You’re not alone if you feel like the last 100 days have been one very long episode of “The Pitt,” HBOMax’s new hit medical drama about an emergency room in a hospital in Pittsburgh, PA, starring Noah Wyle, the actor who starred in “ER.” We’re the patient in this drama — the U.S.A., the oldest continuous democracy in the history of the world — and it feels like we’ve been on the table in the OR since the credits rolled back in January, with one bleeder after another squirting blood all over the surgeons, the nurses, the operating instrument tray and everyone’s bootie-clad feet slipping on a floor slick with blood.
Patients end up in the ER because they were in a car accident, had a heart attack or stroke, suffered from some pathogen that hit them out of nowhere or had been lurking in their systems unnoticed and undiagnosed until they spiked a fever or passed out or started coughing up blood and couldn’t stop, or somebody shot them or they shot themselves.
