SURVIVING JANE

Del Toro’s medical drama follows a young intern as he cares for a Jane Doe patient admitted after an opioid overdose.

Feeling burned-out, David Scholz intends to keep his head down and get through the end of his internship before taking a year off to travel prior to starting his ophthalmology residency. University Charity Hospital is an extremely busy place, and David’s patience is stretched to the breaking point. Despite this, he connects with an older patient whose surprising backstory serves as a reminder of the human side of his work. The story toggles back and forth between David’s interactions with this person and another patient identified as Jane Doe, juxtaposing the former, who is the picture of gratitude, with the latter, who is about as defiant as a patient can get. Jane even attacks David while going through withdrawal (a plot point that becomes significant later), but his compassion wins out in the end, and David continues working to break through her tough outer shell. As he does, the other doctors and nurses around him provide support and wisdom; one character distills one of the novel’s themes when he says, “Kindness’s greatest virtue is anonymity, but in a small hospital such as ours, few things go unnoticed.” Several aspects of the prose and plot keep readers at a remove, however. The text is crammed with medical jargon, which, while accurate to the setting, becomes distracting and alienating for readers without medical backgrounds. Characters rarely use contractions when speaking, making their dialogue sound like scripted lectures rather than natural conversations. Both of David’s primary patients turn out to be rather prominent public figures; this narrative turn, in addition to an abundance of coincidences that favor David’s growth and development, undercuts the narrative’s believability.

An ambitious hospital saga with a worthy message of compassion undermined by a heavy-handed delivery.