Robin cooks up yet another gripping tale. This is an old book. Nonetheless, it is a very good one. As always his stories combine with great skill the world of medicine and that of human thought, sense and sensibility. The advances in therapy and the manner in which both doctors and patients survive amid those innumerable instruments day and night. What’s great is that he manages to deliver both a doctor and a patient’s view of the situation in the plot intermittently. He gives no extra detail than s required and does not go on to give an elaborate background to each of the characters in the plot as many other authors primarily coz he is a science fiction writer and needs to focus on the scientific issue.
The plot
This is a story of a cardiologist, playing god. A very skilled heart surgeon Thomas Kingsley is so much in demand that he literally plays god. Making decisions, giving people lives with expert heart transplants is what he does. His work is however disrupted by his superiors who want more of teaching hours and teaching cases rather than operating patients with a chance of 90 percent life. Thomas however, is irritated by the fact that the ICUs and ORs are filled with patients in coma or some state of damage beyond repair and that delays patients surgery with a greater chance of life.
Who is to decide whom to be given preferential treatment?
God?
Or doctors?
That’s what this book is about
Thomas is married to Cassandra who has juvenile diabetes. She had to switch from pathology to psychiatry because of the damage it had caused her eyes. Her close friend is Robert Seibert who was still a pathology resident.
Thomas, is fighting, keeping himself overworked to keep up to the allotted slots. He is amazed at how he can do 3 surgeries in the time taken by Ballentine, the chief of cardiology to do 1. He becomes addicted to a heavy dosage of medicines.
Meanwhile, Robert Seibert and Cassandra dig up a pattern of SSD cases, termed sudden surgical deaths, wherein patients have been in the hospital, post operation and suffered sudden inexplicable deaths.
Is someone trying to get rid of terminally ill patients?
They come up with 18 such cases when Cassy realizes her life is in danger.
Why?
Well, well go read the book
A well-knit tale of cardiology and psychiatry. It is an easy book to read. It advances very smoothly, it is a 300-page book and by the time you reach 240 you begin to see a pattern yourself and expect the end. The ending is good. It does not a leave you a hollow within with a tragedy, or give you a wrenched surprise as contagion did. Apart from the main characters, the others in the plot are also very well defined and characterized.
A good pick for a journey.