Summary:

Rocking The Babies is a rich novel which gives us significant insights into the lives of two aging black women who decide to volunteer as foster grandmothers in the neonatal unit of an urban hospital. Each of them is attempting to work out her own problems. Despite the commonality of race, (African-American), their class differences and life experiences become areas of contention as they come together in the hospital. The dynamics of their developing relationship, the descriptions of the day to day experiences in the neo-natal unit, the professional lives of nurses and doctors are depicted with skill, pathos, and humour.

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The title of Scannell’s book refers to an episode in her work with AIDS patients when she realizes that the "good doctor" she’d been taught to be--scientifically precise, medically focused and aggressive--was not what many of her patients wanted or needed. From that point on, she strove to understand the nature of her patients’ suffering and how they might be cherished and morally supported during the last weeks and days of their lives. In a series of essays she offers haunting portraits of the men and women she served--and of herself, as she learns to recognize and grapple with her own anger, grief, comfort, and joy.

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Dr. Sunit "Sonny" Seth is a gifted but troubled (emotionally and spiritually) third year resident who works at a New York hospital that treats and employs many immigrants from India. The sleep-walking Sonny is assigned to care for a prominent Indian politician known as the Transplanted Man, a patient who has already received seven organ transplants and is currently in renal failure.

Sonny mysteriously rescues the Transplanted Man from the brink of death following a kidney transplant but later learns his patient died from a cardiac arrest. Although Sonny is no stranger to personal loss and longing, the death of this special patient serves as a catalyst. He breaks up with his girlfriend, quits his residency, and dreams of relocating to Trinidad. Meanwhile, nearly everyone else Sonny knows seems to be struggling with their role and place in the world as well.

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A stray dog bites the left ankle of 12-year-old Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles. She and her peculiar parents live in a country near the Caribbean Sea during colonial times. Her father belongs to the class of decaying nobility. He is a weak man with poor judgment. Her scheming mother is a nymphomaniac who abuses cacao tablets and fermented honey. Sierva Maria is more or less raised by the family's slaves whose culture she assimilates. The youngster has luxuriant copper-colored hair and a penchant for lying--"she wouldn't tell the truth even by mistake" according to her mother. (p. 16)

Before long, the dog dies of rabies. When Sierva Maria begins exhibiting bizarre behavior, no one is quite sure of the cause even though everyone seems to have his or her own theory. Is the girl displaying signs of rabies? Is she possessed by a demon? The physician Abrenuncio doubts either diagnosis. The powerful Bishop believes the girl may require an exorcism. Perhaps Sierva Maria is simply eccentric or maybe even crazy. Ninety-three days after being bitten by the dog, she is locked in a cell in the Convent of Santa Clara.

The Bishop appoints his protégé, 36-year-old Father Cayetano Delaura, to investigate the matter. The priest is immediately infatuated with the girl. When the Bishop learns of Cayetano Delaura's love for Sierva Maria and his unacceptable actions, the priest is disciplined and then relegated to caring for lepers at the hospital. The Bishop next takes matters into his own hands by performing the rite of exorcism on Sierva Maria. After five sessions, she is found in bed "dead of love." (p. 147)

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Billy Sanchez and Nena Daconte, children of two wealthy Colombian families, fly to Europe to celebrate their honeymoon. Although married only three days, Nena is already two months pregnant. After she scrapes her ring finger on a rose thorn, the nearly imperceptible cut starts bleeding profusely. Nena is admitted to the intensive care unit of a Paris hospital. Visitation is permitted only one day a week so Billy must wait six days before he can see his wife again. He spends most of his time alone in a nearby hotel.

Billy tries to visit Nena sooner but is thrown out of the hospital by a security guard. Billy’s attempt to enlist the aid of the foreign embassy is equally unsuccessful. When Tuesday’s visiting hours finally arrive, Billy cannot locate his wife. He spots the physician who first evaluated Nena. The doctor regretfully announces that Nena bled to death sixty hours after hospital admission. No one could find Billy to apprise him of the situation so Nena’s parents have already arranged the funeral and transported the body home for burial. Billy exits the hospital with thoughts of violence and revenge for his calamity.

