Where the Road Ends — Larry Kramer

Dr. Nathan Jericho loves medicine and the army, in that order. Surgery is his religion, his lifeblood. At least it was until his third tour in Afghanistan as a trauma surgeon with the Canadian Armed Forces. Untroubled sleep and confidence bordering on arrogance used to be easy. Now sleep is disrupted by nightmares and flashbacks fill his days. His patients and their tragic stories remain with him long after their discharges ... or deaths. Demons linger in his head and his hands begin to tremble. Retreat into a bottle and pills provides no more than momentary escape. He needs to get out of Afghanistan, the army, and perhaps even medicine. But he must finish his tour unnoticed. His unblemished service record had to be maintained. Self-sufficiency got him to this point in his life, he concludes, and he just needs to man up and do what has to be done. Can he hide his self-perceived weakness and survive the last few weeks of his tour?

Leaving everything he knows will not be easy. He must start slowly. He tries giving up the high stress of trauma surgery and resigning his commission to “normalize” his life and drive out the hellhounds that torment him. This tactic births a budding relationship along with an imperfect measure of comfort and contentment, until another tragedy takes him back. His attempt at a final escape is foiled by fate and the kindness of a friend. Forced to admit he has a problem, Jericho tries conventional methods of treatment which his own prejudices soon doom to failure. He attempts to escape his past on a hastily conceived motorcycle journey from Ontario to Newfoundland.