Coma (1978)

Dr. Susan Wheeler is one of the bright surgical residents at Boston Memorial Hospital. She
spends most of her time working in the hospital and lives in an apartment with her boyfriend, Dr.
Mark Bellows. Dr. Mark Bellows also works in the same hospital as Susan. Mark is more
interested in hospital politics and aspires to become the Chief Resident at Boston Memorial
Hospital. On the other hand, Susan shows no interest in his talks related to hospital politics. At
home, they argue about small things like who will use the bathroom first and who will heat the
food.

On the other day, they plan for lunch together while Susan has to go to her class. She takes dance
classes for an hour and she enjoys them a lot, she says that it’s the only time when she can spend
time away from the hospital.

In the next scene, we can see Susan and her best friend, Nancy Greenly talking over random
topics. Nancy Greenly is pregnant and she does not want the baby. Therefore, she decides to do
an abortion without letting her husband know about it. For this purpose, she has to go through a
minor surgical procedure that was scheduled for the next day. Nancy is seen to be a little worried
about the surgery but Susan calms her and explains that it is a minor procedure and she will be
okay.

Doctors prepare the surgical room for Nancy’s surgery and then she is brought into the room.
She is still conscious so she is given a dose of anesthesia and then she goes unconscious. They
start the surgical procedure. Everything is going well but suddenly her blood pressure begins to
fall, the anesthesiologist becomes worried as he finds nothing wrong but still, the pressure goes
down, then slowly her pressure normalizes by itself. All of them calm down and complete the
surgery. Tragically, after the completion of the surgery, she does not wake up. The doctors
declare her to be brain-dead.

Marks finds out that Nancy is in a coma so he informs Susan about it. Susan is shocked to hear
that and she rushes to see Nancy. She is not able to accept the fact that a normal healthy person
who is prescribed for a minor surgical procedure after all the necessary tests and following the
required protocol returns brain dead from the operation room. She goes through her medical
charts and finds everything to be alright. However, she wants to investigate further. She wants to
know how and why that happened.

Consequently, she goes to the laboratory of the hospital which conducted Nancy’s test. She
wants to know who prescribed the test but she does not get desired information. So, she heads to
the computerized data department and asks for a record of people who went into a coma during
surgery. Surprisingly, she finds out that ten people who were healthy and going through minor
surgical procedures ended up in comas and never woke up again. This shocking truth motivates
her to do further investigation on the case.

She gets to know that Nancy died and she is taken for postmortem. So, she goes to the hospital
morgue where Nancy is being examined postmortem. Susan questions the pathologists about
possible techniques to intentionally put someone into a coma without leaving any signs. One of
the pathologists suggests that carbon monoxide poisoning can be the best way to do so. He
further adds that these techniques will leave no signs that can prove the patient is intentionally
put into a coma. When Susan connects the dots, all such cases take place in O.R. 8 and leave no
signs. She suspects that patients must be poisoned with carbon monoxide to put them into a
coma.

Meanwhile, nearly everyone in the hospital is against her investigation. Her boyfriend also tries
to persuade her to stop thinking about it all, he believes that everything is merely a coincidence.
He says that such risks are always there when anybody goes through a surgical procedure and
Nancy is one such rare case. Dr. Harris, the chief of surgery, personally calls Susan and tries to
persuade and warn her to stop the investigation. She is warned because she takes the past year's
coma patients’ data which is against the privacy rules of the hospital. He takes the data from her
and asks her to stop thinking about it all and focus on her job otherwise he might lose her job.

Regardless of the warning from Dr. Harris, Susan does not sit quietly, she goes to meet Dr.
George, who is the chief of anesthesiology. She wants to check the record of those ten healthy
patients who went into a coma last year. Dr. George finds this insulting and hence he offended
Susan. Mark explains to Susan that Dr. George is a rather powerful person and it might be
dangerous to upset him or go against him. She is again approached by Dr. Harris to talk on the
same matter. This time he offers Susan to take the weekend off and also consult with a
psychiatrist as a condition for her to let her continue the job. He is sympathetic and hence offers
her a weekend off to cope with the grief of Nancy’s death.

Mark and Susan plan their weekend for a lot of enjoyment. They go to different places to relax
and have fun. During this time, Susan urges Mark to go to Jefferson Institute when she sees a
highway sign for Jefferson institute. The place seems to be quiet and lonely. Susan walks into the
building as Mark waits in the car. Susan meets a nurse who says that a tour for physicians inside
the Jefferson institute is scheduled on Tuesday at 11 o’clock and before that. Susan insists on
taking a visit when she is already there but the nurse doesn’t allow her.

