The Specimen

On April 11, 2014, Dr. Marilyn Olga Clare King-Rankine, M. D. a humble, industrious, and pioneering cardiologist and electrophysiologist from the former British Guiana, global South America--a tiny, mineral-rich country nestled in between the arms of border neighbours Venezuela and Brazil--sighed her last breaths on one of her beloved hospital cardiac care wards in Fort Worth Texas; her hands were in the hands of her eldest daughter Fey, the author, as she did so. Her passing marked a final, merciful release after a courageous two-year battle with two types of rare uterine cancer. She was 69. Dr. King-Rankine, the second child of Wainwright Earle King, the Superintendent of Police of British-controlled Guiana, South America, and Stella Edna (née Wharton) King, his wife, a Roman Catholic boys' school teacher--emigrated to the Unites States as a foreign student in the midst of the civil rights turbulence of the 1960's. She received her B. A. in Zoology and an M. A. in Microbiology from Howard University in Washington, DC; her M. D. from Temple University Medical School in Philadelphia, PA; performed her internship and residency at the renowned Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH, where she was also accepted into their cardiology program--and additionally became the first Woman ever accepted into the electrophysiology program at the Cleveland Clinic. Subsequent to her training, Dr. King-Rankine went on to become the first--and died the only--Black cardiologist in Fort Worth, Texas. A private practitioner, Dr. King-Rankine specialized in cardiology, particularly the implantation and explantation of pacemakers and defibrillators, electrophysiology, and nuclear cardiology. Additionally, amongst other firsts, she brought the revolutionary procedure of explanting pacemaker leads--using lasers--to Fort Worth in 2011, one year before she was diagnosed with stage 4 uterine cancer. She was preceded in death by her brother, Dr. Loris Oswald O'Brien King, M. D., himself a pioneering cardiologist, in Naples, FL--who similarly died of prostate cancer, seven years before her, in 2007. Dr. King-Rankine was in fact, still deeply grieving her beloved brother's death to cancer, when she received her own late-stage cancer diagnosis. They are both interred nearby each other in Naples, FL.

The Specimen is an edgy, honest and poignant, poetic and photographic testimony on the Stages of Death and Dying--as lived by Dr. King-Rankine in her battle with her late-stage diagnosed cancers and attendant chronic illnesses. Fey Ugokwe's previously published work includes critically-acclaimed "Wifey", a haunting domestic suspense thriller.