Joe Nelson is a pediatrician in Eastern Kentucky and is being sued for malpractice involving the death of a four-year-old girl. The child was the niece of the wealthiest man in town, and the trial is not going well. Then it gets worse. While sitting in his car outside his lawyer's office, someone shoots at Joe. The police seem convinced that he has faked the shooting, especially since the shot was fired with his own gun. The next day in court, Joe realizes that his patient's death was not an accident or malpractice, it was murder. When one of the plaintiffs is murdered, Joe becomes the prime suspect. He must use all of his medical knowledge and deductive reasoning to solve the crime-and save his own life.
Paul is the middle child of three boys, born and raised in New England. Though he is now a practicing Emergency Department physician, his formal education began at the Boston University College of Engineering. He worked briefly for NASA during the Apollo project where one of the engineers convinced him to apply to medical school. Paul went on to attend Boston University School of Medicine intending to pursue bio-medical research, but grew to like the practice of medicine too much to give it up.
While working at Boston City Hospital (now Boston Medical Center), Paul met his wife, Mary. She was his supervisor, but he somehow managed to get up the courage to ask her out and eventually, to marry him. That was 39 years ago. The couple spent their honeymoon year in Eastern Kentucky, Appalachia, because they wanted to go somewhere that really needed physicians. With breaks to return to their training, the year extended to six years. Paul and Mary understood that if they were not there, it was likely that no one else would have been. Exhausting work, but fulfilling.
Paul did end up doing research, publishing a dozen articles including three pieces in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. One of the articles outlined the response of patients with renal failure and bleeding, and became the basis for the current treatment of these patients, still in use almost forty years later.
Paul's favorite journal publication was co-authored by Deepak Chopra, who was an endocrinology fellow at the time. It was Deepak's first time being published, but certainly not his last!
Since that time Paul has certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiology, and Emergency Medicine. He practices now in Lawrence, MA, in one of the busiest ED's in the state, and in one of the most medically underserved areas in the state.
