The Inspiration For The Very Best Of Care

The Very Best of Care started as a tiny seed of a thought twenty years ago. I was working as a nurse practitioner in a forty-bed neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The 1990’s were years of higher than usual birth rates, including preterm births. Often, our forty-bed unit would swell to accommodate closer to fifty, even fifty-five babies. With each baby came a ton of equipment: ventilators, IV pumps, blood transfusion pumps, cardiac monitors, oxygen saturation monitors, to name a few pieces.

On a particularly hectic day when preemie after preemie was admitted to the unit, we had maxed out on space to put all the babies and their equipment. It had gotten to the point that the less sick babies (not on a ventilator and with only one IV instead of 4 or 5) were cribbed against a back wall that had been cleared of the linen and supply carts to make space. It was a scene out of MASH with overcrowding, chaos, noise, people rushing around, and announcements over the intercom of another baby needing help – stat!. Administration loved it when the NICU was at full capacity or even beyond. It was one of the few departments that was a money maker for the hospital and on days of a full to overflowing intensive care unit, administration didn’t have to worry about the financial spreadsheets. I turned to my colleague and said, “What are they doing? Dragging pregnant women in off the street and making them deliver?” A preposterous idea, of course nobody would actually do that, but then again ….. I knew it was very possible for mothers to be induced “a little early”, “just to be safe.” I had seen it plenty of times, planned inductions  or c-sections were moved up a day or two if a 3-day weekend was approaching and staffing was short. Get the baby out while there were plenty of doctors and nurses available during the day shift. However, to induce dangerously early for no valid medical reason – no way. 

That was the day my novel was conceived and is how the book got started – with a “what if…” And in fact, that is how many good stories begin. 

The antagonist was first to emerge as a central character. His arrogance, egotism, and general lack of compassion wasn’t difficult to create. His character emerged out of a combination of several doctors with whom I had worked over the years. I had no lack of ideas of evil acts for him to carry out.

Certainly, there are villains in the medical world where money is the bottom line. And speaking of money, big Pharma was always willing to pay to play. Big Pharma had to have a role in the story. I have a love hate relationship with them. Pharmaceuticals have saved countless lives and are instrumental in enhancing the quality and length of people’s lives. But the industry plays to our fears – you need this drug if you want to live a long healthy life.  Or even worse, it plays to the fears of parents – do you want to do the best for your child? They need this medication. When this is done with malintent – it’s a very low blow.

I thought the human side of the story was what was going to appeal most to readers, especially if /because I was writing to a female audience. A mother child relationship – nothing goes deeper. I needed to make Sophie, the protagonist, evolve. Over the course of the story, she transforms from a naïve, trusting female patient, [almost] at the mercy of the world of male physicians, to a fighter and fierce protector of her child.

Towards the end of the book, in which a futuristic intensive care nursery is showcased, I was able to pay tribute to my favorite medical thriller author, Robin Cook. Anyone who is old enough to have read “Coma,” will recognize the scene.

My years in intensive care were filled with high adrenaline and great intensity, the driving forces in my work as a nurse practitioner. So too with the friendships formed on the NICU battlefield where we all worked together, for the same goal – to save babies’ lives. There were so many experiences, and so many people and circumstances to draw upon for material for a book.

The purpose of writing this book, beyond entertaining the reader with tales of an intensive care nursery, was to honor the lives of thousands of premature infants and their families. I wanted people to see the fragility of premature babies and what parents endure through a three or four-month (or even longer) hospitalization of their child, with daily ups and downs, some days on the edge of life and death, and never knowing what the final outcome will be. I wanted to portray the tenacity and strength of a mother’s love for her child.  And I wanted to leave the impression that hope never dies.  
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THE VERY BEST OF CARE

For fans of medical dramas like Grey’s Anatomy and thriller authors like Robin Cook, a debut novel about one woman’s attempt to fight back against the dark underbelly of medical malpractice in the NICU in order to save her premature babies’ life.

New York, 2012. A young mother stumbles on a disturbing secret: the health system is so broken that the lives of newborns and the unborn are no longer safe.

Three and a half months before her due date, Sophie Young is forced to deliver her tiny two-pound son—a baby boy barely old enough to survive. Caught in the labyrinth of hospital secrecy, Sophie meets the dark side of modern medicine: corruption, exploitation, and profiteering. When she discovers that a prominent physician has joined forces with Big Pharma to exploit pregnant women and their babies, she races to bring the guilty to justice and save her son before it’s too late.

In the end, Sophie has one message for her enemy: It’s a law of nature—never come between a mother and her child.

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Julie Hatch is a master’s prepared pediatric nurse practitioner with a passion for kids’ health and welfare. She spent over thirty years working in pediatric and neonatal intensive care. Ten years ago, she left Western medicine to earn a master’s degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine and open her own acupuncture practice. At the same time, she began writing medical fiction, drawing on her experiences from the front lines of intensive care. This is her debut novel. Julie lives with her husband on the south coast of Massachusetts.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing