Outside the Box

By John Locke

Dr. Gideon Box attempts to move his new girlfriend, Trudy Lake, into his Manhattan penthouse and high society lifestyle. Problem is, Trudy’s a backwoods Kentucky girl with more baggage than the Lost & Found warehouse at LaGuardia!

PRELIMINARY REVIEWS

“Outside the Box is John Locke’s best book in more than a year!”

“I wish I could tell Locke’s fans why they will love this book, but I don’t want to take anything away from the wonderful experience.”

“A Dr. Box book with humor AND heart? What’s the world coming to? I love, absolutely LOVE Trudy Lake!”

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Locke
• Release date: Oct 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781940745091

John Locke

John Locke kommt 1632 im englischen Wrington zur Welt. Nach dem Besuch der Westminster School in London studiert Locke bis 1658 in Oxford. Zwischen 1660 und 1664 lehrt er dort Philosophie, Rhetorik und alte Sprachen. Sein enzyklopädisches Wissen und seine Studien in Erkenntnistheorie, Naturwissenschaften und Medizin bringen ihm früh die Mitgliedschaft in der Royal Society ein. Als Sekretär und Leibarzt des Earl of Shaftesbury ist Locke in Folge der politischen Machtkämpfe in England gezwungen, ins holländische Exil zu fliehen. Erst 1689 kehrt er nach England zurück und widmet sich auf seinem Landgut seinen Studien. Im selben Jahr erscheint anonym Ein Brief über Toleranz, der die ausschließliche Aufgabe des Staates im Schutz von Leben, Besitz und Freiheit seiner Bürger bestimmt. Die hier formulierten Ideen finden in der amerikanischen Unabhängigkeitserklärung ihren politischen Widerhall. Lockes Hauptwerk, der Versuch über den menschlichen Verstand, erscheint erst 1690 vollständig, wird aber vermutlich bereit 20 Jahre früher begonnen. Es begründet die Erkenntnistheorie als neuzeitliche Form des Philosophierens, die besonders in der französischen Aufklärung nachwirkt. Locke lehnt darin Descartes' Vorstellung von den eingeborenen Ideen ab und vertritt einen konsequenten Empirismus. Aus der theoretischen Einsicht in die Begrenztheit der Erkenntnisfähigkeit ergibt sich für Locke die Forderung, daß sich weder ein Staatssouverän noch eine Glaubensgemeinschaft im Besitz der allein gültigen Wahrheit wähnen darf. Der mündige Bürger, der in der Lage ist, kritisch selbst zu entscheiden, wird konsequenterweise zum pädagogischen Ziel Lockes. John Locke stirbt 1704 als europäische Berühmtheit auf seinem Landsitz in Oates.

Book preview

1.

GET AWAY FROM me! she screams. Get away or I’ll jump!

Go ahead, I say, leaning out the window to my waist.

We’re in Manhattan, forty stories up. She’s standing on the ledge, her back pressed against the building.

"What are you doing?" she says.

Trying to look up your dress.

"What?"

It’s windy as hell today. The way your dress is whipping around, I’m bound to see your panties.

Omigod! My last minute on earth, I’m with a pervert!

She looks skyward. "Thanks a lot, God."

She lowers her hands to her sides, holds her dress in place.

I crawl out the window, get to my feet.

You’re gonna fall, she says.

"Bullshit. This is a wide ledge. Even you aren’t going to fall. And don’t think this is my first time out here. I’m a veteran of this particular war."

You’re lying.

"You think it’s a coincidence this is the only window in the entire hospital that opens? It’s my window. This is my ledge."

You weren’t using it.

You beat me here by a minute, at most.

She gives me a curious look. "Why would you come out here?"

Same reason as you. To jump.

Then why haven’t you?

I don’t have the guts. Neither do you.

I take a step toward her.

"Stop! I swear to God, if you come any closer, I’ll jump!"

If I get close enough, you won’t have to.

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

"I didn’t come out here to talk you off the ledge. I came to push you!"

"What? You can’t do that! You’re a doctor."

You’re only saying that because I’m wearing scrubs. Any jackass can buy scrubs. Doesn’t make him a doctor.

"But you are a doctor. A famous one. I saw you coming out of the OR a few minutes ago. People were cheering and clapping."

