Chris Adrian — The Children’s Hospital
Check in here—it might save your life
What if, on your way to work, it started to rain and the world flooded—everywhere except your place of employment?
From Chris Adrian, the author of Gob’s Grief, comes the eerie story of medical student Jemma Claflin, whose life has been a series of deaths. The lone survivor of a deceased family, she has the fortune—or misfortune—of being at the hospital the day the rest of the world is drowned.
Between rounds to see her patients, all children, dramas unfold. A recording angel documents each hour of Jemma’s life in the hospital (sex, drugs, the works) as she embraces her special powers and destiny on this modern ark. What begins as plausible becomes weird—the hospital transforms; a soothing, ethereal voice commandeers the P.A., and patients become less like Cabbage Patch Dolls and more like Garbage Pail Kids.
If it weren’t for the strange creatures, you could almost believe Adrian’s arresting novel to be reality. (He was a medical student, too.) Instead, you take it for what it is—a frighteningly relevant tale of the end of the world, epic within the confines of its setting.