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Killer bugs >> Dr. Peter Clement does Death Rounds by JULIET WATERS
Of course, there is that William S. Burroughs quote about language being a virus. Clement laughs at this, in part because Death Rounds, his second medical thriller, is about a serial killer who has created a super bug resistant to treatment. But also because Clement claims writing has been a compulsion more than a choice. "Writing's a weird activity," he says. "I'm happy doing it, but sometimes it's a dismal job. Coming out of a stretch of writing, I can often feel as mentally exhausted as coming out of a shift of ER." But it's been a rewarding job. His first book Lethal Practice, published last year, has sold more than 150,000 copies. With Death Rounds he'll find out how loyal a following he's created for his alter ego, Dr. Earl Garnet, ER chief and sleuth. I repeat a favourite Harry Cruz anecdote about a writer and a doctor at a party. The doctor says, "I think I'm going take up writing when I retire. The writer says, 'Really? I think I'm going take up medicine.'" Clement sympathizes with the poor writer. "I don't know what could prepare someone for a life of writing. When I look at some of my first attempts I can't imagine why my American editors gave me the time of day." Timing, perhaps. There seems to be an insatiable craving for drama about the mega-stress world of the ER life. But one advantage Clement has over others trying to tap this emerging genre is that he didn't have to fictionalize very much to create hospital conditions that were appalling to American readers. All he had to do was create a scenario that would turn an American ER into a Montreal ER, circa February. "Comments from the Americans on the first book were that the depiction of the conditions in the hospital was more scary than the murder plot," he says. "They found it incredulous that you could have stretchers in the hallways, patients waiting for a day or two, and ambulances trying to find an ER that was open." In Death Rounds those circumstances are created by a super-bug-breeding villain. Mixed in with a realistic environment are some pretty realistic symptoms. "She looked dead. Her flesh was mottled purple and white from not enough oxygen and loss of circulation. But as I stepped up to the stretcher where she was lying, I could hear her breathing--gurgling noises, each ending with a whimper--and I could see the muscles between her ribs suck in and out as she struggled for air... Her pupils were wide with terror, dilated by the flood of adrenaline that goes with dying, and her grey hair splayed out wild and tangled over the pillow. The worst was when those black eyes glared at me. Even in her agony, gasping and unable to move or speak, her expression seemed to say, 'You sent me home.'" Scary as Death Rounds is, Clement maintains that it may not even be as bad as Montreal reality. "Someone asked me if it was likely that the super bug could fall into the hands of a villain. But I think what's scary about this is not that some nut might get the ingredients for a super bug. What's even scarier is that the makings of the super bug are there now and it's evolving up the ladder naturally. When they get to that final step we won't have something to treat this virus with for the first time since antibiotics were developed. The ingredients that make it up are ones that you hear about in Montreal hospitals now. The worst scenario is that people will come up against each other and create it." Death Rounds by Peter Clement, Ballantine, pb, 354pp, $8.99
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Peter Clement keeps trying to read the notes I'm taking as I interview him. It's driving me crazy, but I figure this is something he's doing out of habit as much as curiosity. Clement is his pseudonym. For many years, before he started writing, he was known by the staff at St. Mary's as Dr. Peter Duffy, their chief of Emergency. He's read a lot of notes in his life.