Health and Happiness

Ivy Tarro, a young, single mother, awakens one day with an oddly swollen arm — a minor problem that should have her home from the hospital by dinnertime. Instead, she finds herself detained, and hospitalized — her life mysteriously at risk. A near fatal misdiagnosis, over-medication, and neglect leave Ivy a victim of modem medicine.A swirl of galvanized doctors surround her — interns, specialists, virtuosos, incompetents, prima donnas, saints, the head nurse who knows her patients’ vital signs and her colleague’s love affairs — and the brilliant doctor who falls dangerously in love with her. As these lives intermingle, Ivys potentially fatal condition sends shock waves through the hospital community, stirring up currents of fear, courage, ambition, rivalry, doctor hate, and doctor love.

Health and Happiness captures the endless moral dilemmas and life-and-death decisions that are the foundation of hospital life, portraying the continuous dashes of motive and sensibility that create the ongoing comedy of medical manners.