Coma

Partial SPOILER, as it’s now clear that Boston surgical resident Susan Wheeler has uncovered a conspiracy involving patients being put into comas, and she’s joined a tour (Betty McGuire the guide) at the facility where they’ve developed a cheap way to store patients, in one of the most remarked-upon scenes in director Michael Crichton’s medical thriller, Coma, 1978.

Opening in Boston, Genevieve Bujold is surgical resident Susan Wheeler, Harvard-trained MD turned novelist Michael Crichton in his third film as a director, shooting exteriors at Boston City Hospital where he did clinical rotations, and we learn Michael Douglas as Dr. Bellows is also her love interest, in the hit medical thriller Coma, 1978.

Michael Douglas as incoming chief-resident Dr. Bellows has sent for his colleague and live-in girlfriend (Genevieve Bujold as Dr. Wheeler) after he recognized her close friend (Lois Chiles as Nancy Greenly), now being treated for a coma following a routine abortion procedure, with some feminist overtones, in Coma. 1978.

Still remarkable scene, even moreso in 1978, where Lois Chiles is the unconscious patient getting a therapeutic abortion, but the lead actors are real doctors, Tom Borut the anesthesiologist, Philip G. Brooks the surgeon, recruited by the MD and novelist Michael Crichton, directing his third film, based on a novel by his doctor friend Robin Cook, from Coma, 1978.

Maybe they had to cast Tom Selleck for sheer handsomeness, as a knee-surgery patient, when Genevieve Bujold as resident Dr. Wheeler is summoned to meet chief surgeon Harris (Richard Widmark, his first scene), after getting caught accessing confidential records, after her friend went into a coma during a routine procedure, in Coma, 1978.

A doctor (Genevieve Bujold) investigates a series of strange deaths and disappearing bodies at her hospital in Coma (1978).