Diagnosis Death by Dr. Richard L. Mabry

Available for purchase April 2011

When her comatose husband dies in the ICU while on life support, the whispers about Dr. Elena Gardner begin. Another death during her training puts her under suspicion. When the pattern is repeated in the hospital where she is attempting to start over, the whispers turn into a shout: “mercy killing.”

What is the dark secret that keeps Allison’s lips sealed when she should be defending herself? Despite her move to a new city, the midnight phone calls that started after her husband’s death follow Elena. Who is the woman who sobs out, “I know what you did?” What does she mean by “You’ll pay?” And what can Elena do to prevent it?

Two physicians, widowers themselves, offer support, telling Elena they know what she is going through after the death of her husband. But do they? And is it safe to trust either of them with her secret?

My opinion: In this book we meet Dr. Elena Gardner, who recently lost her husband to a brain hemorrhage. He was on life support and she had to make the difficult choice of making him a DNR. However someone pulled the plug on him before the ultimate choice was made, and Elena can't remember if she did it or not. Then Elena has another patient with a brain hemorrhage who also has his life support disconnected. Suspicions begin, but is certain she did not do this. She starts to fear that she's having episodes where she does things she can't remember. Luckily she's moving to a new town where she can get a fresh start. But will the trouble keep following her and destroy her life?

Well, I started out liking this book. It seemed like the writing was decent and the story was compelling. There were just a lot of things that ended up annoying me in the long run. For example, when they call her into their office the first time they say "as long as you promise it won't happen again", like they're talking to a 5 year old. Then the second time a man is taken off his respirator, they say "as long as you promise not to do it again, we won't look into it further". I felt deja vu reading those two parts of the book because they sounded so similar and nothing happened to her. Then when Matney said that he didn't care if she did write the DNR order or take the two men off life support, it wouldn't get her accused of murder or manslaughter, it wouldn't even be malpractice. Now, I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure at least with the second man, she would have at least got hit with malpractice if she was responsible. The wife never agreed to a DNR order or taking him off life support, so I think that would have definitely been a problem (although it turns out she was relieved that the decision was made for her). Also, a lot of the text in the beginning is just her sitting in her apartment, listening to her TV for white noise, and being depressed. Not that I blame her for being depressed, but one description of her crappy home life was enough to get the picture. I just found Elena really dense for a doctor; there were a lot of things she missed that had me smacking my head. Like when she found that letter and assumed that it was for her, that her husband had planned on leaving her. Uh, they lived together, why would he put a letter for her in an envelope like he was going to mail it when he could just have left it for her? And if she would have just went to the police in the first place when she started getting the phone calls and creepy messages, they could have traced the phone number and figured that part out a lot sooner. The story really just didn't work for me. And the end, well I won't go into a lot of details about what happens, but I get that she was trying to clear her name but the way she went about it was not smart at all. I wanted to like Elena, but I found myself not really caring if she got pinned with murder or not. Just couldn't connect with her or really feel sorry for her. It was not the most horrible book I have ever read, but I was not at all impressed by it either.

Rating: 2/5 stars