Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

Because Pharma is the worst, most psychotic Autobot medic.   -_-

And Dr. Gideon Box is a bad doctor himself.   Having so many doctors in my family, I probably should have known that this would have offended me.   But I figured it was free, and I really love psychopathic and sociopathic characters in fiction, so why not give it a try?   I've read two of Locke's books before, although they were in another series (Donovan Creed).    I was hoping he'd matured a bit as a writer, since I wasn't crazy about those other two, either. 

He hasn't.   He makes brief reference of Donovan Creed, and uses his Dani Ripper character briefly, but in ways that feel like wink, wink, look at me pat myself on the back for all these characters!   The problem is that what we see of Dani doesn't really show us much about her, and certainly nothing that would make me want to read more about her.   

Then again, I don't want to read more about Dr. Box.   He's a surgeon who deals with high-risk patients.   In fact, children whose cases are labeled hopeless, and whom all the other doctors ever have given up on.   These children die, sometimes multiple times on his table, and Dr. Box cures them with surgery.   Oh, and possibly by cursing at them.   Like so many surgeons, he has truly horrendous bedside manners, although this feels like a fluke.   Locke just doesn't understand enough about human nature to actually really get why surgeons tend to treat people like shit, and he doesn't show that he understands this is the novel.   Surgeons, to keep sane, think of people as intimate objects.   If they think of people/bodies as human, they couldn't cut into bodies, and keep sane, and do their jobs.   They would be too much of a nervous wreck.   

And yet, Dr. Box bounces between sociopathic behavior, calling women cunts in the operating room, cursing at the bodies of dying children, and seems to be under the delusion that the cursing saves the children - because the first time he operated on a child, they were gone, but he cursed at them, and they were miraculously saved.   

He also bounces between caring so much about the children that he's distraught, and that stress building up to the point where he blows it off by doing something dangerous and illegal.   He has a list of everyone who's ever fucked him over, and kills them, or their loved ones, or tortures them, when they end up in the hospital.   Uh-huh.   A sociopath totally works that way. 

Or let's get into the fact that he doesn't get fired despite nurses complaining about him, parents complaining about him, and him asking for blow jobs when the mothers of these children ask what they can do to repay him. 

Or his 0% mortality rate, despite dealing with such high-risk cases. 

Let me explain something - surgeons have a higher risk of malpractice, because a higher risk of fatalities, because, well, riskier procedures.   The riskier the procedures are, the more the fatality percentage tends to go up.   High risk surgeons get paid more because they pay a lot more in insurance because they deal with more fatalities and thus more lawsuits.   If one is doing only more routine surgeries, such as appendix removal, the fatality risk and percentages go down; if they're dealing with brain or cardiac surgery, the risk goes up.   Cardiac abnormalities in infants who are blue when Dr. Box enters the OR are a theme in this novel. 

There is no, no, no way he has a 0% fatality rate.   No way.   Not even if he only deals with seven or eight patients a year.   No.   Way.   

Not only that, the fact that he still has a job is ridiculous.   His behavior is unacceptable.   The fact that no nurses will work with him is understandable.   So he gets new nurses, and their contracts mention that there will be verbal abuse and that they are okay with this.   

Yeah, because a lawyer would totally be okay with that.   

Let's not even get into the middle-aged Dr. Box sleeping with a woman he believes is eighteen, but is in fact just shy of her eighteenth birthday. 

And gross, especially since he starts falling for her.   And setting up a sleeping with her arrangement that will start after she turns eighteen - but that they talk about when she is still seventeen.

Overall, this is just not a good book.   The sentence structure is fine, and I was compelled to keep reading, although that might have been my fascination at how much of a train wreck this was. 

Mostly, though, I'm just glad it was such a quick read and over now.   I feel kinda like this whole book was bad touching me all over.    And like I might need another shower.