What the Monitor Can't See

Every screen on the wall says fine. Tess Alvarado has worked nights in the intensive care unit at Halloran Memorial for nineteen years. She can read a monitor at a glance, and she knows the numbers can look perfect while the person in the bed is thirsty, frightened, or trying to say something without a voice. At home, her father waits by the window for a train, and Kathy from next door sits up with him so Tess can go to work. Over a few weeks of night shifts, the things no alarm announces begin to add up, until Tess crosses to the other side of the bed rail, where someone she loves is the patient and she has to sit in the chair herself. Written by two nurses, Nora Vega and Daniel LaRusso, What the Monitor Can't See is a hospital novel about watching the person, not the screen. For nurses, caregivers, families of ICU patients, and readers who love medical fiction with real medicine inside.