Iván de Cristóbal’s waiting room

About the book

What would you do if a baby’s life depended on an unauthorized transfusion?

Two women await their fate in their particular waiting room. When the clock strikes eleven, their lives will change forever. Mariona, a young doctor with strong convictions, anguishedly awaits the ruling of a high-profile judicial process that pits science and religion against each other, with her as the main defendant. Lucía, a middle-aged entrepreneur, disillusioned and back from almost everything, hopes to turn a mysterious job interview into her last chance to not lose everything she has.

«Iván de Cristóbal masterfully weaves this story between two women, an exciting thriller in which the murderer is time»
Risto Mejide

The religious convictions of Jehovah’s Witnesses prevent them from accepting blood transfusions during a medical procedure. «The Bible prohibits the consumption of blood. Therefore, Christians should not eat it. Nor should we accept transfusions of blood or any of its main components,” the congregation justifies on its website. This makes it impossible for this group to undergo some major surgeries, such as a transplant or oncological intervention.

In Waiting Room Mariona is a young doctor who is doing her first year of residency. One night when she is alone in the emergency room, she has to care for a 32-week pregnant woman who arrives by ambulance with severe hemorrhage. She has lost a lot of blood and the only treatment that can save her life and that of the baby is an immediate transfusion. But the patient arrives with a living will in which she refers to her religious beliefs not to receive transfusions under any circumstances; Her husband also calls to speak with the Doctor and make her wishes clear because of her firm convictions. However, Mariona cannot conceive of letting a mother and a son die. She is alone in the emergency room and decides to go ahead with her instinct, she does the transfusion, delivers and saves both their lives. The consequences are not long in coming: she is suspended from her job at the hospital and has to face a trial that can change her life and her professional career forever.

At the same time, the reader also knows Lucía’s story; a middle-aged woman, who has suffered a love scam and has lost everything. She mortgaged her apartment for a project that turned out to be a ghost and her partner has absconded with her money, leaving her on the brink of eviction, without money or hope. A strange job interview is the last chance she may have to hold on to the everyday life she knows.

Through exquisite and fast-paced prose, with irony and closeness, Iván de Cristóbal manages intrigue and empathy and takes us hand in hand with his two protagonists, so authentic and real that we will want to accompany them and we will feel all their setbacks and shocking moments as ours. script twists that await them on their path, filled with unusual situations and unique characters, until a surprising outcome.

Waiting Room combines suspense, current affairs and social reflection to reformulate the rules of the thriller until it becomes a fascinating ethical dilemma and gives us a story of improvement as addictive as it is unforgettable.

Iván de Cristóbal Miras was born in Barcelona in 1972. He currently runs an advertising agency that works with leading brands in sectors such as sports, technology and energy. An economist with a degree from the University of Barcelona and the Copenhagen Business School, Iván has also been a professor of communication at the Universidad de la Salle for ten years and has written articles on brand strategy in different media, as well as several scripts for short films fiction, some awarded at various independent festivals. Waiting Room is his first novel and he is already preparing his second.