The Children's Hospital
Hardcover edition
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| Author | Chris Adrian |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Morality/Society |
| Genre | Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction |
| Publisher | McSweeney's |
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Publication date
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August 22, 2006 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 615 |
| ISBN | |
| Followed by | The Great Night |
The Children's Hospital is the second novel by Chris Adrian, published on August 22, 2006 by McSweeney's.
The Children's Hospital is a long work, with the first edition copies running some 615 pages.[1] The novel starts in the maternity ward of a famous hospital. As a storm rages outside, third-year medical student Jemma Claflin helps deliver another complicated birth. The storm soon floods the rest of the earth beneath seven miles of water. The hospital begins to float and the survivors try to retain a semblance of normal life, combating the illness of their patients and setting up an internal government.
Jemma Claflin is a struggling third-year medical student at a children’s hospital. She is teased by the nurses and tormented by her superiors, but she is most crippled by a lack of passion for her profession. A traumatic past also haunts her daily life. Her family and loved ones died in various incidents, leaving Jemma with the belief that she must avoid loving anyone else, lest they also be killed. Jemma is particularly troubled by the loss of her brother, Calvin, who filled her early years with the supernatural and eventually took his own life. Despite her guarded emotions, Jemma enters a relationship with fellow medical student Rob Dickens.
On a particularly stormy night Jemma aides in the birth of a disfigured child, a daughter of a “King of the East” who had come to New Jersey and married. The child is named Brenda and often points at Jemma, to her discomfort. After the birth, Jemma seeks solace in a sexual liaison with Rob in the on-call room. When they emerge, the storm has submerged the entire world beneath a vast ocean, with only the hospital and its inhabitants left floating above. No one finds time to mourn the loss of the world as the condition of the hospital’s patients suddenly turns for the worse, and every adult is busy attending to them. The hospital has reconfigured its layout, and an angel begins to speak to them, asking each person to name her so that she can serve them. A man named John Grampus reveals that he is the architect of the hospital, and was contacted by the angel long ago to create the building which would serve as an ark when the Apocalypse came.
Once the patients are stable, life in the hospital returns to a relative state of normalcy. The hospital hierarchy remains intact as medical personnel and parents focus on their sole mission- to make the children well. Everything that could be needed is provided by the angel via replicators, and people may even request items which have never existed before. The daily lives of other medical students are flavored by their own personal problems. Dr. Chandra struggles with his lack of medical aptitude and deepening loneliness. Jemma’s best friend, Vivian dates constantly, while secretly obsessing with a long list of reasons leading to the end of the world. Jemma continues to go through the motions during rounds, not really helping any patient but getting to know them and the particulars of their ailments. Jemma develops notable relationships with several children including Pickie Beecher, a mentally disturbed boy who drinks blood, and Jarvis, a boy who was warned of the Apocalypse by John Grampus and stowed away in the hospital on the night of the storm.
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