May, Chapter 1: The Committee Summary and Analysis

The chapter opens with Patrick Dismuke, a fifteen year old boy who is constantly in and out of the hospital with significant health problems. He has been a patient at Hermann on and off for his entire life, spending more time in the hospital than out of it. He has Hirschsprung's disease, which affects the digestive tract, leaving Patrick unable to digest food. He is fed through a nutritive drip - a tube which feeds him the nutrients he needs to live. But the line can get infected and the infection can overwhelm his body. Thus his life is a constant struggle fighting both against starvation and against infection, and winning the battle against one weakens his chances against the other.

The chair of the committee is introduced in this chapter: Lin Weeks, a new...