Deadly Choices

What happens when medical treatment is determined by the patient's ability to pay? Alex Lowe has painful memories of Richland Memorial Hospital. Five years earlier, she watched helplessly as her mother spent her final days of life in bed three of the ICU, suffering needlessly before succumbing to the ravages of metastatic colon cancer. Now, as the newest nurse at Richland, Alex finds herself working in the same intensive care unit, determined to do what she can to banish the demons that have plagued her since her mother's death and to prevent the suffering of other terminally ill patients. Things are going according to her plan until she makes a shocking discovery about Jim Curry, the physician who cared for her mother in her final weeks of life. Curry has a track record of keeping patients alive until the all-too-bitter end, putting them through test after painful text that ultimately turn out to be useless to the dying patient. And, as Alex soon discovers, Curry isn't acting alone. She vows to do what she can to help terminally ill patients slip peacefully away instead of being subjected to painful tests and an undignified death. Because of her compassion, she quickly finds herself involved in a whirlwind of secret medical decisions and cover-ups in an intricate conspiracy that runs deeper than anyone could have imagined. Are Jim Curry and the staff at Richland simply bound by their vows as physicians to keep patients alive at all costs? Or is there something far more sinister ongoing at Richland? Can Alex Lowe do something about it before more victims are brutalized, and before she gets in any deeper?