The Seer

Clifford Beck

Copyright©2016

Cover Design Clifford Beck

"No excellent soul is exempt

from a mixture of madness."

-- Aristotle

For my brother, Randy

Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KYEL92Y

Chapter 1

His life was ruled by gifted mind, and having been deemed a genius, received his bachelor's degree at the age of fifteen. From there, he was accepted by Harvard Medical College, where he excelled beyond anyone's expectations. He seemed to soak up the material at an astonishing rate, more so than some of his colleagues. However, his only difficulty was the anatomy lab. Even with their heads shaved, and their faces covered in the removal of their humanity, the sight of the dead disturbed him deeply. But logic replaced fear, and once he began to see the medical cadavers as objects of learning, his gift of genius, again, expressed itself. At almost twenty years old he stepped down from the stage, having graduated in the top two percent of his class, as Doctor Gordon Richards. With the help of his mentor, he had secured a residency at Maine Medical Center. It was one of the top cardiac hospitals in the country, licensed as a level one trauma center with over six hundred beds. It was guaranteed he would witness a great deal of human tragedy.

His first rotation was at the Barbara Bush Children's Hospital, yet as rational and stoic as he tried to be, the sight of suffering children was nearly overwhelming. There was no doubt in the young doctor's mind that he could not work in pediatrics. He did his job brilliantly, but privately, he believed no child should be in a hospital beyond their birth. This idea was compounded by his first experience of seeing one of his small patients die. Born with an aggressive brain cancer, the two-year old was not expected to survive beyond the age of three, and when the time arrived, Gordon sat with the child's single mother as her child in her arms. As a doctor, he was supposed to be objective, but as a human being, he reacted the way anyone else would; however, he was not at liberty to express his sorrow until returning to the quiet solitude of his apartment.

His next rotation was the emergency room and critical care. It was there that Doctor Richards received the broadest experience in human ailments and injuries. He dealt with everything from babies short of breath, to traumatic open head injuries sustained in collisions or freak accidents. He was fascinated with the variety of cases that seemed to flow endlessly into the emergency room, but there was one particular type of case he found especially interesting. Illnesses and injuries are generally fixable, but it was mental illness that most drew his attention. He was fascinated by such conditions as schizophrenia, ego spitting, bi-polar disorder, and suicidal ideation. But, he was not yet specialized, and lacked a complete understanding for the dynamics of the human mind. He got as much pleasure as he did learning, talking with those compelled by their illnesses, consumed by irrationality and confusion. The variety of symptoms were amazingly diverse, with claims of involvement with the CIA, conversations with God, and catatonic immobility.

By the time Doctor Richards finished his rotation in the emergency room, he had discovered what would become his life's work, as a practicing psychiatrist. He knew he couldn't save people from themselves, after all, people are never comfortable with the idea of change, and cannot be 'fixed'. It was also through his interactions with these particular patients that he realized all he could do was open the door to recovery. The patient would have to walk through, even if turning the knob took months or years to accomplish. The remaining two years of his residency were filled with valuable learning experiences, not only in medicine, but in the matter of the human element. One can be an experienced specialist, and still have no people skills. Without these, the practice of medicine becomes devoid of humanity.