Brain Death

#519 
Title: Brain DeathAuthor: Sandra Wilkinson
Publisher: Pinnacle
Year: 1988
396 pages

It's hard even to tag this as "disappointing" when I knew what it was going into it--the kind of fiction that a hospital worker brings to the nursing station in a grocery bag full of similar books that are functionally disposable. In this regard, Brain Death did not fail to deliver what it promised. It did serve  the function of causing me to re-evaluate my book for Bahrain, QuixotiQ, in a kinder light. I read it because it was there. My sister-in-law, mother-in-law, and I all read it while agreeing it was dreadful, not unlike kvetching about how nasty those stale chips are while eating the whole bag.

You know this book's ilk--its characters and scenes are those of pornography--ill-defined suites that are sparsely detailed except for some emblem or notation that is intended to signify "hospital" or "brokerage after hours" or "millionaire's yacht." The worn carpets and nondescript nightstands, though, say that the action has nothing to do with the setting that has been asserted.  Peopling this world are "administrators" or "doctors" or "young men from the countryside who are confused and alone in the big city." The "nurses" or "teachers" wear "diamond" tiaras; the "doctors" or "electricians" or "police officers" are saviors or menaces. Any resemblance of set to purported story is incidental.

You don't need a spoiler tag on this, right? I can't even find a cover photo on the web. The action here takes place in a Boston hospital. Since I worked in a Boston hospital at the time this book was published, I have a good basis for comparison. For better or worse, we had no sentient computer, evil medical research cabal, or vituperative board members. Anyone psychotic (whether patient or staff) was easy to identify and generally not destructive. To my knowledge, our hospital had far fewer homicides than plague the protagonist's institution, and had we had multiple homicides, severed legs left in closets, etc., I feel certain that our administrator and her cop boyfriend wouldn't have been the ones to try to figure it out, heroically rising from their hospital beds again and again to right wrongs and rout the bad guys. Also, if a large number of our nurses were raped in an only nebulously related way, I imagine we'd have put a guard in the parking lot.

About this sentient computer--I have nothing against artificial intelligence stories, but I loathe bad science fiction by writers of other genres who seem to believe that the reader is entirely credulous and that logic has no place in the reader's participation in solving the mystery/thriller. I'll promise you one thing--if I ever managed the use of a sentient computer, I would damn well make sure there was a "threat to the safety of self or others" alert mechanism for patient or staff confidences to said sentient computer. Even in 1988, before HIPAA, we would have prioritized that, evil medical research cabal or no evil medical research cabal.