Mercy

Heron, a nurse and author of the nonfiction bestseller Intensive Care , cobbles together a lumpy, unevenly written novel from disparate elements of New Age mysticism, creepy thrillers and standard romantic yarns. Red-haired heroine Cat Richardson is a deliberately daffy, self-confessed ``Sister of Masochism''--a nurse, that is--at San Francisco's Mercy Hospital, where she gives her superiors plenty of grief and her patients enormous support. Entrusted to her care are Corky, a suicidal adolescent, and Lucy Cross, a gifted artist viciously beaten by her boyfriend, a tormented male model. A blind newsseller named Gage who possesses ``the sight'' knows that Cat has power she isn't tapping. As her spiritual guide, Gage eggs her on toward danger and romance with the cop investigating the Cross case. (``You wear the haunted look of someone who has stared the beast in the face and survived,'' that swain observes.) There's a creative, rough-edged charm to the cheerfully obscene repartee between Cat and best friend Nora, but the heavy-handed psychological motives fueling the action owe a lot to bestsellers from the thriving recovery industry. BOMC alternate. (Mar.)