BOOK REPORT:

by Mathew Kallumadil

Title and author:

“Coma” by Robin Cook: Fiction, Medical Novel

Place and Time:

The story happens in 1976, in Boston, in the United States.

Plot:

When Nancy Greenley's routine D&C medical operation is nearing completion, the anesthetist
reports strange fibrillations of the heart. Her brain stops responding and she does not emerge
from her sleep ever again. Such a minor surgical operation could never place the patient in
such a deep coma. The doctors are rather stunned. Susan Wheeler is a young medical student
working at the Boston Memorial Hospital. She is one of a group of students under the
direction of Mark Bellows, the head intern. She finds out about Nancy Greenley's misfortune
and becomes deeply interested in the cause of her death, for reasons of both, sympathy and
curiosity. She does some research but without any real success, till she meets a patient who is
being given surgery of the knee. He later suffers the same fate as Greenley: he falls into an
irreversible coma. Susan notices that the deaths both happened in OR (operation room) 8, so
she investigates further. She later finds a carbon monoxide gas line running from a small
hidden tank in the boiler room to the oxygen gas line in OR 8. The deadly gas is meant to kill
the patients, however only through destroying the brain activity. Little does she know that she
has stepped in the way of a very big company's business: supplying black market organ
transplants to rich buyers.

Characters:

Susan Wheeler:

There is only one word need to explain Susan Wheeler, a third-year medical student: perfect.
She is young, sexy and healthy and beside that stereotype of characteristic draws she is very
intelligent too.
Actually, Susan does not date as much as people imagined she would. The explanation for this
strange contradiction is that she would rather prefer reading alone in her room than having
some boring date.
In the novel, Susan has to improve her medical experience by working in one of the most
famous hospitals, The Boston Memorial Hospital.
When she finds out that there had been some dramatic complications with a 23-year-old
woman, who lies in irreversible comatose, she more and more becomes interested in that case,
partly hoping to find a new disease, partly just curious. You could say it is a kind of weakness
of her, that she does not give up so easily at all.

Mark Bellows:

Mark Bellows is 29 years old, but you never estimate him for that age. His skin is smooth for
a man and he is in excellent physical shape. Maybe his gradually receding hairline betrays his
age.
He has been at the Memorial for 2 and a half years continuously most of the residents call him
an intern.
By the time, he gets to know Susan he falls in love with her. He attempts to support Susan,
wherever he is able to, however, he himself does not risk anything because he fears to lose his
awaiting promotion.

Problems:

•

Susan is a woman and when she works in hospital, she really feels that there are many
prejudices to women, especially women as doctors. For example, when she wants to
change her clothes and walks into the doctors’ dressing room, it's told her, that even as a
doctor, it’s expected that she changes herself in the nurses’ room.

•

As a medical student, it’s very hard for Suan to get more information for her research,
because everyone just sees her as an unexperienced student. Nobody accepts her
presumptions, neither for serious nor for possible.

•

She cannot expect any support from doctors nor surgeons because for them it’s a very high
risk to help a “greenhorn” student, who has no evidence for her presumptions. They fear to
lose their position at the Memorial (= hospital).

Style of the book:

It is a third person narrative and written in rather formal language, which let the story appear a
lot more objective and precise. The book is written from a neutral narrator’s point of view.
Not only does the narrator describe all of the situation objectively, he also explains the
feelings of the different characters, in other words in a direct way.
At the beginning the novel starts with one of the operations, which becomes a complication.
Then it goes on with some background information about the main character, and afterwards
the “real” story gradually begins.
The end is an open end.
You cannot define that book to “fiction” or “non-fiction”, because I think it’s an invented
story but it could have happened in real.

Message:

I think one message of the book is that you have to hold tight on your believe, and not lose
your aim. If you believe in yourself, you are able to achieve many things in life.
The other message says that sometimes you have to take some risks to proceed in life and
sometimes you even cannot avoid taking risks.

Personal Evaluation:

I think it’s a very good book, because it’s gripping. Except many medical expressions it was
quite easy to read, and there were a lot of aspects, which made me think a lot. The plot is very
thrilling, and therefore I would recommend it to every fan of thrilling books.