CHASING RABBITS

A medical student is assigned to a life-altering clerkship in pediatric oncology in Del Toro’s novel.

In 1995, Rudy Dell, a fourth-year medical student at the top of his class, is looking forward to a cushy clerkship at an outpatient dermatology clinic. He’s suddenly reassigned to a pediatric oncology department, however, likely because he’s paired with his best friend, Mike Davenport, the son of a billionaire in the medical insurance business roundly hated by doctors everywhere. Rudy is quickly thrust into an emotionally charged environment—all about him are children struggling to survive, flanked by their agonized parents. He befriends Maria, a 9-year-old girl in the final throes of leukemia who has no family and is a ward of the state; sadly, she seems destined to die alone. Rudy has always been a competitive student, one who routinely sees his professional commitments in careerist terms, but now he’s profoundly confronted by the obligations of his chosen vocation. “Up to this moment, everything had been a challenge. He had learned to see patients as tests of his abilities. Rudy saw them not as people, but as problems to be solved, unconsciously rationalizing away the human factor, the empathy.” The author sensitively depicts Rudy’s gathering misgivings about his choice to become a doctor and his first confrontation with genuine self-doubt. The most memorable aspect of this poignant novel, though, is the characterization of children like Maria, facing death with almost preternatural courage, often more worried about their parents than their own fate. This presentation of childhood—“innocent to the world and in the presence of magic”—is as insightful as it is heartbreaking. Occasionally, Del Toro’s writing approaches sentimental clumsiness, but he always pulls back with an admirable authorial restraint. This is a sad but hopeful book, one that impressively captures the complexity of children’s lives.

A haunting tale that is both despairing and inspiriting.