Bellevue Hospital, the first public hospital in America, has a history of amazing doctors and healthcare, while also a grisly past. Serving the poor, and immigrants who couldn't afford treatment elsewhere, some doctors viewed them as guinea pigs to be experimented on and had no compunction in trying new procedures and techniques on them. Most notorious of their buildings is the old psychopathic hospital which still stands in Kips Bay, next to the new Bellevue hospital complex. This is where Cook's story begins.
Twenty three year old Mitt Fuller graduates medical school and is thrilled to start his surgical residency at Bellevue Hospital. He has a history with this institution, as many of his ancestors were innovative and noted surgeons-as his father has always told him. On his first morning he enters the new hospital, and as he walks through the preserved arch of the old hospital, his sixth sense starts to erupt. He doesn't usually acknowledge the strange sensations that he sometimes gets, and is annoyed that they seemed to be activated today. He joins his fellow students and gets his assignment-three surgical patients will be in his care and he is responsible for their pre- and post-surgical workups. He will also assist in their surgeries. The first surgery is long and difficult, but Mitt gets to help close the incision. The other two surgeries were more commonplace. One of the senior residents acknowledged Mitt's illustrious ancestors but also told him that they did horrible things-notably frontal lobotomies on children. He was also assigned to be on-call that night, and he hoped it would be a quiet one, as he was exhausted. Unfortunately he was called to the patient's room,as the poor man bled out and died. His two other patients also died.
Strange things started happening-surgical tools were jumping out of the scrub nurse's hands, sutures began falling apart, and Mitt was seeing manifestations in the halls. A ghost of a young girl started appearing, whose eye was stabbed by a protruding spike.Other horrible phantoms menaced him holding organs and amputated limbs. Was he going mad from tension and lack of sleep or were spirits out for revenge?
I read Coma, my first Robin Cook hospital thriller, in the seventies, and was very happy to know that he hasn't lost his touch. Bellevue was Cook's first assignment as a medical resident and he knows the pressure that his character was experiencing. Mining Oshinsky's 2016 history of Bellevue, Cook combines a ghastly horror story with accurate information of the historic hospital. Start casting the movie.
Reviewed by Donna Ballard
Publication date - December 3, 2024
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