Intensive Care

In this startling yarn, surgeon Caleb Winter resolves to make history by performing the world's first pancreas transplant. His patient is a formidable publisher, Celine de La Roche, who has nice legs and a virulent tumor. But a company about to market oral insulin has bribed Henry Brighton, an idiot who runs the hospital's surgery department, to lobby against the transplant, so things seem bleak for de La Roche. What's worse, she has fallen in love with Winter, who has a big problem himself. His immunologist, a Yugoslavian emigre whose work is vital to the transplant, has taken to beating and raping his dates. Roe ( Doctors and Doctors' Wives ), meanwhile, treats us to a likable straight man (Dr. Ambrose ``Porky'' Rosen), anatomy lessons (``perfectly shaped breasts'') and even equestrian events (``she rode him like a horse''). In a ripely dramatic denouement, the hospital's board votes down the transplant, leaving de La Roche's fate very much in doubt. Unfortunately, a meritorious resolution is marred by truly weird players and frequently grisly narrative. (Aug.)