Kelly, a hospital maintenance worker, gives a tip to Susan that whatever she is suspecting is true.
He secretly gives the tip to Susan and asks her to meet him that night in the maintenance room.
But unfortunately, an unidentified man electrocutes Kelly and he dies on the spot. According to
his claims, Susan investigates the hospital basement and discovers a tank with a line going
through the ventilation system from it to OR #8. Now, Susan becomes the target of the killer
Kelly. He tries to attack her at the hospital one late night when she secretly goes to Dr. George’s
room to check the medical charts of the Coma patients. Susan manages to escape after a brief
struggle and captures him in the cadaver cooler in the anatomy department. In spite of all the
difficulties, she is successful in escaping and goes to Mark.

She is very much nervous, scared, and worried. She begins to tell Mark everything that happened
to her. She explains how she finds the tunnel and the gas line which supplies carbon monoxide
gas along with oxygen. Mark just listens to her and tries to calm her down. He makes her lie on
the bed and goes to prepare tea for her. He says that they will talk over tea. However, because of
Mark's suspicious behavior, Susan is not able to trust Mark. She silently runs away from there.
The following morning, she wakes up in a hotel room. Then she suddenly remembers that she
needs to go to Jefferson Institute for the tour that the nurse told her about. She rushes for it and
manages to reach it on time.

Susan takes the tour of what appears to be a cutting-edge, low-cost hospital for caring for
patients who are in comas. She adjourns the tour to secretly explore the forbidden territory
around the Jefferson institute. For some time, she manages to walk around the institute despite
the strict security, CCTV cameras are installed everywhere in the hospital but the security
personnel are distracted for a while and do not notice Susan walking around. In the meantime,
Susan learns that the institute is only a cover for a global criminal market for human organs.
Organs from patients are offered for sale to the highest bidder. She finds surgeons operating on
coma patients to take out their organ and sell it to the highest bidder. She hears nurses and others
talking and they address the name of Dr. George quite a few times.

Unfortunately, the security personnel noticed her presence in the institute through CCTV
surveillance. After that, they make it nearly impossible for Dr. Susan to escape from the institute.
Despite the tight security, Dr. Wheeler is clever enough to escape from the eyes of security
personnel by climbing on the roof of the ambulance which is there to collect human organs for
transplant. After her visit to the Institute, she is very sure that Boston memorial hospital
purposely induces in selected patients whose organs match the requirement of potential buyers.
She reaches the conclusion that carbon monoxide is poured from a secret tank in the basement to
the anesthesia machinery in operating room #8, rendering the patient brain-dead. A radio signal
controls the line.

Susan runs to Dr. Harris to tell him what she has learned since she thinks Dr. George is the
mastermind behind this scam. She explains everything that she knows to Dr. Harris. He
expresses his sorrow to know whatever is going on in the hospital and then he offers scotch to
Susan. While drinking scotch she notices all the certificates that Dr. Harris has in his room, all of
the certificates address him as Dr. George A. Harris. This makes her realize that she has come to
the wrong person. She finds out that Dr. Harris is the one behind whatever is going on in O.R. 8.
However, the moment she realizes the truth, it turns out that he has slipped a drug into her drink
that gives her the symptoms of appendicitis. She experiences acute pain, Dr. Harris makes sure
that all of the symptoms appear to be very extreme and he decides to operate on her.

In the following scene, Mark comes to meet Susan. She tries to tell Mark that she does not need
the surgery but Mark does not believe her. Mark also says that she has symptoms of appendicitis.
But when a staff informs Dr. Harris that O.R. 7 is prepared for the surgery, Dr. Harris continually
insists the staff prepare O.R. 8 for the surgery. This arouses Mark’s suspicion and whatever
Susan told him earlier flashes in his mind. He rushes to the maintenance in the basement and
locates the gas line from the basement to O.R. 8. Meanwhile, surgery is progressing in the
operation room. Mark destroys the gas line that supplies carbon monoxide and then the surgery
completes. Now, he asks the anesthesiologists to bring her back.

As a massive shock for Dr. Harris, Susan wakes to be fine and normal. Finally, at the end of the
movie, we can see that Dr. Harris realizes that now he cannot escape and the lights go off as an
indication of the downfall of him and his crime.