The Way We Love by Stuart Friedman

This "unconventional novel of manners and morals in a modern hospital" switches between boring and salacious, but somehow, I couldn't put it down. I can't recommend it, but—I liked it.

Brilliant surgeon Kurt Severton seems the only one concerned with standards at Lakeland General Hospital. The night he consults Chief Surgeon Dr. Tolliver at his home over a patient, his wife, Donna, makes it clear she is busting with need and attempts to seduce Kurt in her high-slit silk Chinese gown. Kurt has had enough of both of them, knowing Tolliver is an unfit alcoholic about to operate on a woman unqualified for surgery. She is a patient of Joel Marshall, whom Kurt grew up with, a doctor who over-prescribes, and the splenectomy is a bad idea. Everyone knows Dr. Tolliver has shaky hands, and the patient dies. Kurt is consoled by Marti Conlan, his capable nurse girlfriend. He also reunites with Joel's sister Anne, whom he once dated and almost married. When Kurt goes to confront Tolliver, he ends up in bed with Donna, and when Marti finds out—why, she proposes a threesome so he can decide whom he likes better. Patients die from easily treated infections and preventable accidents, like the delicate spinal surgery patient on whom Kurt operates successfully, who is dropped on the floor by orderlies. It's up to Kurt to initiate a hospital-wide review, but his own life is not above reproach.

The sexy scenes are interspersed with pages where the hospital itself is described in detail; the building, the medical theaters and all the equipment in them to perform surgery, the scrub stations and preparations, and the operations themselves in detail as if written by a doctor. A little too clinical and dull for the reader. For a novel of just 144 pages, the malpractice may be enough, but somehow there is room for a rape, overdose, incest, pregnancy, and someone falls into a coma. You get your 35¢ out of this paperback.

1960 / Paperback / 144 pages

My other review of Stuart Friedman:

The Bedside Corpse