Akshay Rao
Patient is a quirky, humorous, and occasionally poignant romp through the American health care system. After a seemingly mild case of COVID-19, the author finds himself hospitalized with acute renal failure. The connection to COVID-19 is tenuous at best, yet he is examined from head to toe with the ruthless efficiency that only a hospital with the latest technology can accomplish. Scans and tests of every possible type are conducted, eliminating the most dire of diagnoses.In Patient, the reader is grasped by the lapels and is guided through a week in the hospital interspersed with the author’s travels through space (being kissed by an orangutan in Borneo and 'hijacking' a plane in India) and time (a ghost story set in nineteenth-century Southern India). We meet a cast of interesting characters--doctors, nurses, and children--whose interactions with the protagonist reveal much about themselves as well as the main character.All’s well that ends well, we discover, when the author returns home to a greeting from his cats that eventually move him to tears, something that had not occurred during his earlier travails.All in all, a delightful, charming, and engaging piece of prose.
