Ripples in Opperman's Pond

Identical twins Dorian and Daniel Sloane grow up inseparable, sharing the same tubes of toothpaste as children and their lives as adults. Loyalty proven many times, they have been saving each other since the day Dorian rescued Daniel from drowning in Opperman’s Pond. Now, with Dorian as head of a multinational pharmaceutical company and Daniel as an innovative cardiologist volunteering in Africa, the brothers come together once again. A devastating midair collision on the basketball court during a Celtics/Pacers game sets falling dominoes in motion.

After NBA legend Randy Jackson sustains a career-changing ankle injury, Daniel and Dorian partner together to try and heal him. A brilliant chemist has created a miracle arthritis drug that they hope will cure the star and also save Dorian’s pharmaceutical company teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Celebrations ensue when the Pacers’ star returns to full glory—and then tragedy suddenly strikes during a casual pickup game, threatening to destroy Daniel’s career as he faces a devastating malpractice suit, the possible loss of his medical license, and even a voodoo curse.

In this high-stakes thriller set in the world of big-money medicine, a chain of unanticipated events culminates in a life-or-death decision two brothers never thought they would have to make.

1114967888
Ripples in Opperman's Pond

Identical twins Dorian and Daniel Sloane grow up inseparable, sharing the same tubes of toothpaste as children and their lives as adults. Loyalty proven many times, they have been saving each other since the day Dorian rescued Daniel from drowning in Opperman’s Pond. Now, with Dorian as head of a multinational pharmaceutical company and Daniel as an innovative cardiologist volunteering in Africa, the brothers come together once again. A devastating midair collision on the basketball court during a Celtics/Pacers game sets falling dominoes in motion.

After NBA legend Randy Jackson sustains a career-changing ankle injury, Daniel and Dorian partner together to try and heal him. A brilliant chemist has created a miracle arthritis drug that they hope will cure the star and also save Dorian’s pharmaceutical company teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Celebrations ensue when the Pacers’ star returns to full glory—and then tragedy suddenly strikes during a casual pickup game, threatening to destroy Daniel’s career as he faces a devastating malpractice suit, the possible loss of his medical license, and even a voodoo curse.

In this high-stakes thriller set in the world of big-money medicine, a chain of unanticipated events culminates in a life-or-death decision two brothers never thought they would have to make.

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Ripples in Opperman's Pond

Ripples in Opperman's Pond

by Doug Zipes
Ripples in Opperman's Pond

Ripples in Opperman's Pond

by Doug Zipes

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Overview

Identical twins Dorian and Daniel Sloane grow up inseparable, sharing the same tubes of toothpaste as children and their lives as adults. Loyalty proven many times, they have been saving each other since the day Dorian rescued Daniel from drowning in Opperman’s Pond. Now, with Dorian as head of a multinational pharmaceutical company and Daniel as an innovative cardiologist volunteering in Africa, the brothers come together once again. A devastating midair collision on the basketball court during a Celtics/Pacers game sets falling dominoes in motion.

After NBA legend Randy Jackson sustains a career-changing ankle injury, Daniel and Dorian partner together to try and heal him. A brilliant chemist has created a miracle arthritis drug that they hope will cure the star and also save Dorian’s pharmaceutical company teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Celebrations ensue when the Pacers’ star returns to full glory—and then tragedy suddenly strikes during a casual pickup game, threatening to destroy Daniel’s career as he faces a devastating malpractice suit, the possible loss of his medical license, and even a voodoo curse.

In this high-stakes thriller set in the world of big-money medicine, a chain of unanticipated events culminates in a life-or-death decision two brothers never thought they would have to make.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781475975376
Publisher: iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date: 03/29/2013
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 288
Sales rank: 311,475
File size: 482 KB

Read an Excerpt

Ripples in Opperman's Pond


By Doug Zipes

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 Doug Zipes
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-7535-2


CHAPTER 1

We were identical, Dorian and I, but not at all alike. He was firstborn, seconds before midnight, December 31, and I followed on January 1, twelve minutes later. Those twelve minutes shaped my world, because Father loved his firstborn more than me.

Growing up, we were inseparable. We wore the same clothes, ate the same foods, and shared the same tubes of Brylcreme, Colgate, and Clearasil. But Dorian squeezed from the top and left the cap off. We even dated the same girls. No one could tell the Double Ds apart, so it was easy for Dorian to appear faithful to one while dating another, using me as his stand-in. We loved sports and played on the same football and basketball teams. We could read each other's minds, anticipating where the pass would be thrown or a block needed. Defenses thinking they saw double went crazy.