So?

Doctors are required to help people. You took an oath.

I also took an oath not to cheat on my wife, but here I am, standing on a ledge, forty stories up, hoping to see your panties.

You’re not wearing a ring.

Sadly, I’m divorced.

There’s a shock.

Look down.

"Look down? Are you insane? That’s the last thing you should tell a jumper!"

Why?

I could get dizzy and fall.

I close the space between us. You came out here to jump. Does it really matter if you fall?

She takes a couple of shaky steps away from me, but I’m much more comfortable out here than she is. For each step she manages, I take two.

What’s your name? I say.

None of your business.

You’ve got a nice body. Are you a dancer?

Fuck you!

You’re actually quite pretty. You’re what, twenty-eight? You should be in the suburbs, ruining some poor bastard’s life. I point to her dress. Show me your panties.

Get away from me, you degenerate bastard!

You can show me now, or I can see them on the pavement in a few minutes. Your choice.

She looks down, nearly loses her balance. Looks back at me, sees I’m three feet away. She screams, takes several quick steps.

I say, I’ve tried to kill myself a hundred times on this very ledge, and backed out every time. You should thank me.

"Thank you for pushing me off a building? You’re crazier than I am!"

Stand still, I say. Close your eyes. Pretend you’re a kid again, standing at the edge of a swimming pool, learning to dive. Lean out over the edge, let your body take you right into the air. It’s going to feel exhilarating.

Shut up, you crazy bastard!

See what you’re doing? You’re chickening out, like I always do. We’ve both got it in us to jump, we just need a push. Or if you prefer, we can hold hands and jump together.

She studies my face, sees I’m serious.

Her eyes go wide; then she turns and sprints away from me.

I’ve never done any ledge sprinting, but I gamely chase her to the corner of the building, turn, chase her to the next corner; which is half a city block. She’s younger than me by a dozen years, and I’m feeling it. I’m winded, ready to quit.

But then I think about how this is the most fun I’ve had in a long time, not to mention on a ledge, so I suck it up and charge forward. My renewed effort allows me to keep pace with her, though I’m unable to gain ground. When I turn the fourth corner, we’re back where we started, except that she climbs back through the window, then closes it, then locks it.

She’s safe inside; I’m still on the ledge. She’s grinning at me, making monkey faces. Still hopeful, I point at her dress, but all she shows me is her middle finger.

I sigh, walk to the spot where I met her, then sit on the ledge and watch the city move beneath me.

2.

I KNOW WHAT you’re thinking.

I could use one of my shoes to break the window, then reach in and unlock it. And that’s exactly what I’ll do if I decide not to jump. In the meantime, it’s pleasant out here, despite the wind, and I’ve got nowhere to go, since my girlfriend, Trudy, left me this morning.

You think you know someone, then one morning you get up to use the bathroom, and when you come back to bed, she’s gone.

Didn’t even take her stuff.

Just left, without a goodbye.

No message, note, or parting gift.

Nor did I have time to grieve. My phone rang, and when I answered it a nurse shouted, "Baby Blue Rooftop!"

It’s a code.

Hospitals use code words to prevent panic and protect patients’ privacy.

Baby Blue is our hospital’s code for an infant whose condition is so critical the Cardiac Life Support Team knows to go straight to the ER entrance and prepare the patient for immediate surgery. Rooftop means the infant is arriving by medevac helicopter, in which case the team will rush to the rooftop heliport.

When those words are spoken, everything changes. Administrators and fund raisers bite their lips and worry my streak will be broken. The doctors and specialists who signed off on the hopeless child think, "Good luck with that one!" The orderlies, cooks, and non-essential staff exchange bets on the surgical outcome. And the nurses regard me with hope, reverence, and awe, instead of the way they usually do: like I’m a shit stain in their panties.

I check my cell phone.

11:30 a.m.

Still no word from Trudy.

Some time passes before I hear a sound, and notice a group of workers setting up tables and chairs on the rooftop garden directly across the street. Though we’re 40 floors up, the street that separates us is so narrow I could pelt them with rocks.

