor in the words I once promised to believe in and to uphold. Before, I would have breathed in that promise—lived it. I would have died defending it and seeking justice against those who broke it.

Now, as much, I expect my colleagues with any shred of integrity to seek it against myself.

And I do not care.

The man in the chair squirms, rope tied tight enough around his arms that I’m sure several abrasions will be documented during the autopsy. His face is a deep red, the pressure from screaming and sobbing pushing the blood into his skin. But his tears should allow for some relief—or they would, if they were not also hot with fear and rage.

I think of my rounds as a medical student as I weigh the 1911 steadily between my palms. I was nervous then, hands shaking and unsure while I applied blood pressure cuffs and pricked fingers for glucose readings.

The Colt .45 was my grandfather’s before he died of myocardial infarction. Heart attacks and the elderly—a common deadliness, as many know. I was surprised to inherit what little assets he owned. I never knew him.

Neither did June.

The .45 is suited with a pearl grip, white and heavy like marble. So beautifully crafted that my mother's late father hardly ever used it; it simply rested in a glass case in his bedroom that smelled of dust and shaving cream. When I found it there, I never intended to use it. I wanted to sell the thing, being that I never had an interest in guns.

But the stranger before me—he was a stranger to June—is sniveling and whining and pleading. And nothing makes me want to land a round into the eye more.

Did June cry? Did she beg?

Those questions are what steel my spine. Straighten me. Leave me without doubt or hesitation or shaking hands as I raise the weapon and aim it at the brown ring around his pupil. There's even a small smile dancing on my lips, fading in and out while the physician wars against the childless mother within.

"Please," he cries. "I didn't--I never should have done it. I'm sorry. Please!"

I pretend to consider, the only sound being his breath wheezing in and out in anticipation.

I pull down on the hammer, and the breathing comes to an abrupt stop at the sound of a click.

"You can spend eternity worrying about how you'll never have the chance to touch my daughter again."

I am close enough that—with only practicing once—his eye can no longer be identified, replaced with a gaping hole that looks something akin to what I feel. I lower my arm and walk over to his slumped-over body, careful to not step into the growing puddle of red. My white coat brushes my calves when I stop before him, and I blankly press my gloved fingers to the flesh covering the carotid.

There's no pulse.

There's no one to report time of death to, but I had to be certain.