A Word on Words; 2438; R. Darryl Fisher

a word and words are programmed delving into the world of books and their authors this week dr darrow this year talks about the broker your host for a word and words mr john chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center vanderbilt university hello i'm john single european formal review of this week will once again the world towards a mystery a medical mystery that's what were intimate with their o fish a doctor their official welcome to were words it's good idea back here in the nashville out where you were at vanderbilt and them and you've gone on to distinguish their career and in medicine and now you've launched a distinguished career in history riding the brokers the book and the and the broker is a is a is a title that fits the plot of her ear we're talking about

here is a brokerage of organs in this case the human heart day is the focal point of of the story and a heroine percent dr cassie baldwin where does she come from is she somebody new ones or is she a composite of several women in the medical profession i think every author draws a boy's experiences chinese philosopher once said that the novel is made up for better or worse a man's experiences and sure she eats every a nursery a woman doctor i've ever met i noted early on that she smokes and i thought how could dr darrow fisher do that to heroin but she does not she makes it and tries to quiet she's not perfect not perfect

that's exactly right she's not perfect but i must say she is courageous and she's tough minded and she backs into the worst catastrophe a medical doctor i suppose good ever going back into and that is there was a patient on a table did she knows marcus is did george marcus is somebody that she is examined her old staffers taller while son is gone no lights they are dead dead dead and three hours later not that he endured marquez arouses in the morgue of the dallas memorial hospital for three hours after cassie have pronounced him dead presumably a heart attack and that's the opening of the broker that is the opening of the program that's exactly right now the other heroes and in the lungs and

you have several the lungs and in this piece in and it keeps us guessing all the way through and i'm not gon cheryl lowry into a real villainous on this program letterman read the book or haven't bought but one carat golf say you were and it is the ultimate culprit is his man and talk some of the mystery figure yes very hispanic of mysterious origins are successful business entrepreneur are multi multi millionaire multimillionaire you can have anything or perhaps anyone a lot during the show tonight was with george marcus one when george church hit the floor or try collapsed he brought into the hospital follow the ambulance in islam into the hospital on that memorial day weekend the bass when testing

when tested clarendon because that in and of itself is of something that happened before i mean i can remember new stories about the people being declared dead and then coming back not many of them but it's but this was a rarity it's a unique experience was there one example that the i learned later included in the in the plot actually happen they get really when i was a resident with the johns hopkins hospital many years ago i was so called summum to operate on a year elderly woman who'd been in the x ray department all afternoon and when they read about you the only mistake and made in and was not just a kick ass he made in the book but the mistake i made at the time was that this woman had had multiple transfusions and

her body had become quite cold just as somebody who had the earth fallen into an icy river or into a snow bank or some of the some of the other skiers have the body gets very cold and life science stop and that's what happened maybe it with this woman i pronounced revered erroneous lakes unfortunately she revived they're not in the morgue but before she left the operating room we were able to at a resume our efforts and then she left the hospital weeks later and lived in an eventful on the islands forty five is a journalist and wrote news stories wrote editorials and i have found in writing about journalism that it is very very difficult to write about the news story and then include the new story and to be sure it and there are two articles from the dallas newspaper very

early on one telling story george mark is that and the second one which mentioned stomach for the first time in our play of those news stories read like news stories i get alexander read novels were news stories sounded like none in stores where they're going to get hit by an absolutely tell me about that pleased to hear you can hear a couple that are coming from you know a newspaper person i am i wrote these articles aim is is you see in the book are blocked as a i'm a newspaper article and i took a good journalism friend of mine who had a degree in tourism has an experience when newspaper writer said is this okay and he had he had a ticket for me and help me out with that with those two clips that we include well i'm in a bubble right on the money one of them on course announcers that mark is growth in the dead and they are in the morgue and the other

reports that this distinguished physician someone who had initially known as a muslim the heart surgeon and an expert in your field who had some very personal reasons going to work in the emergency room a dallas metro hospital but possible that she had been suspended and our career is at that point apparently shattered she's kicked out over john pike dr simmons no by play in their train walter simmons in and cassie baldwin and he tells a year you're out she says uk do this to me as a driver like whalen yes and says he would drop and i covered it up as you said cass he's not perfect that happen that that happened in real life until it

happens i don't think so it hasn't happened a lot as you try to make it a huge leap i think the author has to guard against making the hair one supporter he wrote is so perfect he's unbelievable we're unsympathetic similarly like the villain he can portray a villain so desperately that he would you just turn off that really nobody can be valuable either has some redeeming feature and sharply like cassie baldwin she has are flaws she has a record but she has a strong points to she has a dog named charlie if she has a son named alex who has some emotional problems stutters here's an excerpt of her ex husband's car loans junior