When the tables are done, a team of decorators swarms the terrace like crabs on a crotch. Within 30 minutes they transform the space into something you’d see on a movie set. Everything’s white and heart-shaped, including the ice sculptures. It’s clear I’m about to witness a high-class engagement luncheon.

Soon the caterers take over, and I watch them fuss with the food till the guests arrive. By the time the festivities start, the wind has died down, and there’s not much skirt-blowing taking place, so I focus my attention on the pretty young lady in skin-tight designer jeans standing beside an imperious, well-tanned older couple. She’s graceful, trim, ponytailed, and wearing just enough makeup to prove she doesn’t need any. Even from this distance you can see the blaze of sunlight glinting off the gigantic rock on her finger, and the infinity-carat tennis bracelet her fiancé placed on her wrist to keep the pretenders at bay.

See that dazzling smile on her face?

Want to know who put it there?

See the young doctor heading her way? That’s her fiancé. He’s wearing scrubs.

Nice embrace, don’t you think?

What did they call that back in the day? A Kodak moment? Hallmark moment? Shit, I can’t remember. But it’s safe to say most people would consider it a romantic moment.

Not me.

I’m also a doctor. Unlike the young, good-looking beneficiary of the ponytailed brunette’s affection, the ledge girl was right in saying I’m famous. I’m Dr. Gideon Box, and happen to be the greatest cardiothoracic/cardiopulmonary pediatric surgeon in the world.

You think I’m boasting?

I’m not.

Nor am I putting the civilian population in danger by advertising my profession with my scrubs, like the young doctor who’s now hugging his future in-laws.

As it turns out, I know this kid. As recently as last week he was boning one of my former nurses on a regular basis. Probably still is. How did I find out? The nurse in question told him why she quit working for me. Said she was uncomfortable with the language I used in the OR, and the unorthodox methods I employed, like yelling, pushing, and slapping the kids around on my operating table when they failed to respond. This guy filed a complaint with the board, and I had to answer for it by agreeing to attend a series of sensitivity lectures.

I fully intend to punish him for that.

You probably think I should tell his fiancée he’s been cheating on her with my former nurse, but if confronted, he’ll deny it and claim I fabricated the story to get back at him for reporting my inappropriate behavior. He’d wind up an even bigger hero in her eyes.

So that won’t work.

But trust me. I’ll find a perfect way to get back at him. Don’t worry, I’ll make you proud.

Speaking of proud, just look at the way his fiancée is beaming! She’s proud of her young doctor, in his scrubs, fresh from the hospital, where he’s been working alongside dedicated nurses, doctors, and highly-skilled, highly-trained personnel. By this time next year he’ll be married, in private practice, earning enough to subsidize his wife’s jewelry fetish.

He doesn’t have to wear scrubs. I mean, who wears scrubs to a fancy engagement party?

This guy.

And the reason why is because he wants the whole world to know he’s a doctor. It’s a status symbol.

You see them everywhere, don’t you? Nurses and doctors wearing scrubs in grocery stores, fast food restaurants, coffee shops, at their kids’ ball games, at PTA meetings.

I don’t wear scrubs in public. Want to know why?

If you strip the scrubs off the next ten nurses, doctors, or health workers you see in public today and send them to a lab, six will test positive for pathogenic bacteria that can cause pneumonia and lethal bloodstream infections. One of the ten scrubs will test positive for antibiotic-resistant organisms, which can kill you even if you’re in an ICU, receiving round-the-clock medical treatment.

Highest areas of concern? Sleeves, waists, and pockets.

How do you think our cute brunette would feel if she knew that when her fiancé gave her a full-body embrace a moment ago he saturated her blouse and jeans with live germs that could render her unable to have children?

There they stand, chatting up the bartender, holding hands, grinning like pigs in shit.

Now he’s reaching in his pocket, removing cash, placing it in the bartender’s tip jar.

Now he’s holding his fiancé’s hand again.

It’s highly likely his pocket contains live viruses he brought with him from the hospital, not to mention each bill in his pocket is saturated with up to 25,000 colony-forming germ units. To put it another way, the folding money in his pocket contains more bacteria per square centimeter than the steaming shit stack the homeless wino deposits behind our hospital loading dock every night.

