Author : David Hellerstein
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2001-09-18
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781469117461
Stone Babies by David Hellerstein Pdf
Synopsis of Stone Babies A young doctor in New York City, Dr. Jay Sones has just finished training as an obstetrician and infertility specialist. For over a decade he has been working at Manhattan Medical Center, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side, first as a medical student, then as an obstetrics resident, then as an Infertility Fellow, treating women with fertility problems and doing ground-breaking research with his mentor, the world-renowned Dr. Leon Witt. After years of sleepless nights in which Jay has delivered innumerable babies and treated almost every type of difficult pregnancy, he has become an expert obstetrician-gynecologist. In several years of Infertility Fellowship, working with the temperamental and brilliant Dr. Witt, Jay has survived a different kind of apprenticeship, becoming a medical scientist who can participate in the amazing advances of infertility research. After years of sacrifices--financial and emotional--Jay is ready for the rewards of "real life." He prepares to open up a private practice in Manhattan in partnership with his friend and colleague from the hospital, Dr. Alli Daniel. For a while it looks like life will be perfect--an Upper East Side practice, the opportunity to continue doing research with Dr. Witt. And, most of all, some time for a personal life, for love and romance, with his sometimes-girlfriend, Janine Stern. Janine, who is elegant and intriguing and quite successful (she runs a large consulting firm), has her eye on Jay's future, though he is content to remain in the present--dinners at elegant restaurants, nights at her East End Avenue penthouse, leisurely Sunday brunches together after running the Reservoir in Central Park, not to mention occasional romantic weekend in her Connecticut country house. * Just as Jay's new life begins, though, disaster strikes. One weekend afternoon, while working in the research lab at Manhattan Medical Center, Jay's partner, Dr. Alli Daniel, is assaulted and nearly killed. Then Jay's application for Admitting Privileges at Manhattan Medical Center (which will allow him to deliver babies and treat patients there) is denied. And out of nowhere, he is caught up in a vicious malpractice suit. To make ends meet, Dr. Sones takes jobs in New Yorks dreaded outer boroughs. There is The Lamb, a beleaguered hospital in the South Bronx, and Brooklyn Womans Care, or BWC, a storefront clinic in the slums of Brooklyn. At The Lamb, he delivers baby after baby, enduring brownouts and shootouts, and squalid operating rooms and thirteen-year-old mothers having their second or third babies. And in Brooklyn, Jay sees a different side of urban medicine, working in the front lines in what can only euphemistically be described as a "clinic" but is really the private preserve for Eddie Polito, better known for his prior professions of refuse removal and stolen car redistribution. Nonetheless, The Lamb and BWC pay the bills. And when your fancy Park Avenue practice is bleeding money, and when your lawyer is running a $250 per hour meter with no end of billable hours in sight, cash is king. And so Jay Sones's dreams of a glamorous medical existence rapidly fade into oblivion. There is more, though: As he runs from one patient to the next, and from the squalor of urban poverty to the glamorous world of his wealthy girlfriend, Jay's suspicions grow that the three disastrous events are related--that there is a connection between Alli's attack and the malpractice suit and the way in which his privileges were denied at Manhattan Medical Center. Then things get nasty. Jay becomes persona non grata at Manhattan Medical Center, banished from even setting foot in the Infertility Center. Dr. Witt turns from chilly politeness to open hostility. And then Jay himself is sucker-punched, unexpectedly caught up in the inc