Life Support - Hardcover

Gerritsen, Tess

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671553038 ISBN 13: 9780671553036

Publisher: Pocket Books, 1997

Synopsis

When an elderly patient with a critical, viral infection of the brain mysteriously vanishes from the emergency room, ER resident Toby Harper finds her job and home life coming under intense scrutiny, while her search for the missing patient uncovers a frightening epidemic and a nightmarish conspiracy.

About this title

About the Author

Tess Gerritsen left a successful practice as an internist to raise her children and concentrate on her writing. She gained nationwide acclaim for her first novel of medical suspense, Harvest, which became a New York Times bestseller, and is available in paperback from Pocket Books. She lives in Maine.

Reviews

Former internist Gerritsen follows Harvest (1996) with another far-fetched but effective medical thriller. Toby Harper is an idealistic emergency-room physician who has chosen to work the graveyard shift so she can care for her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. When a disoriented old man walks out of the ER and disappears, Toby finds that she cannot let the case go. She sniffs around Brant Hill, the ultra-upscale retirement village where he lived. Then another Brant Hill resident ends up in the ER with symptoms of disorientation and seizures: Toby worries that some unknown toxin at Brant Hill might be to blame. Or perhaps there's a problem with an experimental hormone protocol being used to restore youth to elderly residents? When the new patient dies, the snooty and evasive medical director for the complex denies the need for an autopsy, but willful Toby diverts the body to the medical examiner, Daniel Dvorak, who also happens to be handsome and divorced. Daniel finds that the old man died of Creutzfeldt- Jakob Disease, an extremely rare condition. When another CJD autopsy report shows up for a Brant Hill resident, Toby steps up her investigation. But she is also having trouble at home: The woman she's just hired to help care for her mother has told police that Toby has been physically abusing her parent. However beleaguered, Toby continues her detecting. A local prostitute gives birth to a strange one-eyed baby, who turns out to be a genetically altered factory of sorts, producing multiple pituitary glands. Could the Brant Hill gang be using this fetal tissue as part of their fountain-of-youth protocol, and could an unhealthy embryo have been behind the CJD outbreak? The climactic showdown hyperventilates to the point of silliness, but realism's not the point here. A satisfyingly nefarious scheme, some tentative romance, and enough medical rushing-about to satisfy hardcore ER fans add up to a lively ride. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Brant Hill Clinic and Residential Care Facility houses wealthy elderly persons who want to find the fountain of youth. Coincidentally, the home-care aide for emergency room doctor Toby Harper's mother is an associate of researcher Carl Wallenberg, who, with fetal brain tissue implants, seeks the same spring. Toby herself eventually strikes most of the other characters in Gerritsen's cleverly developed thriller as paranoid (of course, she's not). The story leading to that suspicion opens in the ER with Toby's embarrassment when the son of a patient asks to see his father, present only a moment ago. Then two prostitutes give birth to ugly somethings, neither monsters nor tumors. There must be answers to these mysteries. Trying to find them, however, Toby and medical examiner Dan Dvorak nearly die as the trail winds to--ta-da!--Brant Hill. The second medical thriller from internist Gerritsen, who has ditched medicine for full-time writing, seems scarcely to need the aggressive marketing campaign scheduled for it. Reader word-of-mouth alone ought to move it. William Beatty

Another medical thriller from Gerritsen, who one-upped Robin Cook with her best-selling first novel, Harvest.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671553038
• ISBN 13: 9780671553036
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336