At the beginning of the movie Coma, Dr. Susan Wheeler (Geneviève Bujold) arrives at Boston Memorial Hospital where she and other doctors talk medicalese all day, which impresses us because we don’t understand it.  She and another doctor at the hospital, Mark Bellows (Michael Douglas), finally finish their day and arrive at his apartment where they live together.

It doesn’t take long for them to start squabbling about who gets to take a shower first, who fixes dinner, and who brings whom a beer.  Susan becomes fed up and leaves. She leaves him on a regular basis, but then she always goes back to him. She is able to do this because she never gave up her apartment. Later in the movie, we hear Susan telling a psychiatrist, “Mark’s whining about how I can’t make a commitment, and I’m cold, and I’m afraid of intimacy.”

Mark tells her she doesn’t want a lover; she wants a wife.  Of course, it’s also true that he wants a wife. And since, as long as they remain a couple, they can’t both have a wife, it would be best if they split up. We wish they would. We know they won’t.

Susan’s best friend Nancy needs an abortion.  It is referred to as a therapeutic abortion, presumably because if Nancy’s husband found out she was pregnant, it would be bad for her health.  We are not told how her husband would know that the baby is not his, but several possibilities are available:  military deployment has kept him away from home for the past six months; he had a vasectomy five years ago; Nancy has been having an affair with a man of a distinctly different ethnicity.

Whatever the reason, the doctor performing the abortion seems to know all about it, commenting on her situation to others in the operating room, saying that she is in “a hell of a mess,” but that what she has done is none of his business.  “I’m just her surgeon.  I don’t run her life.”  Because he feels the need to justify doing this abortion, he seems to regard the procedure as morally dubious.  Moreover, in the very act of congratulating himself for not being judgmental, he is implying that she has done something shameful.  His attitude appears to be that of the movie itself, that she is guilty of committing one sin in order to cover up another.

In that case, movie karma says that she should be punished.  And so, she is. During the procedure, she goes into a coma and never recovers. When another young patient has a minor operation and goes into a coma too, Susan becomes suspicious.  When she decides to investigate to see how many young, otherwise healthy patients have inexplicably gone into a coma during surgery, she is thwarted by Dr. George, Chief of Anesthesiology.  He won’t let her look as the files. Worse yet, Dr. George is played by Rip Torn, who often plays unsavory characters.

Susan finally gets a sneak peek at the files, and she discovers that all the patients have something in common:  Operating Room 8.  Further investigation on her part reveals that a device allows certain patients being operated on in that room to be fed carbon monoxide instead of oxygen.  Then their bodies are sent to the Jefferson Institute where their organs can be auctioned off to the highest bidder. It is while she is snooping around there that she overhears a conversation indicating that “George” is behind it all.

Because Susan’s investigation may jeopardize all the money that the Jefferson Institute is raking in, an assassin is assigned to her case. He chases her into the amphitheater and then into a room where she sprays him with a fire extinguisher. At that point, he pulls out his pistol and chases her into a room full of cadavers, which is kept really cold so that they don’t rot.  While he is trying to find her in that room, she pushes a bunch of cadavers onto him and runs out of the room, locking it behind her.

The lock is a barrel slide bolt.  Such a lock does not prevent anyone from entering the cadaver room, but it does keep the cadavers from getting out.  Well, you never know.  What if Herbert West is a doctor at this hospital?  In any event, the assassin is locked in with the cadavers.

At this point, the most natural thing in the world is for her to call the police and tell them a man just tried to kill her, and that she has him locked in the cadaver room. Instead, we next see her in Mark’s apartment, crying hysterically about Operating Room 8, while he strokes her hair in a patronizing way, telling her she needs a Valium.

I suppose we should have known it would turn out like this when the movie condemned Nancy for trying to conceal an adulterous affair by having an abortion.  The movie is faux feminist.  It starts out by letting us think of Susan as being intelligent and resourceful, and indeed she is.  But then the movie does this!

Can you imagine the roles being reversed?  That is to say, imagine it was Mark who began to suspect something strange going on with these comas.  And then, after almost being killed by the assassin, whom he locked up in the cadaver room, he fails to call the police and instead runs to Susan, sobbing and blubbering, while Susan strokes his hair and humors him as if he were a child.

But that’s just it.  This movie plays into sexual stereotypes so vividly that their roles cannot be reversed.  Susan may be a doctor and able to hold her own in that profession, but she is still a woman, and Mark is still a man.  So, according to this movie, that means she is weak, and he is strong.

Anyway, while she is resting, she hears Mark talking suspiciously to someone on the phone.  Perhaps Mark is in cahoots with Dr. George? She sneaks out of the apartment.

You might think that having had a chance to regain her composure, she would now go to the police and tell them that a man tried to kill her, and that he is locked in the cadaver room. Instead, she goes to see Dr. Harris (Richard Widmark), Chief of Surgery, and tells him all she knows.  Like Rip Torn, however, Richard Widmark is also known for playing unsavory characters.  And it turns out that Dr. Harris’s first name is “George.”  He slips her a drug that not only makes her drowsy, but also causes her to have symptoms of appendicitis.  He gets her prepped for immediate surgery.  Of course, there haven’t been any lab tests, and she hasn’t signed all the necessary forms agreeing to have an appendectomy, but no one is willing to question Dr. Harris.

However, Mark hears Dr. Harris insisting on using Operating Room 8, reminding him of Susan’s theory.  He manages to stop the carbon monoxide from being fed into her breathing apparatus in the nick of time, thereby becoming the hero of the story. Then, because Mark is a man, he knows to call the police.  Dr. Harris sees the two policemen waiting for him outside Operating Room 8, and he realizes he is going to be arrested.  As for that guy who is locked up in the cadaver room, he probably froze to death by now.

Given the way the way this movie subverts its superficial feminism, we may guess how things will be for Mark and Susan going forward.  She will make a commitment, quit being cold, and quit being afraid of intimacy.  She will give up her apartment and become Mark’s wife.  And that means she will be the one to fix dinner and bring him a beer.