is political figures and in texas politics wants to be governor and that saw a subplot in lyons in lyon's the story i think because of the scots not a very nice person not at all a producer is that typical from a sleazy politician did but with a little style as any politician was talent that i think that describes it very well and the image of a good father takes his sun six flags over taxes for his birthday is critical of cassava goes she works too much is not very good in supporting or she had made the mistake of saying she will be self supporting his job or less less less talk about the clinic to a

group wants to see and as you say it has the money to get almost anything you want but money really gave their and so he goes about getting her through her son alex this and that and then the answers in the mexico us talk about the mexican smugglers story art i first met you i honestly i know you from oklahoma i said my god she writes a well about taxes about balance about the city of dallas and so at any any message aquino idea what mexico to lie about a witch or exposure to those places and i've had people sit in the chair where you know sitting room will say and some pretty famous office of sat there and said well i've never been there i made up and an untimely i read novels sun which alters describe cities new york los angeles the city miss

describe the way the city is laid out but my sense of it is that you're pretty accurately or depictions of dallas and mexico talk about how that is for an author to write about a place where there may be some familiarity but you have the marshes of more into it like it's absolutely accurate was picked up that dallas is the major city in the united states senate nawal because that's close to home and every year oklahoma plays texas and all they owe you supporters know the cardinal focus on a fairly good fairly comfortable with dallas and knowing the city you have the feel of it i've never been to mexico city as you describe in the book the the book begins in dallas and it then goes into mexico city and as i was writing the book i got to the mexico city part in my mind if we

stopped suddenly i couldn't write anymore i didn't i couldn't make it up and i had to go to mexico city and spent a few days down they're getting that but the sense of a place that mo police people the year the overpowering small and that was the first impression i got on the airplane getting off the airplane just it just never seen anything like it anywhere else in the world and that's not describe that is kasey first impression when she gets off the airplane that they the smallness solves your nose is a sort of testing so that i dont know how but an author can write about a city or a meal he how can you describe a meal that early and having your book if you haven't eaten a meal this yeah i mean the very tough draw up eating as cargo is you know there's snails but about having been to mexico city i i i think you're in your creation of fabric the texture of the places from

the true life but to like the senate is like a bed in a mexican entrepreneur you've seen you read about it may be seen depicted in the movie that he is not a character in real life and yet there are people you read about who are very much very much like an east move and suave and vicious and powerful powerful pretty good villain values prevail and this guy you know when you get right down to it done yet a lot of play in well one of the that one of the fun things that my friends and the readers who come out and they were quite rude who is going to start moving up that we have had some hollywood interest in this a surprise that

because it's a very visual book but three the year leading candidates for a promotion i think are jimmy spirits smith is at work almost some of the year younger generation prefer antonio banderas oliver they can all do in that he's gone that there's a beginning to leave their bundling that on as well this isn't this is a this is the robert ludlum john grisham mystery and you hold us in suspense until marianne but beyond the fiction this is a story with a serious an end and sensitive problem presented the prison in iran in a mystery drama but behind that mystery

and beneath that mystery there's the rare a real possibility the increases in the fort there was a very real possibility that the organs could become the subject of brokerage could a comic we could have in this country and as he says in the informal forward there had been evidence is of indian elsewhere where were organs are not related but they're so n and as he says innocent book makes it clear if we come to a point where organs go for money we will reach we will become a society of haves and have nots and those who have one of your marines and those who have not only of them and that's not a very it's not a very good what if you know i think you're honest that you can see that to be a clear example that is india were a person who is

in need of an organ and understandably would go to a place we can get it even if he has divided but the difference in bargaining power between a peasant who is willing to sell a kidney for three thousand dollars we can stretch represents his life serving this to a wealthy person from the south emirates the arab countries years ago there were three thousand dollars is less than a day's income perhaps that conduct the inequity a believer is what we must guard against in this country and i think that's what problem brown a pause in the broker which they point out the subtext is that are the real you're the evil black mark up we hear stories occasionally read in the newspapers you see on television occasionally report that maybe it's going on what butchers sense of whether

that's whether that so i you know and there was some criticism not about selling book about parties when mickey mantle suddenly head transplant than others who've been waiting longer we're forced away but the tight how you do serious problem for our society and i think that we have that we have to understand that we have to acknowledge that the organs that are transplanted ought to be viewed as commodities they have to be vp at as commodities know that kind of runs counter to the notion that our body is so sacred and but the kidney is a commodity heart is a commodity and end those it in ankeny a situation in where a commodity become scarce we've seen throughout history the black markets can occur we see the markets in this country and well during the war and during that

