A NEW TWIST TO WRITING AND MEDICINE IN THE COVID-19 ERA

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned life upside down in so many ways it's difficult to quantify. For me, it has touched on my writer-doctor career in special ways. As you probably know, many well-known writers have also been physicians, e.g. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Anton Chekhov, Robin Cook, and so on.

Medicine
Although I'm not "on the frontlines" anymore, having retired from medicine in 2018 to write novels full time, I have a particular sensitivity to the havoc wreaked upon the hospitals all over the world by COVID-19. ERs and ICUs shown on TV full to capacity remind me of my on-call days and nights at USC-LA County Medical Center when it seemed like there was no end to the relentless flow of patients. At the ungodly hour of 3 AM, exhaustion was so profound that sometimes I couldn't feel my feet as I went back and forth between the wards and ERs.

L.A. County USC Medical Center, the older on the left, the newer on the right     

(David Tonelson/Shutterstock)

 

 

COVID-19 has suddenly familiarized the lay public with words and phrases like N-95 masks/respirators, (removes 95% of all particles that are at least 0.3 micrometers in diameter, Not oil resistant); ventilators, or "vents" as doctors often refer to them; and intubation, the procedure of placing a tube into the windpipe in order to attach the patient to the vent; and perhaps above all, PPE, Personal Protective Equipment, vital to keep doctors and nurses safe.

Full PPE (Som Taste/Shutterstock)

 
As a physician, there will always be a tendency to feel like going back to the battlefield, and the call is so urgent that California Governor Gavin Newsome has waived fees for retired physicians to reactivate their licenses (a stiff $808). It's unlikely I'll return to brick-and-mortar clinics, wards or emergency rooms, but there's an appealing alternative. One result of the COVID-19 pandemic is a quickly burgeoning interest in telemedicine, i.e., the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients by means of telecommunications technology.

Long before COVID-19, I've been interested in telemedicine not only because I think not all in-person visits to one's physician are completely necessary, but also because of telemedicine's potential as a tool in developing countries, where the doctor-to-population ratio is very low and going to see a doctor could mean a day-long trip from the village to the nearest clinic/hospital. One of my specialties, chronic (non-healing) wound care, is particularly suited to telemedicine. If a nurse goes out to a remote area, he or she can transmit an image of the wound back to the office and the physician, who can recommend on-the-spot treatment from the nurse's well-supplied wound kit. But up until now, physician reimbursement has depended on seeing a patient in person in the doctor's office. In a large, traffic-choked city like Los Angeles, a medically stable patient may commute 2 hours to his/her doctor's office just for a routine visit lasting 10-15 minutes. Maybe COVID-19 can show us that a telemedical visit could have achieved the same thing effectively and efficiently.


Writing
I will wager that at this moment, writers are incorporating the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic in their novels, or are writing medical thrillers based on COVID-19--not that it hasn't been done before. I consider Robin Cook (Contagion) a master of pandemic fiction, as is Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain). What's remarkable is that the scenarios in these fictional accounts are no longer unlikely or the stuff of mere fantasy. This doesn't necessarily make pandemic fiction any easier to write.
Although I will probably not write a medical thriller--it's funny, you'd think I could or should!--but the next Darko Dawson novel I'm working on will have COVID-19 as a backdrop.
A few scenarios have occurred to me in which the disease can add some interesting scenarios to mysteries and thrillers:

• How did the crime occur when everyone was on lockdown--the "impossible" crime?
• How does a detective investigate a murder when everyone is on lockdown? Is s/he morally obligated to investigate while the pandemic is swirling? What about  the investigator's family who might become infected secondarily?
• The victim had asymptomatic COVID-19; the prime suspect denies ever having been in contact with the victim, but then the suspect comes down with COVID-19 five days later. That might strengthen the case against him or her.
• The victim didn't have COVID-19. If traces of COVID-19 RNA are detected at the crime scene, who left it there, and can s/he be traced?
• The RNA of the virus can be sequenced. If the COVID-19 RNA of the victim and a possible suspect are identical, what does that add to the case?
• For an international thriller, what if an assassin (think The Day Of The Jackal) denies being in a particular country--let's say, Iceland--but his COVID-19 genome is typical of the Icelandic pattern? That's complicated, but thriller readers love a challenge!