Think about it. A butcher handles raw meat all day and gives his assistant a five-dollar bill to bring him a sandwich. The assistant gives the bill to the sandwich shop lady, who gives it to the next customer in change, who swings by the coffee shop on his way home from work. Everyone who handled that five-dollar bill has been exposed to what amounts to germ warfare, and our young doctor will accept that same bill, fold it, place it in his germ-infested pocket, cross-contaminate his hands with the live viruses and germs picked up in the hospital, and spread it to his fiancé’s hand (and her crotch, if he happens to get lucky after the luncheon).

Where you see a romantic gesture, I see a possible homicide.

I know what you’re thinking.

You think I’m exaggerating because health care workers kill hospital germs by washing their hands.

Think again.

Tests show 33 to 50% of all health care workers fail to achieve minimal hygiene standards when washing their hands.

Every time.

Even when they know we’re conducting tests.

We’d all like to believe that doctors, nurses, and orderlies would understand the importance of thoroughly washing their hands after taking a shit in a hospital toilet, and yet 1.7 million health care associated infections (HAI’s) take place in US hospitals every year and kill more than 100,000 patients.

Yes, I realize I just said that U.S. hospitals kill 100,000 patients each and every year! You check in with a broken leg and check out in a body bag.

Why can’t we make health care workers wash their hands properly?

Who’s going to enforce it?

We’ve got signs posted everywhere.

Doesn’t matter.

Everyone thinks they’re already washing their hands properly, and patients keep dying. You’d need to have a trained professional shadowing every worker every minute, because it only takes one mistake by one orderly to send your Aunt Agatha into a death spiral.

As for hospitals barring health workers from wearing scrubs outside the hospital?

Please.

Do you have any idea how many male residents and orderlies get laid by pretending they’re doctors? I’ve always been a decent-looking guy, but when I used to walk down the street I was virtually invisible to women until I donned my surgical scrubs.

With scrubs, getting laid was easier than slipping cash to a preacher.

As long as female health workers are proud of their profession, as long as male health workers seek to be laid, they’re going to wear scrubs in public every chance they get.

Why did I stop wearing mine?

I met a young lady.

A country girl from Kentucky, named Trudy Lake.

3.

TRUDY’S TWENTY-ONE.

Almost twenty-one.

And I’m forty.

Approximately.

Trudy has some family baggage.

Her father’s on trial for drug trafficking and first degree murder. Not only that, but he disapproves of our relationship to the point he tried to hang me to death!

Trudy’s sister, Renee, also tried to kill me. Had she succeeded, I would have been her fifth murder victim. Trudy wasn’t aware her sister has a giant, orange, heart-shaped bush in her panties, and wasn’t thrilled to learn about it from me. But one thing about Trudy: she’s a very forgiving young lady, which is one of the reasons I asked her to come to Manhattan and move in with me. While I’m convinced she cares for me, her decision to move here may have been influenced in part by the $10,000 a month I contractually agreed to pay her for the next two years.

Additional family baggage for Trudy includes a history of drug dealing, larceny, petty theft, grand theft, assault, extortion, blackmail, kidnapping, money-laundering, witness-tampering, necrophilia, and bestiality—and that’s just naming a few.

But one of the biggest obstacles to our budding romance is Trudy’s husband.

It’s okay, we’re working it out.

She’s filed for divorce, and it’s just a matter of time before everything’s resolved. The holdup is Darrell. You see, Darrell—the man she’s married to—happens to be her brother.

It’s not as bad as it sounds.

Trudy didn’t know Darrell was her brother at the time they got married.

She thought he was her cousin.

Don’t judge. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? What’s important is we found each other and we’re in love. At least I am, and thought Trudy was, too, till this morning. But then she—

Wait. My phone’s ringing.

It’s Trudy. Hang on.

"Where are you?" I ask.

"Home. I mean, your place. Where are you?"

At the hospital. I had to perform an emergency surgery.

How’d it go?

Really well, actually.

Really? ’Cause you sound depressed.

I thought you left me.

When?

This morning.

I went for a run in the park.

Without telling me?

I tried to. But you were in the bathroom a long time.

You should’ve hollered to say you were leaving.

"I hollered a bunch of times! But you couldn’t hear me, for practicin’ your duck calls. You’re gettin’ better, by