Leonard Goldberg | PLAGUE SHIP: A Story Best Told by a Doctor

Most people are surprised when a doctor writes a novel. I'm surprised that more of us do not. After all, we're pretty good storytellers, aren't we?  Just think about it for a moment. Every time a doctor sees a new patient, it is the start of a new story which we narrate. Doctors are expert at weaving a meaningful tale from a variety of symptoms, signs, and laboratory tests. If the patient presents with a very difficult diagnosis, the story becomes a mystery. If violence or suspicious death occurs, it turns into a medical thriller. Thus, doctors are in fact highly trained storytellers.

And when it comes to writing medical thrillers, no one can compete with physicians. Some non-physicians try it, but their attempts are flimsy and unconvincing because they lack authentic details. Doctors, on the other hand, know a great deal about the signs and symptoms of numerous diseases, and about the human drama that happens so often in medicine. They know a great deal about these particular areas because they've experienced them, up close and personal. My upcoming novel, Plague Ship, clearly shows how important real-life experience is when it comes to writing a believable medical thriller. PLAGUE SHIP is fiction but is based on fact. It is authentic. It is what actually would happen aboard a modern-day plague ship.

To begin with, let me tell you about the history of plague ships. In the Middle Ages, people suffering from an obviously contagious disease were placed on a ship and sent out to sea so they couldn't infect others. And they would die on these boats, which were appropriately called plague ships. It was a form of deadly quarantine. This couldn't happen today, you're thinking. Right? Wrong! Given the appropriate circumstances, it most certainly could. Let me set the stage for you. A luxury liner, the Grand Atlantic, is on a Caribbean cruise when a sick goose infected with the bird flu virus crashes onto its deck at night. It's found by a young boy who loves animals and dreams of becoming a veterinarian. He takes the sick bird below deck to a secluded area and attempts to nurse the coughing bird back to health. The bird continually coughs up droplets that are heavily laden with the deadly virus. These infectious droplets fill the air and are sucked into the ship's ventilation system. Thus, the stage is set for a massive, deadly outbreak of bird flu.

Well, the reader thinks, anyone could write the story given those circumstances. Perhaps. But would it be authentic? I think not. With a writer who has no background in medicine, errors would quickly show up in the story and knowledgeable readers would shake their heads in disbelief. Allow me to give you a few examples.

1) A knowledgeable reader would know that the current bird flu virus is not highly contagious, and has poor person-to-person transmissibility. So how could it spread like wildfire on the ship? The writer would have to have the expertise to explain how the virus could mutate so that it becomes highly contagious, and easily passed from one person to the next. Otherwise, the story is unbelievable.

2) The writer would have to know that influenza pneumonia is unlike any other in its pathophysiological effects. The patient not only coughs but can't stop coughing and gradually turns intensely cyanotic. The purple-blue color of their face is so deep, one cannot tell the race of the patient. An experienced doctor could describe this in frightening detail. An amateur could not.

3) Then there is the dilemma of being only one of two doctors on the ship and having to care for hundreds of deathly ill passengers, with limited supplies and no anti-viral agents capable of combating the virus. These patients are so sick that they belong in an ICU. And since supplies for supportive measures, i.e., oxygen and IV set-ups, are so limited, how does one determine who receives treatment and who does not? Do you simply let some patients die, in particular those with serious underlying disease who have no chance to survive? A nonprofessional would have no idea how to deal with this dilemma, but an experienced doctor would.

4) A what about the nightmare of a quarantine? Since the ship has hundreds of people dying with a dreadful, highly contagious virus, the ship would be placed under quarantine and not allowed to dock anywhere. Passengers would panic and be tempted to launch a mutiny. They would do everything possible to get ashore, even at the risk of starting a world-wide epidemic. Not many doctors have been involved in a deadly quarantine, but those who have will know how to describe it in terrifying detail.

These are but a few examples of why doctors are unsurpassed when it comes to medical thrillers. Simply put, they know the territory. For a medical thriller to be taken seriously, it has to ring out authenticity and believability. Only then will the reader feel as if they are really there and involved and part of the drama. That is why PLAGUE SHIP is a story best told by a doctor.

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