In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.

I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it's only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.

It was all I had, all I've ever had, the only currency, the only proof that I was alive. Memory.

She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.

What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books?

I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI, or orthopedic consult.

Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.