SMALL RAIN by Garth Greenwell

Overweight but fairly healthy, our unnamed narrator in his forties is suddenly struck by excruciating pain in his abdominal area.  It’s 2020, and the hospitals are overwhelmed, so he delays going to the ER for five days.  Medical staff eventually usher him into the ICU, where most of the novel takes place.  They discover that he has a tear in his aorta, a condition that generally affects much older people with underlying health conditions.  Surgery is on the horizon if they can just figure out why this tear occurred, but in the meantime, his doctors are “carpet-bombing” him with antibiotics.  I became totally immersed in this book, as the narrator copes with a gazillion IVs stuck in his arms, painful heparin shots, and the embarrassment of having a nurse help him go to the bathroom.  I bought both this book and Greenwell’s What Belongs to You, and I was so put off by the other book that I was reluctant to tackle this one.  However, I was very pleasantly surprised, as Small Rain is obviously intended for a more mainstream audience and perhaps even open-minded book clubs.  I savored all of the time that I spent with this character and shared his horror when an inexperienced nurse allows his blood pressure to rise, threatening to make his condition worse, if not fatal.  Other than that one bad apple, I can see this as an homage to all the nurses who gave their all to save lives during COVID, including those patients with other grave illnesses.