We both stood six feet two with light brown hair and an untamable cowlick, gray eyes, and the sure hands of a shooting guard, with long fingers that could palm a basketball when we were only twelve. We were football-big and looked a lot like our father, with a square chin, a slightly bent nose, full lips, and Clark Gable ears. At least, my right ear was big. My left ear started out smaller than my right because Dorian's head had pressed against it in the womb—so the doctor said. Dorian bragged he had impacted me even before we were born. By the time I was ten, both ears were the same size.

At our college graduation, Father said we could be whatever we wanted—after we graduated medical school. That presented a dilemma, because Dorian partied throughout our four years at Dartmouth College. Father blamed me for not making him study more in Baker Library instead of drinking beer at Sigma Chi.

But we did get into medical school and graduated—Harvard for me, and Syracuse for Dorian. I then trained at Duke to be a cardiologist and heart rhythm expert and, finally finished, joined the staff at the University of Indiana Medical Center (UIMC).

And now I was almost eight thousand miles from home—seven thousand, nine hundred and ninety-two miles from Indianapolis, to be exact. Although I had traveled to Europe twice, this was my first time to Africa, and I was excited about being in a place so different from anything I had known.

Physicians at UIMC staffed a hospital in Kenya that cared for Africans with HIV and AIDS, and they had been looking for volunteers. The plea resonated, so I'd signed on for six months at the Rift Valley University School of Medicine in Eldoret, Kenya. I didn't think there'd be much need for a heart rhythm specialist. Most likely I'd be practicing general medicine.

I landed in Nairobi, Kenya, and spent two days at the Hilton in the center of town. My room had a big window facing south, and I could see Mount Kilimanjaro when the clouds cleared.

The hotel was too Western, so I wandered to the markets where the smells of spices, sights of slaughtered game, and sounds of people speaking Swahili were more typical of Africa. At a woodcarving booth, I bargained for a scary witch-doctor mask and a family of elephants carved in ebony. I cabbed to the Karen Blixen house and sat at the desk where she wrote Out of Africa. On the way back, we stopped at the Giraffe Center where those long-necked creatures "squatted" to eat crackers from my hand.

On my third day, I traveled to Eldoret, got checked in, was assigned a room, and prepared to start my clinic.

I didn't have to wait long. That afternoon, four tall, muscular Maasai men wrapped in traditional red warrior robes with jangling, beaded, red-and-blue earrings walked into the outpatient building. They carried their chief in a chair secured to the middle of two long wooden poles. The skin of a lion draped the chair, its open mouth snarling over the chief's head. They were too tall to enter my office. So, with a grunt, each warrior removed the pole from his shoulder, placed it on the floor, and the chief stepped out of the chair. Dilated eyes shone in a dark, round face capped by thick, black hair as he spoke rapidly in Swahili, fingers stroking his left chest. I had no idea what he was saying but ushered him into my office and onto the examining table. The four pole bearers shot out the door.

I was about to call one of the nurses to interpret when the chief knotted a fist over his chest and keeled over. I checked for a pulse in his neck and found none.

"Code red! Code red!" I screamed into the hallway. "Cardiac arrest! I need a defibrillator now!"

"Where are you?" a disembodied voice responded from the end of the hallway.

"317A," I shouted. "Hurry!"

My tiny office was only big enough for a desk and an examining table. I half lifted and then dragged the man to the floor so I could kneel alongside to begin chest compressions.

He was tall, and his feet blocked the door. The nurse arriving with the external defibrillator couldn't get in. She finally wedged the door open a crack and handed me the defibrillator. I flipped open the case and stuck defibrillator pads on his chest. The machine analyzed the rhythm in seconds and instructed me to deliver a shock. I hit the red button. Nothing happened. I hit it again. Still nothing. His dark face was getting darker, lips turning purple.

I checked the pads: dried out and not conducting. Who knows when they used it last. "I need fresh pads!" I yelled.

Drawers opened and slammed closed in the hall. "No, that's it," the nurse said.

"Then get me ECG gel. Maybe it'll work." Or he's a dead man, I thought. We were now four minutes into the cardiac arrest. "Hurry or we're going to lose him! We've only got a minute or so left."

The nurse tossed the tube to me. I glommed conductive gel under each pad, mashed down, charged the defibrillator to max, and hit the red button again.

His jaw clenched, and his body arched as 750 volts walloped through it. A slow heartbeat, only about thirty per minute, started up—but it was a heartbeat, sending precious blood to his brain. I continued to massage his chest until his rate picked up to seventy and his pulse felt normal.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, puffing my cheeks in relief. I bent his no-longer-rigid knees, and the nurse came in. We lifted him back onto the examining table.

