The Hostage Physician

"The Hippocratic Oath is one of the oldest binding documents in history. Written in antiquity, its principles are held sacred by doctors to this day: treat the sick to the best of one's ability, preserve patient privacy, teach the secrets of medicine to the next generation, and so on. "The Oath of Hippocrates," holds the American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics (1996 edition), "has remained in Western civilization as an expression of ideal conduct for the physician." Today, most graduating medical-school students swear to some form of the oath, usually a modernized version. Indeed, oath-taking in recent decades has risen to near uniformity, with just 24 percent of U.S. medical schools administering the oath in 1928 to nearly 100 percent today."Orr, R. D., N. Pang, E. D. Pellegrino, and M. Siegler. 1997. "Use of the Hippocratic Oath: A Review of Twentieth Century Practice and a Content Analysis of Oaths Administered in Medical Schools in the U.S. and Canada in 1993." The Journal of Clinical Ethics 8 (Winter): 377-388. This novel is the story of a physician caught between his obligations to the Hippocratic Oath and his marital vows he swore during his wedding ceremony many years before. Dr. Fred Hawkins battles desperately to save the lives of his patient, his wife, and his own, in the midst of a furious hurricane and deadly battles between two drug cartels, in the alligator infested bayous of southern Louisiana. Get ready for a roller coaster ride.