Reminiscent of Chekhov's stories, this collection is a visceral portrayal of a physician's encounters with the highly charged world of an emergency room. The author reveals a side of medicine where small moments - the intricacy of suturing a facial wound, the bath a patient receives from her husband and daughter - interweave with the lives and deaths of the desperately sick and injured. The author presents an array of fascinating characters, both patients and doctors - a neuro-surgeon who practices withcraft, a trauma surgeon who unexpectedly commits suicide, a wounded murderer, a man chased across the New Mexico desert by a heat-seeking missile. At times surreal, at times lyrical, at times brutal and terrifying, this text is a literary work that emerges from one of the most dramatic specialties of modern medicine.