Medical Thriller
Date Published: November 7, 2024
For Sam Wyatt, his intern year was going to be the hardest year of his
life. Profoundly affected by violence and death – and long before it was
called PTSD or burnout – Sam and his fellow interns, Wilson Harrison, Gina
Bautista, and Harry Martin must find a way to survive in THE COUNTY.
Doubting their choices, working 90 hours a week, lacking sleep, surviving
on a diet of bad food and black coffee, each must learn to work in the
understaffed, underfunded, and deteriorating hospital taking care of
critically ill patients; for a system demanding they be constantly
overworked if they want to become the doctors they promised themselves they
would be.
Within this brutal system, Sam finds a mentor in Fish – his senior resident
and the only one to tell him the actual rules to survive:
• Everyone will try to kill your patient, except you.
• It’s OK to be wrong, but never unsure.
• Rebels are shot at dawn.
Fish should know. He had been through it just a year before. But would any
of them make it out unscathed?
Set in the 1970’s, this raw portrait of the birth of emergency medicine
bears the roots of many of the problems underlying our broken medical system
and our system of training doctors. Ones that have only progressively
worsened since that time. But…
If you can persevere…
If you really follow Fish’s rules…
Maybe you too can survive THE COUNTY.
EXCERPT
AFTER THE TWO BOYS DIED side by side, Sam escaped out the side door into the drizzle of the cold December night. Exhausted, he bent over, hands on his knees trying to take a few deep breaths. His anger and frustration had been growing but this night it tightened its choking grip on him, draining what little breath he still had out of him. He had tried to speak several times to tell someone he was going out, getting some badly needed air, but he was so choked by his anger he could no longer get the words out. After shaking his finger rhythmically four times at the side door he finally just expelled the word “out” in a guttural exhalation of anguish. He needed space to breathe, but now more than ever he longed to be free of this place. He pitched himself down onto the rickety wooden bench outside the side door, banging his head on the metal bar behind him as he dropped limply into the seat. Bright sparks floated inside his eyes as his hearing disappeared into a deep monotone tunnel. He rubbed the back of his head with his hand. It was wet; was it just his sweat, or worse? He grimaced when he pressed his scalp and felt a lump. He checked his fingers, no blood at least.
About the Author
In a career that spanned 5 decades in emergency medicine, Dr. Zane Horowitz
was there when the specialty began. He worked predominantly in county
hospitals and trauma centers throughout his 45-year career. He has seen the
best and the worst of healthcare delivery. Since those early days, he has
held many roles in the field of emergency medicine. He directed pre-hospital
ambulance systems, supervised a multi-county rural EMS system and an
air-medical helicopter service, and worked in community and rural critical
access emergency departments. Currently, he is a Professor of Emergency
Medicine at Oregon Health Science University, and he practices medical
toxicology as the Associate Medical Director with the Oregon Poison Center.
With over 100 medical publications Zane Horowitz now has written a novel
about the early days of emergency medicine called THE COUNTY.
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