“Do Not Resuscitate” by Scott Eveloff, MD

Do Not Resuscitate

Scott Eveloff, MD
Black Rose Writing (2025)
ISBN: 978-1685136635
Reviewed by Terri Stepek for Reader Views (07/2025)

Authors, especially aspiring authors, are so often told to write what they know. Well, I’ve got to tell you, I think Scott Eveloff has truly taken that to heart. A physician for decades, Dr. Eveloff has given us a book about which nightmares are made with Do Not Resuscitate: Hospital Evil… Where No One Can Hear You Scream. This is 100% NOT the book you want to read while you’re in the hospital.

This creatively chilling horror novel centers around a new medical intern, Dr. Harry Lindmark. He’s so brand new, he probably still has a tag somewhere on his brilliant white lab coat. As a first-year intern still getting used to being called “Doctor,” he’s delicately feeling his way around the medical and political forum that is the teaching hospital he’s been assigned to.

Harry’s a likable kind of guy. As an intern, he’s sort of middle-of-the-pack; he’s not the best and the brightest, but he’s also not the slowest guy on the team. He does okay, considering he is shiny-new. But Harry’s got more problems than just the long hours he’s working as an intern. He’s got a wife at home who desperately needs and wants him. They recently lost their son at birth, and she’s having to go through the grieving process alone while Harry works the outrageous hours of a medical intern.

Harry, with his workload, hasn’t even begun the grief process, which only adds to the difficulty between him and his wife, Connie. Right now, he’s not sure if he’s better off at the busy hospital running himself ragged, or at home with his desperate wife, who bugs him about the number of hours he’s gone. We get it— his wife needs him, and he needs to be there with her. But he’s in kind of an impossible situation. It’s easy to see both sides of this conflict.

There are several fascinating characters in Do Not Resuscitate. One of them is Dr. Bethany, a third-year resident and kind of the Golden Boy of the hospital. He does well, and he totally leads the pack when it comes to resuscitating patients. There’s also a much older doctor who’s basically been put out to pasture for dementia. He’s over on the nursing home side of the hospital.  Everyone calls him Doc Travis, and they say he was brilliant in his day. But now he is a crazy old man who nobody listens to anymore.

The patients in the hospital provide some unique characters and amazing moments as well. Some of these moments are laugh-out-loud funny, some are heartbreaking, and some just make you shake your head at this nonsensical thing called life… or death.

But perhaps the most interesting character here is a man called Washington. He’s a guy that everyone in the hospital knows. In fact, he always seems to be around. But he’s just transportation. He’s an older gentleman who has worked there forever— no one’s even sure how long he’s been there. He’s good at his job, and everybody likes him. The interesting thing, though, is this guy who transports patients from one place to another within the hospital has an amazing knack for being around when a patient has flatlined. Strange.

As Harry tries to adjust to his routine, his home life, and all the difficulties between the two, he finds himself struggling with something he can’t sort out. He had a patient die rather horribly and ever since then, he’s been losing more and more patients under mysterious circumstances. Some of these patients have been resuscitated, most brought back to life by the esteemed Dr. Bethany. One such patient was even miraculously changed after being resuscitated by Dr. Bethany. Everyone, even the parents of this young man, is just shaking their heads in bewilderment at what’s happened here. But no one is thanking Dr. Lindmark, because he wasn’t the one who brought him back. He was the doc who was there when the young man flatlined mysteriously. Lindmark isn’t exactly raking in the politics points or the “Oh gee, you’re a great doctor!” moments. He’s really struggling, and he’s beginning to think that perhaps the Angel of Death may be out to get him by killing his patients.

I don’t know about you, but the idea of an entity in a hospital being so mad at a doctor that it would want to kill his patients scares the stuff out of me. That is not a hospital I would want to be a patient in. I don’t think I’d want to be a doctor there either, because people are dying at a rapid rate and now the hospital and especially poor Dr. Lindmarkare under scrutiny for the number of patients they’ve lost.

But there’s more going on here than Lindmark’s so-called Angel of Death. What’s really happening here is so much more heinous than a possible evil entity, and it may just blow your mind. Because, in truth, this one’s pretty plausible, folks. I love a good thriller, and I have no problem engaging my suspension of belief to enjoy a good book, but I didn’t have to suspend much on this one. The more I thought about it, the less comfortable I felt. It’s a little too close to possible for me.

My understanding is that this is Dr. Eveloff’s debut novel. After 30 years as a medical doctor and being a guest on several national shows, he decided to put pen to paper, so to speak, and his novel is the stuff of my nightmares. I am extremely impressed; fascinated by the concept he created, by the originality, the pacing, the content, and the virtual texture of this novel. It’s intriguing, frightening, and thoroughly chilling . If you’re a fan of things paranormal, of things that go bump in the night, of awesome horror stories, or plausible thrillers, run to your favorite bookseller and grab this novel. Do Not Resuscitate by Scott Eveloff, MD is waiting to shake up your nighttime reading.