In my novel, "The Phoenix Prescription", Tim Voight is a training surgeon confronted by a severly burned trauma victim, Danny Ferrone, and the man's fiancee who is in a coma. Isolated by the Blizzard of 1978, Voight must make crucial medical decisions on his own. He's opposed by a powerful father figure and his own guilt about his brain-damaged sister. Enter the burn victim's brother, Tony, a Vietnam Vet who has seen his share of horror and who, in fact, is haunted by his own actions years earlier with a terribly wounded buddy. He's wracked with guilt about his war secret. Tony confronts his brother's overwhelming critical condition with ambivalence and a polar difference in attitude about his brother's aggressive ICU care.

What would you do in this circumstance? Uncertainty rides the emotional waves of complicated modern ICU care, luring you into believing that cure is possible when everything around you says differently. You see a loved on suffering, just as Tony watched his brother deteriorate, even after a major operation. How would any of us react in the face of this degree of suffering under the scrutiny of our jugmental gods? In our complex world of dangerous automobile travel, of aging baby boomers, and of new and strange diseases this dilemma surrounding end-of-life care will almost certainly confront us.