2. Everything Dies

The loud, droning wale of the flat-line filled the operating room with a sense of dread, a silence that contrasted the frantic yet controlled energy of the surgeon and his assistants. The patient was dead, despite the greatest efforts of everybody in the room.

"He's gone," the surgeon said, sadly.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Hamilton," the nurse said, looking into the masked man's eyes, that were still focused on the patient, seemingly searching for something he couldn't find no matter how hard he tried. "We did what we could."

"There is only so much," the surgeon uttered, interrupting himself, because he knew it didn't matter what he said. Nothing would change.

The surgeon walked out of the room with his head hung low and into the washing room. There he pulled off his surgeon's mask and stood in front of the faucet, and stared back at the worn, aging man that he had become.

George Hamilton was a master surgeon, the best in Raccoon City. He was renowned for his skill with a scalpel, and had performed many operations in the past, not one of them had ended in tragedy or undergone some error. His work was often viewed as masterly, and he took pride in his inherent ability to make people better. And yet, he had failed this time.

But what could I do, George asked himself. The patient had arrived in a terrible state, far beyond any surgeon could handle. He had already lost an incredible amount of blood, and the wound on his neck was great; the damage his assailant had done, at least they assumed he was assaulted, was of the sort that only brought death with him. This wasn't the first time a patient died on George Hamilton's operating table, either, but he couldn't help feeling so helpless, so guilty.

But I save lives; that is my job, George thought to himself. No, I haven't the power to do that; I simply patch them up, I give them more time, because everything dies eventually. Yes, that's it; it was his time to go. My hands cannot prolong life when it is fate's hand to be dealt.

But no matter how many times he told himself that, it never cured the ailment he felt inside. The longing guilt that he should have been able to do something, that somehow it was his fault.

He pulled off his bloody, gore-covered gloves one by one and tossed them into the biohazard container, then turn on the faucet and thoroughly washed his hands for over a minute, wishing that the guilt he felt could somehow flow through his veins and out the pours of his hands into the sink drain and down into the darkness of the sewers below. When he was finally finished he searched for a towel, but could find none. He then opened a cabinet and reached up high for the paper towels, when he suddenly felt a stinging sensation on his finger. He exclaimed at the pain and dropped the towels to the floor, then looked up after glancing at his pricked finger; the backside of a rat could barely be seen scurrying to the back of the cabinet.

"Dammit," George said holding his bleeding finger.

George washed his finger off and wrapped his finger in a bandage, changed into his lab coat and made his way to his office. He passed his secretary, who stood up.

"Dr. Hamilton," she said.

"Not now, please," George said, waving her off. "I just need to collect myself right now."

"I'm sorry Dr. Hamilton, but your wife came by earlier today and left this for you," she handed George a package.

George looked at it with a sense of dread, and his knees and elbows began to shake with fear. He ripped open the package and confirmed his beliefs; they were the divorce papers.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Hamilton," she said as she sat back into her seat.

George slowly stepped through the door of his office and put the papers on the desk, then slumped down into his comfortable high chair and stared at them. He knew to expect them; he and his wife had already separated, and he knew that time was only a factor until the inevitable occurred. Much like death.

Time. The walls of George's office were covered in clocks, locks of various kinds and sizes, crafted from different countries. He even had a different wrist-watch for each day of the week. Time surrounded him, engulfed him, conspired against him every second of the day; it watched him as a wolf stalked an unsuspecting prey, and when it sunk its fangs into him he felt powerless to its wrath. His very job circulated around time, he only had so much time before his patient's status would overthrow itself into peril, he had appointments, dates, meetings to attend to, time swallowed him whole.

And yet he never seemed to have time for what mattered. His wife always used to tell him he never had enough time, for her or for anything else. For someone with so many clocks, she had told him , you never seem to have much time for anything except yourself.

George pulled his chair up and decided it was time for him to accept the truth; he would no longer live under the delusion that he still had time to spare. He was growing older now, and it was time to free Collette from the cell he had forced her to live in. George reach into his desk for a ball point pen and began to read through the papers.