"Draw blood for a chem 7, lytes, and a CBC," I said to her. "Also, cardiac enzymes and repeat them in four hours."

"Yes, Doctor."

I wiped sweat off my forehead and read her nametag. "Good job, Chalondra. We saved a life today."

Her face was drained, eyes wide, but she managed a shaky smile. "Oh, my, Dr. Sloane. That was frightful, but you did it." She showed me her trembling hands as she prepared to draw the blood samples.

"Makes you feel good, doesn't it?" I said.

A full grin lit up her face, and her eyes sparkled.

"Oh, it does. I feel all warm inside of me." She pointed to her chest. "Almost like a whiskey," she said in a soft voice, glancing over her shoulder.

"And I know this patient. Mr. Abasi Sentwali. He has a wife and many young children. So it is a very good thing he will live. They all need him a lot. He is chief of a Maasai tribe about twenty kilometers away. The warriors who brought him told me the Maasai laibon—the tribe's doctor—treated him for chest pain with herbs and magic spells."

"He should have sent him sooner."

"Sometimes such spells can heal, Doctor. I have seen it."

"Maybe so, but not this time." I wasn't going to argue.

Chalondra finished drawing blood and started an IV. I hooked him up to a portable ECG machine. Sentwali remained unconscious despite a normal heart rhythm and blood pressure. We prepared to move him to the hospital, a few buildings away.

"Will he be okay?"

I nodded. "He's suffered mild brain damage from lack of oxygen. He'll recover over the next few days and be back with his wife and children in less than a week."

Then he stopped breathing.

I drove a fist into his sternum. The whack made Chalondra jump. Sentwali took a breath and then quit again. After several starts and stops, I decided to intubate him. I inserted a breathing tube into his trachea and connected it to a rubber Ambu bag that I squeezed to inflate his lungs as we rolled the gurney to the hospital. Once there, I connected the tube to a respirator that automatically breathed for him.

By afternoon, he was moving all four extremities and even squeezed my fingers. I debated taking the tube out, but I didn't trust him to breathe on his own. I thought he needed another day for his brain to heal.

The Umoja ward for male patients had thirty-six beds and a small intensive care unit. The well-trained staff was dedicated and the equipment as modern as Rift Valley could afford. But I hadn't planned on Mother Nature.

The violent storm erupted during dinner in the hospital dining room. The intensity of crashing thunder and jagged lightning stilled all conversation as thunderclouds settled in and enveloped us. A fierce salvo lit up the night and left the room in total darkness. The waiters searched for candles.

The head of hospital maintenance reassured us. "Do not be alarmed.

The backup generator will kick on in exactly fifteen seconds."

We all waited—and waited. Nothing.

"What about the Umoja ward?" I remembered after several minutes. "Will it have power?"

"It should."

"Even though the backup generator hasn't started?"

"That could be a problem."

I jumped from the table. "Anyone have a flashlight?" I grabbed one and raced to Umoja. The buildings weren't connected, and I had to run about fifty yards outdoors. In moments, I was drenched. Lightning flashed around me, and I hoped the odds of being struck really were one in a million.

As I tore into the ICU, I heard Sentwali before I saw him, thrashing about in bed, fighting the tube in his throat. I knew that without electric power, the respirator no longer cycled. The endotracheal tube, once his lifeline, would suffocate him.

I held the flashlight in my teeth and tried to deflate the tiny balloon holding the tube in his trachea. Yanking it out would damage delicate tissues. Rainwater from my wet hair dripped into my eyes, and I couldn't find the release valve. Finally, I disconnected the end of the tube from the respirator. Sentwali gasped harshly once, twice, and stopped breathing. I hit his chest but got no response. I breathed into the end of the tube. He might have AIDS, but he was going to die without air.

After several moments, I heard a grinding sound like grating gears that overpowered the noise of the storm. Lights flickered twice and flashed on, lighting up the room. The respirator began cycling, whooshing air into the room.

It was too late. Sentwali's pupils were fixed and dilated. He was dead from asphyxiation.

Chalondra was the first to come running in from dinner. I told her what had happened.

"Oh my God, that poor man. What a horrible way to die," she said.

Devastated, I stood at his side, holding his pulseless wrist in my hands. "I should have taken the damn tube out," I muttered.

"You can't blame yourself. It was the storm and the electricity." She looked at me, pain in her eyes. "Maybe you should get some rest, Dr. Sloane. I can manage here." She patted my shoulder and headed me toward the door.

The thunderstorm had blown over, and I walked outside. The sweet smell of its aftermath, a combination of ozone and fragrant soil spores dispersed by the rain, could not relieve my gloom. I went to my room and cracked open the bottle of Jack Daniel's I'd brought along for an emergency.

