In a culture of comic book heroes, it's gratifying to be reminded that there are real heroes out there. Every day the staff of emergency rooms throughout the world are saving lives - 24/7/365. Dr. Patrick Crocker provides us an intimate glimpse into the growing mind of an emergency physician, from residency to retirement.Told in a unique first-person stream of consciousness style, you are right in the middle of the action, looking over the doctor's shoulder while he works. In this compilation of notable, frightening, funny, sad, and poignant cases, you'll see Dr. Crocker's struggles to Do No Harm in the most challenging of situations. Through these stories, you'll see him find the delicate balance between help and harm, empathy and self-preservation.

"In More Letters From The Pit, a sequel to the popular Letters From The Pit, I share how, over the course of my career, I considered the roles that fate, destiny, and karma seem to play in our lives. Medical care is an imperfect science and it's delivery complicated. Why some patients we think will easily recover from an injury or illness die, and those we believe are already beyond our help somehow rally and recover is mystifying. Just what, if anything, controls these events? Are they preordained or are there true miracles. The book is again structured in first-person, stream -of-consciousness narrative of my life as a doctor. What I saw and what I was thinking in real time as I treated patients. In addition this collection of fascinating and exciting cases, I explore some of the darker corners of life in the emergency Room. How we deal with those patients we can't help and the angst and feelings of personal loss that accompany those cases. Events so horrific and heart-rending they can never be forgotten. And of course the joy of triumph caring for those we pull from the jaws of death. The style of presentation will leave you with the feeling that you were there with me, looking over my shoulder, as I worked." -- Amazon.com

Like a latter-day Goya, Sue Coe is driven to create moral works, from stark renditions of slaughterhouse brutality to accounts of abused domestic animals and laboratory testing. In Pit's Letter, a hapless canine describes her desolate life to her only surviving sister. She recounts her puppyhood and upbringing in her human family, her heartless banishment, and finally her suffering and death at the hands of the experimenting scientists at Eden Biotechnology. Ironically, her former master winds up in the same situation: an accidental scratching infects him with a pathogen - and man and beast share the same fate.