Crichton, Michael - A Case Of Need by Crichton Michael

Author:Crichton, Michael [Crichton, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Crime & mystery, Mystery and detective stories, Medical, Physicians, Boston (Mass.), Fiction - Psychological Suspense, Abortion
ISBN: 9780451183668
Publisher: Signet
Published: 1994-06-15T07:00:00+00:00

for abortion. When he is drunk, he talks emotions, attitudes, stances, complacency.

I think he feels hostility toward medicine and gets drunk so that he can release his hostility with an excuse—he's drunk. Certainly he has gotten into bitter, almost vicious fights with other doctors when he was drunk; he once told Janis that he'd aborted his wife and Janis, who didn't know, looked as if he'd been kicked in the balls. Janis is Catholic but his wife isn't. Art managed to end a perfectly happy dinner party right on the spot.

I attended that party, and I was annoyed with Art afterward. He apologized to me a few days later, and I told him to apologize to Janis, which he did. For some strange reason, Janis and Art subsequently became close friends, and Janis became a convert to abortion. I don't know what Art said to him or how he convinced him, but whatever it was, it worked.

Because I know Art better than most people, I attach a great importance to his being Chinese. I think his origin and his physical appearance have been a great influence on him. There are a lot of Chinese and Japanese men in medicine, and there are a lot of jokes about them—half-nervous jokes about their energy and their cleverness, their drive to success. It is precisely the kind of jokes one hears about Jews. I think Art, as a Chinese-American, has fought this tradition, and he has also fought his upbringing, which was essentially conservative. He swung the other way, became radical and leftist. One proof of this is his willingness to

accept all things new. He has the most modern office equipment of any OB man in Boston. Whenever a new product comes out, he buys it. There are jokes about this, too—the gadget-oriented Orientals—but the motivation is different. Art is fighting tradition, routine, the accepted way.

When you talk to him, he seems bursting with ideas. He has a new method for doing the Papp smear.6 He wants to abandon the routine, digital pelvic exam as a waste of time. He thinks that basal temperature as an indicator of ovulation is more effective than reported. He thinks forceps should be eliminated from all deliveries, no matter how complicated. He thinks that general anesthesia in deliveries should be abandoned in favor of heavy doses of tranquilizers.

When you first hear these ideas and theories, you are impressed. Only later do you realize that he is compulsively attacking tradition, finding fault whenever and wherever he can.

I suppose it is only natural that he should begin performing abortions. And I suppose that I should question his motives. But I don't usually, because I feel that a man's reasons for doing something are less important than the ultimate value of what he does. It is a historical truth that a man may do the wrong thing for the right reasons. In that case he loses. Or he may do the right thing for the wrong reasons. In that case, he is a hero.

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