Code Five by Frank G. Slaughter is set a few years after the Vietnam War. Dr. Jud Tyler is highly decorated and one of the most respected field surgeons in the army. However, while he was working in a field hospital in An Tha, Vietnam, a grenade went off, partially parilyzing him and giving him a medical condition called aphasia.

After being dispatched from the army he is asked to come back to the hospital where he started his medical career because they are in dire need of good doctors. When he arrives at Farmingham he is shocked, in the ten years he was gone it went from a nice, quiet town to a run down dump and St. Luke's hospital is in total chaos and it's up to Jud to fix it.