Chaos at Crescent City Medical Center — Judith Townsend Rocchiccioli

Its Mardi Gras season in post-Katrina New Orleans. Thousands of tourists have flocked to the city, paralyzing traffic and jamming the French Quarter with drunken crowds and garbage. City officials are hoping for record crowds and to generate the biggest boost to the Crescent City since the big storm. Alexander Lee Destephano, legal counsel for the “world class Crescent City Medical Center, is excitedly anticipating her third Mardi Gras Season and most of all, her date with dashing art historian Mitch Landry. The couple has tickets to the Endymion Extravaganza, the biggest Mardi Gras Ball in New Orleans at the Super Dome on Saturday evening. After many months, life is good again and Alex is determined to experience and appreciate all it has to offer. She can hardly wait until Saturday evening. But, things change. Alex is stat-paged to the Medical Center at 6:00 am on Monday morning only to learn from her boss, Don Montgomery and her former husband, Dr. Robert Bonnet that Grace Raccine, the Governor of Louisiana and a cancer patient at CCMC, has been found unconscious in her room covered with blood with no visible injury. To compound matters, patients are leaving CCMC against medical advice and staff are refusing to work creating crisis and chaos in the changing Obamacare hospital environment. By the end of the day, the Endymion Ball is the last thing on Alex's mind!