CHAPTER 2

"Does his wife know?" I asked the following morning. We met on the Umoja ward and were standing in front of the nurses' station. I stared at the empty bed that had been Sentwali's.

Chalondra nodded. "We sent word to her village last night to come to the hospital as soon as she could. The laibon said she collapsed on hearing the news and will not come in."

"Can we change her mind? I want to explain what happened in person."

Before Chalondra answered, the phone rang. The secretary to the hospital director was "inviting" me to explain to the director, Jesse Gaudet, what had happened.

A lovely woman met my knock at the director's office. "I'm here to see Dr. Gaudet," I said.

She smiled and beckoned me to follow her into the office, a small room with white walls dominated by a dark wooden desk in the center. Two brown rattan chairs with blue cushions decorated by embroidered animal shapes and a three-drawer, black, metal file filled the remaining space. A small-screened window was open, and a ceiling fan lazily stirred the hot air.

She came up to my chin, maybe five foot five or six. A tortoiseshell comb swept auburn hair off her neck, but a few strands escaped and teased her shoulders as she moved her head. I wanted to tuck them behind an ear. Her high cheekbones and slender, straight nose reminded me of the exotic women on the Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, the perfect blend of African American, Spanish, and Indian in exquisite combinations. I pictured her in a bikini. She'd hold her own on Copa, or any other beach.

She pulled up a chair and motioned me to sit down. "I'm supposed to see Dr. Jesse Gaudet."

"I know," she said, extending her hand. "Jessica Gaudet." Her radiant smile lit up the office, and her deep hazel eyes crinkled in the corners from laugh lines that made her look amused—from my discomfiture no doubt. "I guess the nurses didn't tell you."

I laughed. "No, Dr. Gaudet, I expected a guy."

"Please call me Jessie, with an ie." The light had shifted, and her eyes seemed to shimmer.

"And I'm Daniel."

"Daniel or Danny?"

"Mostly Daniel. Only my family called me Danny, when I was a kid."

She smiled and fingered a tortoiseshell necklace that matched the comb. "Thank you for coming to see me, Daniel. The nurses told me Mr. Sentwali died. I'm so sorry for him and his family, and for you too. Your face tells me how much this hurt you."

She put her hand gently on my arm. Her voice had a lilt to it, American but something softly southern, refined. And I liked the physical contact. She wasn't shy. I was expecting some sort of a lecture, particularly from a heart surgeon—a notoriously arrogant lot, even the women. She took me off guard.

"Tell me from the beginning what happened."

I recounted the entire episode. "So, between the laibon and me, and I guess Mother Nature, we set him up for a perfect storm. Literally."

"Don't be too hard on yourself or the laibon. Belief in the supernatural is deeply rooted in African society and actually may have prevented his cardiac arrest until he got here."

"C'mon, Dr. Gaudet—I mean, Jessie. You really believe that?"

She shrugged. "I grew up in New Orleans, where it was part of our culture, and I've lived here for two years."

I sat back in my chair and shook my head. "I can't believe what I'm hearing—and from a cardiac surgeon, no less!"

Her laugh was musical. Then she looked pensive. "Are you religious?"

"Not really. My father emigrated from Russia when he was a little boy of three or four. Our family name was Slovinsky, and I guess it was Jewish. At some point, he changed the name to Sloane and married my mom. She was Catholic, and my father didn't care, so I was raised a Catholic. But I'm not sure what I believe anymore. You?"

"Jewish. My ancestors were thrown out of Spain in 1492, same year Columbus set sail. They wandered Western Europe a couple of hundred years and eventually made it to America. They settled in New Orleans in the late 1700s."

"You can trace your family back that far?"

"To about 1850. Before that is Internet guessing. I do have a claim to fame, though. A distant relative, Lewis Solomon, was the first king of Mardi Gras in 1872."

"Impressive."

"But I was going to ask whether you thought believing in the miracles of Christianity, such as the resurrection of Christ or the virgin birth, is any different than believing in voodoo?"

"I'm not a believer, but how can you compare the two?"

"Actually, the Creoles in New Orleans syncretized both."

"I don't know what that means—syncretized."

"They reconciled differences between Christianity and their beliefs and melded them into an all-inclusive, functioning religion."

"How could they believe in supernatural voodoo stuff and Jesus? That's comic books and the Bible."

"Right. Like believing wine is Christ's blood and wafers his body? Or a statue of Jesus cries tears, or Moses parted the Red Sea? Western religions have as much mysticism as African."
(Continues...)


Excerpted from Ripples in Opperman's Pond by Doug Zipes. Copyright © 2013 Doug Zipes. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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