Coma

By Robin Cook

            I picked this up at a book sale a while ago and hadn’t had a chance to read it until now.  This book piqued my interest at the sale because it is written by a doctor.  I often have a tough time with authors who overextend themselves in their writing.  Who better to write a book about medical procedures than a doctor? 

The story is centered around third year medical student Susan Wheeler.  She has just finished up with the formal learning, and today is her first day at Boston Memorial Hospital.  Her pretty face makes her a fast favorite with her assigned mentor, Mark Bellows, and she is quickly given additional responsibilities.  She is assigned to start an IV on a patient, who later lapses into a coma as an unfortunate result of this routine procedure.  Susan begins to notice a pattern of high incidence of comas affecting patients of the hospital.  She dives straight into this perceived problem, much to the chagrin of Dr. Bellows, which makes many waves with the faculty.  Susan is convinced of an underlying conspiracy, or a new medical condition.  She pursues this idea with reckless abandon, and steps on the toes of the faculty by blaming them for the coma epidemic .  She is surprisingly rebellious, missing lectures and throwing herself head first into the potential new discovery.  Susan begins to get push back from the faculty, and it seems like there is definitely something going on at Boston Memorial.  Soon she begins to be paranoid that she is being followed, and that there is a large conspiracy at work at the hospital.  Susan relentlessly pursues the truth, as she finds that this may be more than she bargained for.

The suspense of the novel was tangible, and I thought the pacing was appropriate.  However, I found it very hard to swallow how insubordinate Susan was in her pursuit of “the truth” in regards to these mysterious comas.  The book starts on Susan’s first day, not long after she gets her first hands on experience, she is bailing on lectures and rounds.  For some reason she thinks this behavior is admirable, and rebuffs anyone who tries to get her back on track.  She lies, and obtains information on patients under false pretenses.  For someone who badly wants to be a doctor, it’s hard to believe that anyone would see this as anything less than inappropriate behavior.  This book was enjoyable, and I appreciated the sound medical content (as far as I can tell).  The ideas were scientifically feasible, if not unlikely.  Overall it made for an entertaining and smart read.  I would recommend this book, but stay away from the TV series/movie they made last year.  I watched the first half of it on Netflix and it’s pretty terrible.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Bunsen Burners

Up Next: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card