Chapter Eight: "During his many years of civilian medicine, especially in the emergency room, he saw the aftermath of car accidents and the slow devastation of long terminal illness. He’d seen the drunken naivety of trying to assert dominance over the explosive insistence of fireworks, and the sheer absurdity of what human beings choose to put in every one of their orifices, without a much needed plan of evacuation. Including his own, he’d been present for the birth of countless children. He’...