A review by black_girl_reading
Trauma Room Two by Philip Allen Green

1.0

I should have known this book was not going to give me the introspective reflections of a thoughtful doctor based on the fact that Green put “MD” in his name on the cover. Like, dude, we get it. Anyways. I picked it up because I love a good medical treatise, and I thought that the concept of work in a rural ER would be an interesting place to reflect on this issues of the rural populace: poverty, addiction, lack of access to medical care, etc. However, Green referred to vaguely fictionalized patients as junkies and meth heads, made it clear that he did not value staff, and! wrote what I’m sure he thought was a poignant and humanizing account of a man who MURDERED his demented wife because he was stressed. Pushed her down the stairs. It was hard for him you see. Nope. So much nope. Perhaps, other than humanizing a murderer while dehumanizing his victim, the weirdest thing about this book was Green’s propensity to start writing about a patient and then diverge into a soliloquy about what he thought their lives were like prior to their hospitalization. Like imaging where old scars came from, memories of first sexual experiences, idk man, it was weird. He would also try to render these poignant scenes of loss, but some woman cradling the bloody shoe of her dead child while screaming (all of this narrated by some dude in audiobook) was just so melodramatic and heavy handed. What can I say, I’m glad this dude isn’t my doctor. The Emperor of All Maladies this was not.