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Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance tells the story of Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin), a young Korean man who cannot hear or speak, whose sister Han Bo-bae is dangerously ill with kidney disease. Because Ryu and Bo-bae are poor and there is no social system of health coverage in Korea, Bo-bae is not able to receive the transplant she needs to survive. Ryu wants to give his sister one of his own kidneys but he has the wrong blood type. When Ryu is laid off and given a lump sum in severance pay, he seeks out black-market organ transplant. He agrees to give one of his kidneys and ten million won (roughly US $10,000) in exchange for a kidney for his sister. Ryu awakens from anesthesia to find that his kidney has been removed and his money stolen by the black marketeers.

When a kidney becomes available through the hospital, Ryu and his friend Cha-youngmi (Du-na Bae) kidnap the daughter of a wealthy factory owner (Kang-ho Song) in order to raise the money to pay for it. The child dies in an accident and two vengeance plots unfold, that of Ryu punishing the black marketeers and the vengeance that the factory owner wreaks on Ryu and Youngmi for the death of his daughter.

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Some readers may be caught off-guard by this elegiac love poem with its unconventionally direct thoughts about quality of life issues and family relationships. Had the narrator’s father not died twenty years ago, today would mark his ninety-second birthday. In the posthumous apostrophe to his father, the narrator remembers his storyteller voice, his “air of Old Spice,” and his fondness for lilacs in spring. The timeliness of his death prevented the miseries he and his siblings might have endured with illnesses, clinic and hospital visits, and life-saving interventions. Without specifying the circumstances, the narrator writes that his father died with his “dignity intact.”

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The story is told from the perspective of Julian, a recent college graduate who appears to be waiting for employment commensurate with his education; he lives at home with his solicitous widowed mother. The setting is the recently integrated South of the 1960’s. Events unfold during a ride on an integrated bus, in which all of the story’s complex relationships are played out: the vindictive, self-deluding dependency of Julian on his mother; the insightless yet well-intentioned doting of his mother, who is tied to the societal conventions in which she was raised; the condescension of "enlightened" whites toward blacks; the resentment of blacks toward well-meaning whites- all depicted with great skill and humor.

The crisis occurs in a confrontation between Julian’s mother and a black woman wearing the same hat, when the mother tries to give a penny to her counterpart’s child. In the incident, Julian’s mother suffers a stroke to which Julian is at first oblivious, being so consumed with fury at his mother’s (to him inappropriate) gesture to the child. When he realizes how disabled his mother is, Julian is overwhelmed with grief and fear; the extent of his self-deception is fully confirmed.

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The setting is the children's ward of a hospital in Paterson, N.J. during the Great Depression. Alternating between a cynicism born of desperation, and empathetic concern, the physician-narrator describes the sorry condition of his young patients, virtually abandoned by their parents. He muses that they would be better off left untreated so that they would not have to live the inevitably wretched lives ahead of them.

One child in particular has captured his attention. She is Jean Beicke, an eleven month old, malnourished, deformed girl suffering acutely from broncho-pneumonia. The nurses and he look after her, and she responds to their care by taking nourishment and gaining weight. This is tremendously rewarding and reinforces their interest in her, but to their consternation she continues to be very ill. "We did everything we knew how to do except the right thing." "Anyhow she died." The benumbed mother is persuaded to allow an autopsy; the physician wants to understand what went wrong although he "never can quite get used to an autopsy."

The postmortem uncovers an infection of the mastoid process which has spread to the brain. The narrator and the "ear man" berate themselves for having failed to take proper steps to identify and treat the infection. In the end, however, the physician is still unable to resolve the dilemma of wanting passionately to have saved his patient's life, and knowing that the life saved would have been one of misery.

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Writer Paul Monette's first-person account of living through his lover Roger's last nineteen months with AIDS, from diagnosis to death (1986), told in language that is poetic and highly articulate. The couple faces not only progressive physical degeneration (Monette calls time with AIDS a "minefield") but also the agonizing issues of truthtelling with their families, friends gay and straight, and the world, in "the double closet of the war."

Fact-finding is a constant obsession in this story, not only about who is positive and who knows, but also in the rapidly-changing medical arena, where through Monette's extraordinary efforts Roger becomes the first person west of the Mississippi to be put on the drug, AZT. Monette is so devoted a caregiver that he often loses himself--a problem he solves in part by turning to the subject of AIDS as a writer.

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