Running on Empty Contest Entries

ROE 1: Story #1 - Sine Qua Non

PROMPT: Creepy doctor sitting next to you on a plane.


There are all kinds of different jobs out there. Some people have glamorous jobs, like actors and rock stars; others have normal jobs, like accountants and salespeople. Some people even have undesirable jobs, like janitors and – in my case – what I’ll politely refer to as “corporate repo.” I’m the guy who goes into a workplace when it isn’t meeting its financial responsibilities, and either takes its assets, or outright shuts it down and sells it off, piece by piece, until the debts are paid off to the investors. I make an honest living and I don’t ever visit companies that are meeting their financial obligations, but I’m still just as hated as an IRS auditor or a social worker, especially when I have to do what I had to do in New York ... shut down a hospital.

It truly wasn’t my fault; the State of New York simply couldn’t afford to keep an underperforming hospital running. It was painful seeing all the patients transferred to other overcrowded hospitals, and saying goodbye to countless doctors, and support staff, but that was the job, and I did it. I grabbed the first flight back home to Chicago, hoping to forget the carnage that I had wreaked.

To make matters worse, there was a doctor sitting next to me on the plane home. Something about him just didn’t sit right with me; every time I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, I could swear he was glaring at me. When we first took our seats, he mentioned that he was a doctor, and I did my best to disengage. The last thing I wanted was to talk with a doctor after just firing fifty of them. I tried to be polite as I waited for an opportunity to don my noise-canceling headphones and read over my itinerary for the next month. I needed the time to plan my time and next few jobs.

I ordered a drink from the flight attendant and asked that she keep them coming. The creepy doctor, to his credit, would pass the drinks over to my window seat whenever one of them was empty.

Maybe it was the turbulence and reading my itinerary so closely; or maybe it was the number of drinks I was knocking back, but I started to feel really woozy halfway through the flight. My vision was getting blurry, sounds were muffled, and I was having a hard time concentrating. I reached up and pressed the “Call Attendant” button, removing my noise-canceling headphones. Even with the headphones off, though, the flight attendant’s voice seemed far away. I tried to speak, but my speech sounded slurred and incomprehensible. My sluggish mind barely registered the creepy doctor next to me, saying:

“Don’t worry. He’s a patient of mine. I’ll take care of him.”

I wanted to object, to tell the attendant that he most certainly was not my doctor. A sense of panic and emergency was setting in. As my peripheral vision darkened and consciousness slipped quickly away, I saw the creepy doctor lean in close and wink at me.

It was the last thing I remembered before blacking out.


I woke up, groggy and disconnected. I wasn’t sure where I was, or what had happened.

As I regained my senses, I looked around and seemed to be in a darkened hospital room. There was no power and there were no employees walking around, but the checkered tile floor, neutrally painted green walls, and unused medical equipment lying around were a giveaway. I tried moving around, but I quickly discovered that my wrists and ankles were fastened to restraints.

I was on an operating table, and a surgical tent had been erected below by chest. For the first time, I realized that I didn’t have any feeling below the neck.

Just as the terror set back in, a man in surgical garb enters the room and leans over me. His scrubs are splattered with blood and he’s holding a bloody scalpel. He leans in close and pulls down his surgical mask, revealing the creepy doctor from the plane. He winks at me again.

“Nice of you to join us again, Mr. Smith.” He said cheerily.

“What do you want?” I asked, my voice still sluggish and lagging behind my thoughts.

“Why, to return the favor of course!”

“The favor?”

The creepy doctor’s jovial gaze suddenly became darker and more sinister. He leaned in close and lowered his voice to a barely audible, menacing whisper.

“You dismantled that hospital in New York. Took it apart, piece by piece, and sold off those pieces for profit. Do you know how many of my colleagues’ lives you destroyed? How many patients will lose their quality of care?”

“It’s not my fault,” I answered feebly. “Just doing my job.”

“Well, you did what you do best,” he said matter-of-factly. “Now I’m going to show you what I do best. I’m going to take you apart, piece by piece, and sell off those pieces for profit; a kidney here, a liver there. You know, your heart is going to make a needy recipient very happy. I’m sure we can even find a use for your lungs and eyes too.”

I screamed, louder and longer than I’d ever screamed before. I thrashed around on the operating table, struggling to get free.

“Go ahead,” the creepy doctor taunted. “Get it out of your system now. The only way you’re getting off this table is one organ at a time. Don’t worry, though. I’ll keep you alive at long as humanly possible.”

The next hour of my now limited life was one of the most torturous I’d ever experienced. Although I couldn’t feel anything, I saw the creepy doctor working intently behind the surgical tent ... cutting and clamping, slicing and stitching. Blood was everywhere, and every so often, he would pull one of my organs free from its fleshy confines and place it in a medical organ transport cooler, making sure to show me what my own insides looked like before securing it away.

I watched as he put my kidneys, liver, pancreas, and intestine. As each organ was removed, he hooked me up to another life support machine, enforcing my immobility, and ensuring my survival for at least a little longer.

“Well, it’s time for the grand finale,” the creepy doctor said after what seemed like an eternity of operating on me, his live victim.

“I’ll be merciful and put you under for the extraction of your heart and lungs. And you know what? I think you may have won me over after all this, Mr. Smith. The parts really are more valuable that the whole. Unless you are the whole, of course.”

He chuckled as he turned up the nitrous and consciousness again slipped from my grasp.

The last thing heard him say was, “Goodbye, Mr. Smith,” followed by another one of those leering, creepy winks.

And then I felt myself descend into darkness for the last time.


My eyelids fluttered open, and the room slowly came into focus again. I was still in the operating room, but the creepy doctor was long gone. Instead, police officers were milling around, just at the beginning of what looked like setting up a crime scene.

“Hey!” One of them yelled. “He’s awake!”

The detective in charge approached my field of vision.

“Glad you’re awake,” he said, sounding relieved. “We were waiting on the medical examiner. Weren’t sure you were going to come back to us. We’ve got quite a few questions for you.”

He turned to some of the crime scene technicians.

“Get these machines out of here and give us some space, yeah?”

“No!” I screamed as they turned off the life support machines and wheeled them away. “He took my organs! Those machines are keeping me alive!”

A strange look came over the detective’s face, and he looked as if he were going to be sick.

“What is it?” I demanded, now hysterical.

“I don’t know what kind of demented person would put you through this and make you believe that,” he said. “But your organs are fine. No one’s operated on you.”

He helped the crime scene technicians remove the surgical tent and reveal my lower body, which was indeed untouched. At least not by a surgeon. There was something tattooed in big, bold letters across my chest.

“Sine qua non?” The detective asked.

My head fell back onto the operating table and I started to laugh hysterically.

“Without which, there is nothing,” I choked out.

“Huh?”

“It’s Latin. For something that is an essential part of the whole.”

The detective and crime scene technicians looked confused, but it only made me laugh harder, my sanity teetering on the brink. For the rest of my life, every time I looked in the mirror without a shirt, I would be reminded of the creepy doctor’s lesson:

Sometimes, the parts are more important than the whole.


(1,499 words)