Hidden Sparks

Tampa, Florida, 1989. It's Shabbat and the second night of Passover, and Dr. Alan Green is already over it when his pager goes off.

Alan arrives at the ER and waves off the manager’s apologies for paging him. He’s the on-call internist. It’s what he does – and then he sees why. Paramedics wheel in James, a 17-year-old kid with a swastika tattoo, comatose and mostly naked. Patrick is brought in next, a badly beaten 23-year-old skinhead who was with James last and is shouting for him. After them come more, fresh from a brawl with each other, some of them out for “that faggot” Patrick’s blood.

He knows who they are: goddamned Nazis. They know he’s the Jew with James’s life in his hands, but he’s a doctor first, and trained to at least sound like he cares. When Patrick calls him on his scripted sympathy, Alan challenges himself to really see him: Patrick is afraid, afraid of the men who attacked him, afraid of the ones who saved him, but most of all, afraid of losing James.

As Alan works to diagnose James, Patrick begins to trust him. Despite the insinuations of James’s brother Thomas that Patrick is a predator, Alan sees genuine love behind Patrick’s pain. Patrick tells his side of the story, that Thomas had done something earlier which had terrified James too much to describe. When Thomas attempts to physically intimidate Alan, he snaps and fights back. Thomas is escorted away by two of his own: one calls back with a confession, extracted by force. With Patrick at James’s side, Alan finds the source of James’s septic shock: internal injuries from a brutal rape, Thomas’s punishment for James being in love with Patrick.

Alan is put on leave for his actions, effective as soon as James goes into surgery. Thomas is gone, and as his mother Bettina has left to find him, Alan waits for a court order for surgical consent – which may take more time to get than James has left. Patrick’s grief moves him to schedule surgery without it, potentially ending his career. Before leaving, Alan acknowledges Patrick’s love for James, and offers his support.

Bettina returns. James survives surgery. Four weeks later, he is still comatose; only Patrick has not accepted that James will die. That night, as Patrick cries in his sleep, James briefly regains consciousness.

James begins to recover. A battle of wills ensues over James’s future. Bettina insists she will rebuild her family, but with Thomas at large and Bettina denying the extent of his abuse, James panics at the thought of going home and resists the rehab he needs. Patrick invites James to live with him. Hopeful now, James works to build strength while Patrick prepares to care for him and keep him safe.

On his 18th birthday, with Patrick behind him and Bettina hurling threats, James leaves the hospital and a lifetime of abuse. Alan, a visitor now, meets them outside – along with the two men who turned on Thomas. He watches them go, not victorious, but at peace with who he is and what he has done.

Thomas, like most rapists, is never brought to justice. Bettina learns nothing and feels no remorse: narcissists don’t. Alan still doesn’t know if he will be a doctor again, but by living his Jewish values and practicing courage in lovingkindness, he has saved not one life, but two. Patrick doesn’t fully understand his feelings for James, but he isn’t ashamed of them, and they are guiding him to be a better man. Traumatized and still fragile, James may never fully heal, but he knows he is cherished and protected. The work is unfinished, and that is deliberate: we are not obligated to finish the work of healing this broken world, but neither are we free to desist from it.