Two Medical Thrillers

BLOODSTREAM by Tess Gerritsen, MD, Pocket Books, New York, 1998, 464 pages, $7; Simon & Schuster Audio Books, read by Jan Maxwell, 3 hrs, 2 cassettes, $18. ISBN: 06-710167-6-8
GRAVITY by Tess Gerritsen, MD, Pocket Books, New York, 1999, 346 pages; Simon & Schuster Audio Books, read by Campbell Scott, 4 hrs, 4 cassettes, $25. ISBN: 06-710167-7-6

In Bloodstream, Dr. Claire Elliot moves with her high school-age son to the quiet resort town of Tranquility, Maine. She takes over the practice of a physician and finds herself, along with her son, in an uneasy situation. Her son has a skateboard accident. His best friend, Taylor, lands one in his face. The son's skateboard from his late father, lovingly taped together and the sole memento of what was left behind, is confiscated.

But Taylor's violent behavior is no isolated incident. Dr. Elliot becomes involved in a strange pattern of periodic violence in the community, and tries to find out what is going on. The dogs bring in a human femur, then a tibia and a child's skull. What she thought was a medical examiner's case turns out, with the age of the bones, to be an anthropology examiner's case.

The author interweaves their lives with a tale of cyclic changes in the weather, rains and floods to recurring epidemics and unusual microbes that cause aberrant and deadly behavior in the townspeople. This book reveals Gerritsen's command of medical intrigue in an array of circumstances. The audiotape, however, does not deliver the tension and immediacy of the story as well as previous audiotapes did, or the book itself.

In Gravity, Gerritsen moves from the terrestrial to the extraterrestrial. Emma Watson, a brilliant research physician, has trained for years for the NASA mission of a lifetime-studying living beings in space. Her estranged husband, Dr. Jack McCallum, is grounded and cannot share their dream. Their love has rekindled, and as the space shuttle passes over Houston, she waves to him and is convinced he is waving back.

As the astronauts on the international space station (ISS) share the status of the experiments at micro-gravity with the new team of astronauts, they find that microbes have infected their laboratory mice. The mice develop red sclerae, convulse and die. A Japanese astronaut, Check Kinichi, is bitten by a mouse. He develops hemorrhagic sclerae, nausea, vomiting, seizures and cardiac arrest. When the shuttle relieves part of the crew, Kinichi's body is taken aboard.

As the shuttle leaves, its delta wing damages the ISS and pressure begins to drop. The ISS crew tries to repair the damage through extra-vehicular activity (EVA) while Discovery returns to earth with the sealed corpse.

While the new team works with the cultures and fresh mice, other astronauts sicken. The air is filled with desperation - and a green infected culture floats by. Dr. Watson receives an email from the senior investigator, Dr. Helen Koenig, that the study is to be aborted, the cultures incinerated, and the ashes ejected from the ISS. NASA thinks this is bio-terrestrial terrorism.

Meanwhile the corpse on the shuttle swells up, the bag bursts and spews forth deadly organisms. The astronauts become too sick to lower the landing gears and Discovery lands on its belly. Immediately the Army takes over, a large tent is placed over the shuttle, and fully hooded scientists begin decontamination.

Dr. Jack McCallum follows the trail to Dr. Koenig's laboratory, gets new leads, and learns that the problem-a single cell marine organism, an Archaeon, was originally found at 19,000 feet underwater on an asteroid. What happens to an organism that can live in deep multi-atmospheric gravity when it is brought to one atmosphere? And what can go wrong when that organism is taken to zero gravity?

Gerritsen weaves an unbelievable chain of events: different work habits and tensions of astronauts from different countries at close quarters on a space station; a microbe that enlarges at zero gravity even after the host is dead; an epidemic and quarantine in a space station; burr holes in space trying to save an enlarging, infected brain; the challenges of intubation and CPR at weightlessness; an organism that can incorporate the host DNA to become a chimera with microbe, mouse, leopard frog and human DNA-and therein lies the cure. Finally, how is a husband to catch a ride into space to rescue his wife who is ill with only a few days to live?

This is Gerritsen's best as she adds a little science fiction at the end. And the audiotape by Campbell Scott uses his multi-voice capabilities to instill a sense of urgency, creating possibly more suspense than one can feel by rapid page turning. Don't start the tape unless you have at least four hours before you have to see your next patient. This should make a superb space movie thriller that even I would pay to go see.

delmeyer@healthcarecom.net

www.delmeyer.net