In December 2007 Chris Adrian was a guest on KCRW's bookworm. Adrian is a pediatrician, author and Harvard Divinity student and he was talking about his (then) new book The Children's Hospital. You can listen here. I was captivated but the book was new and too expensive. I added it to my Amazon wishlist and waited for the price to come down.
After a year of patient anticipation I found an affordable copy and dove into the 600+ page novel. Wow. It was worth the wait but with hindsight I see that I should have just shelled out the money for a chance to read the book sooner rather than later.
There is a deluge of reviews for this epic opus about a Children's Hospital that becomes an ark in a modern day flood. But I so enjoyed this book I want to write one more.
"It takes four angels to oversee an apocalypse" and so the story is told by four angels: a recording angel, a preserving angel, an accusing angel and a destroying angel. The book begins with the birth of a malformed "gruesome baby . . . so unique that she was her very own syndrome." Immediately following this birth a violent storm rocks the hospital from its very foundations.
"Creatures, I am the preserving angel. Fear not, I will keep you. Fear not, I will protect you. Fear not, you will bide with me. Fear not, I will carry you into the new world."
Seven miles of water have swallowed the earth sparing nothing but the Children's-Hospital-turned-ark and the people who are inside it. The rest of the book focuses on a third year medical student named Jemma, the brother (Calvin) who shaped her, the survivors of the apocalypse, and what occurs after the flood.
There are strong themes in the novel, the strongest perhaps being death. The book is set in a Children's Hospital for God's sake, afloat in a sea that has killed every living creature, and the protagonist is incessantly haunted by the memory of death that has taken everyone she has ever loved. Jemma is so tainted by her grief that she doesn't know how to mourn for the cataclysm that destroyed world, and she wonders if she is able to feel and hurt at all. The novel explores the meaning of death and suffering, it and debates their merits and necessity.
As one who works in a medical setting I found the accuracy of the medicine in the book refreshing and delightful, and the caricatures of some of the people you come across in the medical field spot on and hilarious (especially the descriptions of the surgeon. And the nurses. And the families of the patients.)
The mordancy is that even after the deluge, which everyone refers to as "the Thing," there is nothing to do but what they have been doing, slogging on with their rounds and practicing medicine to keep the severely ailing children alive, racing to save a dying child whenever they hear "the soft tinkling of the code bell, and the angel's calm alarm: 'A child is dying.' "
(On a side note, I cannot help but think of the angel's voice whenever I am in a hospital now and I hear the call for a code-blue, so calm and composed over the speak system.)
The hospital goes through the motions like clockwork, with a cold precision and no heart to speak of.
That is until one day, during an emergency surgery on a critically ill infant, when Jemma develops miraculous healing powers manifested in green flames that flow from her finger tips and burn away all the diseased parts of the children. Against the better judgement of most of the Hospital Jemma sets out on a crusade to rid the children of their sicknesses once and for all-- the harrowing of the hospital, or Thing Two, as it's quickly named.
But even Jemma cannot heal the wounds that are not physical. And here is another major theme in the book: perhaps our bodies are not the only part of us capable of getting sick or needing to be healed. Perhaps our spirits and our minds are just as vulnerable to damage as are our cells and tissues.
Scott Esposito writes, "of special interest here is the ambiguity concerning many of the diseases Jemma eradicates. The autistic cells, for example, beg Jemma’s mercy, asking her why they are so wrong, why they must be eliminated from the world. A fair question, given the claims of Disability Studies that those with autism experience the world in a way that is different but just as valid as that of “normal” people. Is it right to eliminate them? Is a child “fixed” once he’s been cured of autism? Adrian’s inclusion of this question brings much depth to this scene, not in the least because, similarly, all the humans dead in the flood might wonder why God had to kill them."
It is note-worthy that Jemma's super-power comes about because her fiance, Rob, is mortally wounded in the operating room. Surrounded by pragmatic and egotistical surgeons who have made it their lives' work to cure patients whom they view as nothing more than meat on the table, it is Jemma, a character who worried that she was incapable of caring deeply, who is overcome with emotion and able to harness it for good.
As a person who rarely knows how to show emotion, and who grew up with her mother telling her that she had no heart, I can identify with Jemma's situation. Like Jemma, I work in the medical field, and although I am able to remain objective enough to do my job well, I am still pierced by the aching and the misfortune of many of my patients. It isn't something that I let out often, or something that I share with other people, but it is there nonetheless.
Scott Esposito said, "this care without really caring, which Adrian repeatedly presents as the reality of this hospital (and one would presume, others), is mirrored by many of the survivors who believe that the reason for the flood was that humanity had simply grown too callous to the suffering of others."
Perhaps the lack of compassion for the less fortunate among us is our greatest sin.
It is revealed toward the end of the book that Jemma's brother Calvin, who was instrumental in her development, is one of angels who tell the story of the Hospital.
Jeff Hibbert writes, "Calvin, like his theologian namesake, is consumed by the destinies of the saved and laments the lost of the damned. As a human, Calvin loathed the wickedness of the world; as an angel, he is wistful about the beauties of the world he left behind."
It is a magnificent book because, in the end, it aspires to be nothing more than a good novel. The author leaves it up to us to sift through the prose looking for meaning, and to interpret and decipher what we can from the text. It is a story that cannot help but leap off its pages and come to life, so it's no ardous task to glean substance from this mythic tale. It is riveting, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heavy, heartbreaking and optimistic.
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