Coma (novel)

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**Title** **Coma**
Author	Robin Cook
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Thriller, novel
Publisher
Released	1977
Media type	Print (paperback and hardback)
ISBN	ISBN
Preceded by	Year of the Intern
Followed by	Sphinx

Coma is Robin Cook's first published novel written in 1977. The book was a New York Times best seller and was also voted as the number one thriller of the year by the New York Times.

It was made into a highly successful film Coma by Michael Crichton in 1978.

1 Plot introdcution
2 Characters
3 Editions
4 Reference

[edit] Plot introdcution

Susan Wheeler is the protagonist of the novel. She is an attractive, 23 year-old medical third year student working as a trainee at the Boston Memorial Hospital. Susan, along with a group of four fellow students, namely George, Harvey, Geoffrey, and Paul, takes rounds in surgery rooms and ICU’s for making post-treatment notations on the health of patients.

As these students complete their three-month surgical rotation, the many dilemmas and problems faced by a woman in a so-called “man’s” profession are also highlighted.

Dr. Mark Bellows, a surgery resident of the hospital, is the instructor and trainer of this group. The book takes us into a journey of the inner workings in a hospital. There are two patients, Nancy Greenly and Sean Berman, who mysteriously went into coma immediately after their operations. This phenomenon, however, was attributed to the complications within their surgeries due to anesthesia. One of the two ill-fated patients, Nancy Greenly, became comatose when her brain did not receive sufficient oxygen during surgery, following which she never woke up. Medically, the odds for such an occurrence are one in a hundred thousand, however, such odds seemed resolutely higher at the Boston Memorial Hospital.

A similar case was that of Sean Berman, a young man in his thirties with good physical conditions, who underwent a knee operation that he was scheduled for. Despite the operation being a success, Sean fails to regain consciousness.

Baffled by the sudden unconsciousness of these two patients, Susan decides to unveil the mystery behind these peculiar events. She delves into the details on Nancy’s medical history, occasionally skipping lectures and missing rounds. After unraveling various details and facts relating to her case history, Susan is led on to the Jefferson Institute.

It is hailed as an intensive care facility designed to cut down on heavy medical costs. All patients who are declared brain dead or vegetables as doctors call them are referred to the institute. Here, she finds that bodies are suspended from the ceiling by wires in rooms walled by glass, and moved from room to room with little human involvement. This is where they are kept until a call for a kidney or liver of a certain type comes in, at which time the right recipient is prepared, and the organ of choice is removed surgically. It is also revealed that the complication of prolonged coma after anesthesia is about one hundred times more prevalent at Boston Memorial than the rest of the country in the past year! The body parts of these patients are extracted, and then sold in the eerie human organ market.

Shocked, and moreover aghast, Susan plans to discover more. She realizes that dressing up as a nurse leaves her free to roam about any part of the hospital, and uncover more than she could have possibly ever.

Soon enough Dr. Howard Stark, Chief of the Department of Surgery at Boston Memorial, realizes that Susan now knows more than she can handle. Subsequently, she is chased, shot at, and almost crushed by an oncoming train in the course of her horrific investigation. Dr. Stark, scared that the well-hidden, gruesome facts about the hospital may soon be revealed, decides to put Susan in a coma too after an appendix operation. One-by-one, all the horrid deeds and organ-trading secrets of the hospital are uncovered.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Susan Wheeler

She is the main character of the novel. She was a 23 year-old medical student on medical training in the Boston Memorial Hospital.

[edit] Dr Mark Bellows

Mark Bellows is a surgery resident in Memorial hospital and he is also the instructor of Susan Wheeler and four other students who are assigned to him. This group of 5 students (George Niles, Harvey Goldberg, Susan Wheeler, Geoffrey Fairweather III, and Paul Carpin) is to be taken to rounds in surgery rooms and ICUs.

[edit] Victims

Nancy Greenly and Sean Berman are two patients who went into coma immediately after their operations in Memorial Hospital because of complications in their surgery due to anesthesia.