petroleum prices in and i don't think they exist for the in the true sense of a black market in this country now i think the potential is there because they're fifty thousand people out there waiting for an organ and on the end of the people and they die in this country many of those cables some of those people waiting of money right and many others though in the end the broker i thought i'd set up the situation in which the i heart surgeon daughter is in need of a transport trends and take it to to dramatize what would you could falter father first for by any normal election as saccharine and but i don't think that if they exist in this country and i think there's a misunderstanding about the way that the organs are allocated in this country which creates the misperception that there is a some manipulation of this organ allocation system until think that really occurred but it's

seeking it seems that way when in it seems that way because of the way that the hair allocation system has been set up by congress a decade ago where there are regions in the region's prevailed militants or the local options rule for example or a half the lead in tennessee here the needs of tennessee that will be mecca for organs would see a presence of the existence of donors as they become available when the year donors can be used here in tennessee then they look around the country here and that's what happened in texas with a bill or fortunately for him it became available in his region and since he was very he had first priority on it and in that i think creates a lot of misunderstand what doesn't and i remember well when one only when congress got in that hole or subject as i guess a vice

president with and senator oren and chaired the senate side of that that issue when it was before before it make me one of them when you are when you're writing about this field you know so well and medicine doesn't visit were used that by taking area area condition and the purposes of the drama that's needed exaggerated and holding it out as an example doesn't bother you that that might be misunderstood it isn't all the might write the same story chair and no one moved or take a suggestion that it was beyond that that was the norm that will be ordinary the more you that some readers might think all he's writing about every doctor and

every hospital in every a listen every transplant well i'm tired i have had in fact have had doctors come up and say boy if you've written a story it's not good for my work our ears to i said look better this is just a fiction and this isn't just a story of what the story does it dramatizes the shortage of organs it tells it tells better than i can in any other way say that there is a desperate shortage of organs in this country and that's what i what i hope that the broker or how it will be interpreted that people read this book they'll read the front of peace and see maybe for the first time that there are fifty thousand people on the waiting list that there is that certain people a day die in and that they will tell their families hey you know being an organ donor might not be such bad ideas and you know beyond that it is true that

while i mean there it is true that there are doctors with drug not all problems and they're the exception not the rule but heaven walter simmons in the air makes a point having a doctor like to see a heroine he smokes makes another multiple emmy every doctor is not able to kill the league ballpark for humans it's exactly like well let's go back in for just a moment to so how you wind this plot down a mania about hair well a little more than halfway through you give us day a day a rather attractive cop a lieutenant and then with a phd in the main cabin is not europe where ordinary i'm five foot i mean he is a first class or fisa but for now the first class human being and i thought from the outset

noland more and more aware she had been married to that maybe something would work out and you know maybe maybe they're like a tail at the end what was going to happen when he was going to cook more shrimp former he said he was going to but it's a story that after putting her through something close to hell have a happy ending not into start this book or the audio i had been in serious awad i didn't want to leave i don't wanna leave a bitter taste in the readers mouth the one that wanted the reader to have a suspenseful read and then at the end and i remember the characters so want to see those characters again somewhere and i hope that one of these days you'll see kasey baldwin and allen a signal i wouldn't be surprised by your gut or i don't know that the present time i'm working on another novel it's called that deadly vector that takes one of the minor characters in here that you have mentioned dr betty freeman

already i gather is a big big palin focused and very helpful because and i expanded expand her role in this novel i'm working on right now too if anything give her involvement in a hit international plot involving domestic terrorism in this country do you find time to write it you know and it obviously a year bureau practice most concern like we're a busy doctors aren't <unk> know the biz and they're both as you know the waiting to how you find like well that's a lot easier than a federal fleet off the top what's your revenues are all right in the mornings earlier sourdough it through from really a really going strong i get up at five and how a how long as they were i'm good for about six hours are you know until about the late morning and then i have to start doing some of the sort of non creative things

as unifil four percent does that hurt does that writer's block ever hit you and it just won't roll when it won't move when the story won't tale the uk get the sense is to work the way you want to allege lula what you do i raise that i try like jack london is one of my idols sleep he wrote fifteen hundred words every day and our product the right fifteen hundred words every day knowing that they're not is not really good word sometimes and can you do it every day most everyday life i'll get fifteen hundred words and i'm already written about seven hundred fifty today and you have this and what and how long would take his next book the forts out but i hope to see it out next spring maybe next summer takes it takes about a year maybe a year in and then we're right then revised barbero fisher author of the broker has been our guest

on a word on where us grossed as ben johnson involved chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university this program was produced in the studios of wbez in nashua