Teams that manage crisis situations are poised to cope in novel ways.

Play prepares us to expect the unexpected.

Like more than fifteen million others, I’ve consistently tuned in to episodes of the televised medical thriller, The Pitt, where across little and large events, the drama literally turns on trauma.

The hyper-realistic series occurs in a busy, sometimes frantic, emergency department at a large hospital in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. But medical teams like this swing into action in any big American city.

Patients most urgently in need arrive in ambulances with life threatening, code-blue level emergencies—a “floating face” fracture, which I won’t explain, or a “hand-degloving” case that explains itself.

At the other end of the scale some others stumble in needing treatment for conditions that result from poor judgment, injuries that the medicos regard as “minor” and borderline-comic. For example, an instance of imprudent sunbathing on a holiday weekend is a condition that might be termed “code pink.” Or a cannabis overdose that ended with a celebrants’ tongue that needed stitching. (If you’ve seen that vivid bit, I’m sorry for loading you up with it again.)

Patients such as these will be routinely patched up, sometimes literally glued back together, and sent home with a prescription along with a wry admonition.

Unforgettable, That’s What They Are

Regular viewers won’t easily forget other complex, urgent, and critical injuries that compel the intervention of a team of experts who deploy special skills.

A dislocation required leverage that took several tugging hands to snap it back into place. A trachea severed by a bullet necessitated fishing out before a victim’s breathing could be restored. When a speaker tower collapsed at a music festival and broke the ribs of an audience member and bruised his lungs, air........

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