ASK FOR ME TOMORROW

ke Franck, a surgeon (as is author Geiger), has personal problems to work out presumably dealing with death-- he'd lost his wife to leukemia-- and he has six more weeks to serve in a California hospital before leaving for South Vietnam where he hopes to learn the answers. This time, as well as the novel, is spent between Laura, a Catholic girl with whom he falls in love, and a patient- a fisherman who comes in with a spot on his lung. His attempt to save this old man of the sea is touch and go all the way (he does a lobectomy; then a tracheostomy; the play by play procedures are stringently clinical) and he finally loses him. Laura too is a terminal case-- she sends him off knowing that he must go.... Granted that this is what it is (a rather de luxe sink-scrub-soap opera), the graphic surgery and glazed romance should have a moderate appeal for the outpatient audience which has already been prepped at home.