The Year of the Intern — Robin Cook

“DR. PETER'S, “THE PATIENT HWAS STOPPED BREATHING AND DOESN'T HAVE ANY PULSE!”

The nurse's voice of the phone is desperate, but young Dr. Peter's, in his first weeks of internship, is only bone-tired and a little afraid. He has forgotten when he last slept. Yet he knows that in the coming hours he will have to make life-or-death decisions regarding patients, assist contemptuous surgeons in the operating room, deal with nurse who may know more than he does, cope with worried relatives and friends of the injured and ill, and pretend at all times to be what he has not yet become … a fully qualified doctor.

This book is about what happens to a young intern as he goes through the year that promises to make him into a doctor, and threatens to destroy him as a human being…