CODE BLUE follows Dr. Tobi Lister, a physician trapped in a wildly dysfunctional system and entangled in deadly intrigue. It is becoming obvious that something strange is happening at her clinic, but she has enough to deal with just trying to practice medicine, now that patients have become “customers” and the medical field is dictated by entrepreneurs whose sole objective is profit. And now suddenly, after nearly two decades, the man who broke her heart has resurfaced, but Tobi is determined to ignore his desperate attempts to communicate. She has no idea he is trying to warn her about a vicious Russian hacking scheme that is making billions of dollars murdering patients. But if he can’t get through to her soon, Tobi will be next.

This medical thriller emphasizes the loss of humanity felt by both physicians and patients now that medicine has become a consumer-driven industry.

"Code Blue vividly describes the underbelly of medicine - what it's like to try to remain a careful, dedicated doctor in an impersonal system infected and overtaken by corporate greed. Into this setting, Dr. Debra Blaine weaves a murder mystery, dropping tantalizing clues that point toward a world-wide medical conspiracy, and providing enough detail to make you believe it really could happen. Don't miss the crescendo to a heart-pounding climax!”

Ken Kamler, MD

Best Selling Author of Surviving the Extremes and Doctor on Everest, TV and Multimedia Medical Consultant, International Medical Lecturer

“Part takedown of the toll profit-driven medicine can take on physicians and their patients, part global tale of murderous betrayal and all about the price of greed, Debra Blaine’s page-turner of a first novel reads like a cross between a fictional thriller and Elisabeth Rosenthal’s An American Sickness."

Edward Hershey

Award-winning journalist and author of The Scorekeeper, Oregon Book Award finalist

"Code Blue takes us into the real world of modern medicine in all of its heartfelt sincerity and profit-driven dysfunction. Wrapped in a fast-paced thriller, our physician heroine finds everything she thought she knew about her career and her personal losses upended. How does she fight for her own life and for those of her patients when nothing is as it seems?"

Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana

Senior Rabbi Congregation Beth Israel, Portland, OR Past President of Oregon Board of Rabbis, Social Activist

Medicine has become a commercial business, and is in danger of losing its humanity by treating health and life primarily as a profit-driven industry. It becomes harder and harder to maintain compassion in this system which prioritizes quantity over quality and pleasing over healing.  

But Greed is not unique to medicine; it is pervasive in our western culture.

We must find a way to shield medicine from a process that considers only efficiency, and bring humanity back into the arena of human services. We must re-acknowledge the sanctity of human life.

Imagine a world whose highest value was not the accumulation of wealth, but the practice of kindness.

" When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people. "

                     - abraham joshua heschel