Library Corner
November 12, 2008

I wish autumn lasted longer. It seems like we go directly from the heat of summer to the chill of winter, only pausing briefly for fall. I keep telling myself to get out the camera and take some pictures of the lovely trees, then a storm comes and the leaves are on the ground. I don’t know how I survived 14 years in Prineville; it was either hot or cold there, really cold. The growing season was about 2 ½ months.  I have a garden full of green tomatoes here just like I did there. I’ve tried red plastic on the ground around the plants, those plastic tubes you put water in to keep them warm, covering them with tarps, and still I have more green tomatoes than red. The few red ones we do get are very tasty and I will try again next year. 

I finished the novel “Oxygen” by Carol Cassella and found it quite suspenseful but exasperating at times. I wanted to shake the main character some times and say, “Open your eyes, girl.” Of course, I was never in the situation she was in. I suppose I would fall apart too. The story is about Marie, an anesthesiologist who is so wrapped up in her work she hasn’t had time to make a life for herself. She’s a good, conscientious doctor who is caught up in a crisis of her own making. An eight-year-old girl’s heart rate drops and she dies during a fairly simple operation to remove an abscess from the base of her spine. Marie goes back through everything she did, wondering what she could have done differently. 

Marie is devastated when she has to explain to the child’s mother, a single mom, that she doesn’t know what went wrong. The mother files a lawsuit against the surgeon, the hospital and Marie.  The hospital shifts all the blame on Marie. With her carefully structured life ready to collapse, she renews an old love relationship with a fellow anesthesiologist, Joe, making him her closest confidant. While the lawyers are deciding what they are going to do, Marie goes to visit her sister and her family in Texas where they are having troubles of their own. Marie’s father, an independent history professor, is losing his eyesight and not coping well. The ultimate responsibility for his care falls on her.With all these troubles going on, you start to think, “Hey, my life’s not so bad.”

The author herself is an anesthesiologist so the background of the Seattle hospital is very realistic. You can almost feel you are sitting beside her in the operating room.  I recommend this book.  It was very suspenseful and engrossing. Marie is an appealing character and I was so glad when she finally took my advice and opened her eyes!

See you at the library,

Pam Pugsley