Condition Critical

A non-fiction text that reads like a novel. A 15-year veteran of coronary care and emergency room nursing, Echo Heron works in a large city hospital, which she calls Redwoods Memorial. In this account, Heron describes nights spent, for example, tending victims of heart disease.

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Stress, burn-out, bureaucratic idiocy, this is a non-fiction text that reads like a novel. A 15-year veteran of coronary care and emergency room nursing, Echo Heron works in a large city hospital, which she calls Redwoods Memorial. In this account, Heron describes nights spent tending victims of heart disease or shooting traumas; the "haunting" of room 5/6; the very real fears of Echo and her colleagues after being exposed to AIDS-infected blood in the heat of a lifesaving procedure. There are the patients too; the schizophrenic convict who must recover in time for his execution; the house-painter with a broken neck who defies the odds to walk again; and the man whose wife's desire to get even with him makes her insist on keeping him alive.