Now It's Inescapable - Bill McCausland

He became self-deceptive and then had a realization.

Dr. Glen Coyle used to be an artist at what he does. In his office is a hand sculpture given by a patient whose hand he reattached.

These days, though, Glen is doing his best to keep his hands from shaking. He’s on the run constantly from pharmaceuticals he’s supposed to be prescribing for his patients. His wife is about to leave him. The DEA comes to pay him a visit. But when he’s called before the hospital board, he knows his days of running wild have careened out of control.

Now It’s Inescapable is a timely recovery story about a man in desperate search of love and oblivion in equal measure. Glen will do anything to avoid facing himself, and the title of the novel becomes a repeating mantra each time he gets cornered with himself and then ducks away. Glen is very good at wiggling out. Even after he’s ordered to rehab, he takes off on a disastrous bolt to Baja California that takes him to the brink of self-destruction. He has hit the proverbial bottom.

Gradually, Glen faces the unresolved issues of his past: his neglectful and distant mother, his abusive military father, his war experiences in Iraq as a trauma surgeon, and the biggest gorilla in his living room-his addiction.

Once Glen fully commits to this fateful step, the world around him slowly reshapes to his new perspective the plastic surgery has its positive uses, he feels more empathic with his patients, he has embarked on a promising new relationship that he must take slowly. In the closing scenes Glen and his sponsor do a medical mission to Guatemala, and his tormented past is transformed into his best asset.