There's any number of setups using the COVID-19 pandemic as an environment in which a mystery or thriller takes place, but its appearance in some shape or form is pretty much inevitable. In medicine and writing, it's the elephant in the room that can't be ignored.

BORROWED FROM THE BARD: book titles taken from William Shakespeare

Zoë Sharp

Saturday – April 23^rd – was the 400^th anniversary of the death of the Bard, William Shakespeare, arguably the greatest writer in the English language.

By the time he died, in Stratford-upon-Avon, he had written 38 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a number of other works. He was only 52, although that was considered quite a good run in Elizabethan times, when the life expectancy of the average Londoner was 35.

Shakespeare’s work has been translated into every major living language, and his plays are constantly re-imagined for each generation, bringing new meaning each time. It could easily be said that the themes and schemes and tribulations of his characters are just as relevant today as they were 400 years ago.

His characters, words, and phrases have seeped into everyday life to such an extent that they are everywhere you look. And nowhere more than in the chosen book titles of other authors.

BRAVE NEW WORLD, Aldous Huxley

The title of Huxley’s 1932 science fiction classic is take from lines spoken by Miranda to Ferdinand and his companions in The Tempest:

"O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is!

O brave new world

That hath such people in it"

MacBeth has provided inspiration for many other writers when it comes to naming their work.

Alistair MacLean’s 1973 novel, THE WAY TO DUSTY DEATH comes from MacBeth’s soliloquy when he hears of the death of Lady MacBeth:

“She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.”

THE SOUND AND THE FURY is also the title of William Faulkner’s 1929 novel.

Ellery Queen used DOUBLE, DOUBLE, again from the witches in MacBeth for his 1950 novel:

1 WITCH.

“Round about the caldron go;

In the poison'd entrails throw.—

Toad, that under cold stone,

Days and nights has thirty-one;

Swelter'd venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i' the charmed pot!”

ALL.

“Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and caldron bubble.”

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s 1962 dark fantasy takes its title from the second witch in MacBeth:

“By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes. [Knocking]

Open locks,

Whoever knocks!

[Enter MacBeth]

Agatha Christie used a several Shakespeare quotes and references as titles of her novels, including from that same speech in MacBeth:

BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS, 1968

SAD CYPRESS, 1940, from “Come away, death” a song in Twelfth Night

ABSENT IN THE SPRING, 1944, from sonnet 98

THERE IS A TIDE, 1948, (later renamed TAKEN AT THE FLOOD) from Brutus’ speech in Julius Caesar

And her famous play The Mousetrap, 1952, is apparently taken from Hamlet’s answer to Claudius regarding the play the court had just watched.

Erle Stanley Gardner took the title of his 1956 Perry Mason novel THE CASE OF THE GILDED LILY, from a speech made by Salisbury in King John:

“Therefore, to be possess’d with double pomp,

To guard a title that was rich before,

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.”

Frederick Forsyth took the title of his 1974 thriller THE DOGS OF WAR from a speech by Marcus Antonius in Julius Caesar:

“And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,

With Ate by his side come hot from hell,

Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice

Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war,

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

With carrion men, groaning for burial.”

I’m sure there are plenty more I haven’t listed here. What are your favourite crime novel titles taken from Shakespeare quotes, or do you have a quote for which you have yet to find the right story to fit it?

My own favourite is actually a stage direction from The Winter’s Tale: EXIT, PURSUED BY A BEAR. I’m sure someone’s beaten me to it, but it’s a great title.

This week’s Word of the week comes from Shakespeare, appropriately enough, and is Anthropophaginian, meaning one who eats human flesh, used in humorous context in The Merry Wives of Windsor:

HOST

“What wouldst thou have, boor? what: thick-skin?

speak, breathe, discuss; brief, short, quick, snap.”

SIMPLE

“Marry, sir, I come to speak with Sir John Falstaff

from Master Slender.”

HOST

“There's his chamber, his house, his castle, his

standing-bed and truckle-bed; 'tis painted about

with the story of the Prodigal, fresh and new. Go

knock and call; hell speak like an Anthropophaginian

unto thee: knock, I say.”