ER Confessional
by Dr. Kyle Smith
Published by Brown Books Publishing Group
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Reviewed by Maria Elmvang
If you like “ER,” “Scrubs” or just happen to be studying medicine, this is the book for you. Through 24 anecdotes, Dr. Kyle Smith tells of his experiences while working in the beloved ER. The stories vary from the devastating and the heartbreaking to the touching and the just plain hilarious. Each anecdote is lovingly told with dry wit and humor, and then turned and viewed from a different viewpoint when Kyle uses the lessons he learn at the ER in guiding an old friend of his who suffers from a broken heart.
I’ve always enjoyed stories that take place at a hospital, and the fact that these anecdotes just happen to be true only makes them better. We’re once again shown without a shadow of a doubt that truth is indeed stranger than fiction at times, as Kyle Smith shows us how differently people react to the traumas and surprises of the emergency room. Some of his stories made me appalled at how human beings can treat each others, while others made me sit with tears in my eyes at the tragedy that sometimes, no matter what a doctor does, a person is beyond saving. Yet others made me laugh out loud at the shear madness Kyle experienced–for instance when a girl was asked if she used protection when having sex, and replied that she always had a .38 (pistol) in her bedside table!
The parallels to life outside the hospital and Kyle’s heartbroken friend were a bit heavy-handed at times, but as I got further into the book they made more and more sense. Then I could see a natural progression both in the stories and in the way he tackled having his heart broken–and attempting to move on. I still think the book would have worked just as well without that twist, but it didn’t seem as obviously tacked-upon as I’d feared in the beginning.
ER Confessional is an intriguing book with poignant tales from all aspects of life. Kyle resisted the temptation of making the characters larger than life, and the result is a collection of stories where you can identify with at least one person in every chapter.
Armchair Interviews says: Human stories that took place at the hospital’s ER