INTENSIVE CARE
by Francis Roe
A brilliant surgeon plans to transplant a pancreas, and lesser mortals plan to stop him before he puts artificial insulin out of business. The author is a surgeon now specializing in novels (Doctors and Doctors' Wives, 1990). The pancreas in distress belongs to beautiful French aristocrat Celine de la Roche, whose hot little Manhattan publishing company is about to make the leap to the big-time level and whose husband may be about to make the leap into the arms of someone less driven than Celine. All leaps are off, though, when Celine swoons in her limo from pancreatic distress and is referred to Dr. Caleb Winter, who knows all there is to know about problem pancreases and whose research is leading to the world's first ape- to-person pancreas transplant. Dr. Winter's thoracic palpations detect just the right kind of tumor for his great experiment. They also set off little waves of passion in Celine, who had thought she didn't like him very much. The pancreas is not the only problem for Caleb and Celine. Caleb's critically important Yugoslavian lab assistant can't control his satyriasis; his nurse can't control her masochistic nymphomania; and his department head is in the pay of the unscrupulous European insulin industry. Celine, meanwhile, must cope with a sadistic nurse, unfriendly corporate buyouts, and a disintegrating marriage. Medical melodrama. For the beach-bag.