Episode One: Dream a Little Dream of Me
September 25, 2008
Opening:
We all remember the bedtime stories of our childhoods. The shoe fits Cinderella. The frog turns into a prince. Sleeping Beauty is awakened with a kiss. Once upon a time. And then they lived happily every after. Fairy tales. The stuff of dreams. The problem is, fairy tales don’t come true.
It’s the other stories. The ones that begin with dark and stormy nights and end in the unspeakable. It’s the nightmares that always seem to become reality.
The person that invented the phrase “Happily ever after,” should have his ass kicked – so hard.
Closing:
Once upon a time. Happily ever after. The stories we tell are the stuff of dreams. Fairy tales don’t come true. Reality is much stormier. Much murkier. Much scarier. Reality. It’s so much more interesting than living happily ever after.
Episode Two: Here Comes the Flood
October 9, 2008
Opening:
As surgeons, we are trained to fix what’s broken. The breaking point is our starting line at work. But in our lives, the breaking point is a sign of weakness. And we’ll do everything we can to avoid it.
Closing:
Bones break. Organs burst. Flesh tears. We can sew the flesh. Repair the damage, ease the pain. But when life breaks down, when we break down, there’s no science, no hard and fast rules. We just have to feel our way through. And to a surgeon, there’s nothing worse, and there’s nothing better.
Episode Three: Brave New World
October 16, 2008
Opening:
In 6500 B.C., some guy looked at his sick friend and said, “I have an idea. Why don’t I drill a hole in your skull? It’ll make you feel better.” Thus, surgery was born. It takes a certain brand of crazy to come up with an idea like drilling into somebody’s skull, but surgeons have always been a confident bunch. We usually know what we’re doing. And when we don’t, we still act like we do. We walk boldly into undiscovered country, plant a flag, and start ordering people around. It’s invigorating, and terrifying.
Closing:
We like to think we’re fearless, eager to explore unknown lands and soak up new experiences. But the fact is, we’re always terrified. Maybe the terror is part of the attraction. Some people go to horror movies, we cut things open, dive into dark water. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what you’d rather hear about? If you’ve got one drink, and one friend, and forty-five minutes… smooth rides make for boring stories. A little calamity, that’s worth talking about.
Episode Four: There’s No ‘I’ in Team
October 23, 2008
Opening:
“I am a rock, I am an island.” That’s the mantra of pretty much every surgeon I’ve ever met. We like to think we’re independent. Loners. Mavericks. That all we need to do our job is an OR, a scalpel and a willing body. But the truth is, not even the best of us can do it alone. Surgery, like life, is a team sport. And eventually, you’ve got to get off the bench and decide… what team are you batting for?
Closing:
The thing about choosing teams in real life, it’s nothing like it used to be in gym class. Being first pick can be terrifying. And being chosen last… isn’t the worst thing in the world. So, we watch from the sidelines, clinging to our isolation. Because we know as soon as we let go of the bench, someone comes along and change the game completely.
Episode Five: Life During Wartime
October 30, 2008
Opening:
For a surgeon, every patient is a battlefield. They’re our terrain, where we advance, retreat, try to remove all the landmines. Just when you think you won the battle, made the world safe again… along comes another landmine.
Closing:
Some wars are never over. Some end in an uneasy truce. Some wars result in complete and total victory. Some wars end with a peace offering. And some wars… end in hope. But all these wars are nothing compared to the most frightening war of all. The one you have yet to fight.
Episode Six: Rise Up
November 6, 2008
Opening:
If you’re a normal person, one of the few things you can count on in life is death. But, if you’re a surgeon, even that comfort is taken away from you. Surgeons cheat death, we prolong it, we deny it. We stand and defiantly give death the finger.
Closing:
We’re born, we live, we die. Sometimes not necessarily in that order. We put things to rest, only to have them rise up again. So if death is not the end, what can you count on anymore? Because you sure can’t count on anything in life. Life is the most fragile, unstable, unpredictable thing there is. In fact, there’s only one thing about life we can be sure of… it ain’t over, till it’s over.
Episode Seven: These Ties That Bind
November 13, 2008
Opening:
It’s intense, what happens in the O.R. When lives are on the line and you’re poking at brains like they’re Silly Putty. You form a bond with the surgeons right next to you. An unbreakable, indescribable bond. It’s intimate, being tied together like that. Whether you like it or not, whether you like them or not, you become family.
Closing:
The ties that bind us are sometimes impossible to explain. They connect us, even after it seems like the ties should be broken. Some bonds defy distance, and time, and logic. Because some ties are simply… meant to be.
Episode Eight: In the Midnight Hour
November 20, 2008
Opening:
When you’re little, night time is scary, because there are monsters hiding right under the bed. When you get older, the monsters are different. Self doubt… loneliness… regret. And though you may be older and wiser, you still find yourself scared of the dark.
Closing:
Sleep. It’s the easiest thing to do. You just… close your eyes. But for so many of us, sleep seems out of our grasp. We want it, but we don’t know how to get it. But once we face our demons, face our fears, and turn to each other for help, night time isn’t so scary, because we realize we aren’t all alone in the dark.
Episode Nine: All by Myself
December 4, 2008
Opening:
My mother called it the greatest and most terrifying moment in her life. Standing at the head of the surgical table, knowing that the patient’s life depends on you and you alone. It’s what we all dream about, because the first person that gets to fly solo in the O.R. – kind of a badass.
Closing:
We enter the world alone, and we leave it alone. And everything that happens in between, we owe it to ourselves to find a little company. We need help. We need support. Otherwise, we’re in it by ourselves. Strangers, cut off from each other, and we forget… just how connected we all are. So instead, we choose love, we choose life, and for a moment, we feel just a little bit less alone.
Episode Ten: Wish You Were Here
January 8, 2009
Opening:
We all get at least one good wish a year, over the candles on our birthday. Some of us throw in more, on eyelashes, fountains, lucky stars. And every now and then, one of those wishes comes true. So what then? Is it as good as we’d hoped? Do we bask in the warm glow of our happiness… or do we just notice we’ve got a long list of other wishes waiting to be wished.
Closing:
We don’t wish for the easy stuff. We wish for big things. Things that are ambitious, out of reach. We wish because we need help, and we’re scared, and we know we may be asking too much. We still wish though, because sometimes… they come true.
Episode 11: Sympathy for the Devil
January 15, 2009
Opening:
My mother used to say this about residency: It takes a year to learn how to cut. It takes a lifetime to learn not to. Of all of the tools on a surgical tray, sound judgment is the trickiest one to master, and without it, we’re all just toddlers running around with ten blades.
Closing:
We’re human. We make mistakes. We mis-estimate. We call it wrong. But when a surgeon makes a bad judgment call, it’s not as simple. People get hurt. They bleed. So we struggle over every stitch, we agonize over every suture. Because the snap judgments, the ones that come to us quickly and easily, without hesitation… they’re the ones that haunt us forever.
Episode 12: Stairway to Heaven
January 22, 2009
Opening:
(Denny Duquette) I believe in heaven. I also believe in hell. I’ve never seen either, but I believe they exist. They have to exist. Because without a heaven, without a hell, we’re all just headed for limbo.
Closing:
(Denny Duquette) Heaven. Hell. Limbo. No one really knows where we’re going… or what’s waiting for us when we get there. But the one thing we can say for sure, with absolute certainty… is that there are moments that take us to another place. Moments of heaven on Earth. And maybe for now, that’s all we need to know.