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Exit West, a novel by Mohsin Hamid, follows two young lovers as their (unnamed) Middle Eastern city descends into war. The story is an intimate look into how quickly war can warp the quotidian routines of daily life. It begins by introducing us to its protagonists. Nadia is a fiercely independent and thoroughly modern woman; she lives alone, rides her vespa around and listens to jazz records. Saeed is perhaps a bit more traditional—he lives with his parents—but is still a typical university student (he brings a joint to one of his and Nadia’s early dates.) The city is a cosmopolitan one, if not a bit outdated. However, as Nadia and Saeed’s relationship deepens, the initial hints of insurgency become apparent: drones and helicopters buzz constantly overhead, a night curfew is implemented, the window with a nice view becomes a liability as gunfire breaks out. The city descends bit by bit into all out war. As this happens, rumors of magical doors that whisk people away to distant lands begin to circulate. Nadia is keen to find one of these doors; Saeed is hesitant to leave in part because his parents are unwilling to join them. Eventually with growing violence in the city, the couple decides to enter a door and together are transported to Mykonos where they join hundreds of other migrants and refugees from all over world who are living in makeshift homes. The second half of Hamid’s novel follows the couple’s life as refugees, traveling from Greece to England and eventually to the USA. Hamid portrays the psychological cost of exile, loss and dislocation—a cost which slowly drives Nadia and Saeed apart.

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In Dr. Elizabeth Ford’s Sometimes Amazing Things Happen, Ford recounts her time spent on the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward. The memoir is as much about her own personal growth as it is about the daunting, yet crucial care she provides to one of the country’s most vulnerable populations, prison inmates from Riker’s Island. Dr. Ford goes from being a nervous intern on her first day working in the ward to a confident—if not emotionally drained—director of the forensic pathology service all the while trying to balance her family life as a wife and mother. Dr. Ford’s patient encounters with the inmates all center around one crucial thing: trust. In many of her conversations, Dr. Ford works tirelessly to convince her patients, many of whom had suffered abuse or neglect in their younger life, that she is on their team. This process is, more often than not, an uphill battle. Nonetheless, it is an endeavor we see Dr. Ford embark on repeatedly throughout the memoir. For as she says, “My job is to try to look past [what they’ve done] and ... to care for them, to be curious about them and to be non-judgmental. It is a daily struggle, but one that I have found over the years [to be] incredibly rewarding."

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“Few hospitals are more deeply embedded in our popular culture” than Bellevue, David Oshinsky writes in the introduction to his new book Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital.  What follows, however, is not just an account of the (in)famous hospital, but a history of New York City, of disease and medicine and of America itself. Thus, the pages of Bellevue take us from Revolutionary War to Civil War, from Miasma Theory to Germ Theory, from the Spanish flu epidemic to the AIDS epidemic and from the disaster of 9/11 to the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. Along the way, the reader is introduced to giants of the medical and political world, many of whom were connected intimately to the hospital.  In Oshinsky’s telling, Bellevue is a hospital of firsts. The hospital with the first ambulance corps, first in-hospital medical school, first pathology lab. It is—at the same time—a hospital rooted in tradition. It is startling in reading Bellevue, for example, to realize that halfway through the book, the doctors who are being celebrated as central to the hospital’s longevity still subscribed to Miasma theory and could do little more for their patients than bleed them and give them alcohol.  Bellevue is also—and in Oshinsky’s eyes this seems most important—a hospital of immigrants. It was and is, a hospital where those for whom no one else would care could come, where no one would be turned away. Over the years, this has meant that Bellevue has opened its doors to Irish immigrants who were thought to be causing the Typhus epidemic, to Jews who were thought to be causing tuberculosis outbreaks and to homosexuals who were thought to be causing the AIDS epidemic. The demographic of patients who come to Bellevue has changed drastically throughout its history, but the underlying ethos of the hospital has been unwavering. 

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Extremis, a Netflix documentary directed by Dan Krauss, follows Dr. Jessica Zitter a palliative care ICU physician at Highland Hospital in Oakland, California. The documentary begins with an exasperated Dr. Zitter trying to communicate with a patient on a ventilator: “Is this about the breathing tube? You want it out?” she asks. When the patient nods in affirmation, Dr. Zitter replies, “What if you die if I take it out?” The questions confronting the physicians, patients and their loved ones get no easier over the course of the film. The documentary is propelled by a dramatic tension between its protagonists: on one side Dr. Zitter, who is compassionate but dogmatically pragmatic, on the other side the family members of patients who are driven above all by hope and faith. This tension manifests itself in palpable ways. In one particularly powerful scene, a patient’s daughter says to Dr. Zitter: “it would feel like murder to pull that life support. That’s what it would feel like to me…I feel like maybe as a doctor, you know, being as smart, and being as knowledgeable, and being inside medical journals, it can dwindle your optimism a little bit.” Dr. Zitter replies simply, “I’m just trying to help you make a decision that’s right for your Mom.”  Of course, for Dr. Zitter there does appear to be a categorically appropriate decision in all of these cases. In most of her conversations, she is transparently trying to get family members to see that there is no realistic chance of meaningful recovery for their loved ones. That is not to say that she is insensitive to the family’s wishes or the complex bioethical conundrums which arise around her. In fact, her bravery and deftness in broaching these serious and difficult topics is on full display throughout the film. 

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Talking with Doctors, a memoir by David Newman, follows the author’s dizzying journey to find a physician and treatment plan after being diagnosed with a rare malignant tumor perched dangerously near his brain stem. Despite the author’s education, money, connections and geographic privilege (Mr. Newman is a New Yorker surrounded by “the best” hospitals and the “the best” doctors), he finds himself struggling to make any sense of the conflicting medical advice he receives. The vertigo induced by the deluge of advice he gathers in his countless trips to multiple medical centers, is only exacerbated by the egotism and childishness of some of the doctors he sees. The indecencies range from the routine—waiting hours for doctors that are running behind schedule—to the utterly bizarre—a doctor returning Mr. Newman’s $10 copay as a gesture of good will after explaining that his tumor was inoperable and would likely be fatal.   Mr. Newman’s career as a psychotherapist is intimately interwoven into the fabric of the memoir. His analytical eye strongly informs his search for a physician whom he can trust. Moreover, knitted into the narrative is Mr. Newman’s experience with his own patients whom he is forced to refer to other therapists while he is receiving treatment.   Coloring the tone of the entire memoir is the fact that Mr. Newman has survived the tumor around which the memoir is framed. Nonetheless, Talking with Doctors is a harrowing and suspenseful read.

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