Your name is Dr. Quentin Hendrix, M.D., and by God, if you aren’t the most medically trained doctor to come out of Harvard in the past 50 years.

You graduated with two degrees in 30 days, had affairs with the world’s most prominent professors, and posed shirtless on the cover of The American Journal Of Medicine when you were just 22.

You’re a doctor, so everything should be perfect, but...

“Look, Quentin, you can’t just walk out of Harvard and be the king of Harvard General,” says the Chief, Dr. Christopher Runson, M.D., slamming you against a gurney. “If you wanna be the king, you gotta kill the king. And—look me in the eye—me? I’m the king.”

“I’ve said it over and over again: I’m in love with the Chief, not you,” says your wife, Dr. Melissa Goddard, M.D., D.D.S., avoiding your gaze. “Remember, I’m a doctor too. And when two doctors get together, sometimes one of the doctors has to leave.”

“Stay with me, Goddard,” you yell, slamming her chest. “You might be a doctor, and you might be my wife, but if you die, that means you’re dead.”

Dr. Hendrix, this is the ER. Harvard may have taught you how to love, but did it teach you how to love under pressure?

♫ Lovers by day, doctors by night... ♫

♫ To love or cure, that is the fight... ♫

♫ In the heat of the night, two become one... ♫

♫ Life or death, are doctors done? ♫

♫ Lives And Loves... ♫

♫ ...Lives And Loves... ♫

♫ ...Lives And Loves... ♫

♫ ...Of... ♫

♫ ...The ER ♫

In the ER, one wrong move could change a life, and one small life could make a change...

You stand in the field right outside Harvard General, kicking the soccer ball around with your best friend of 20 years, Dr. Gregory Underwood, M.D.

“Hey Quentin, I’ve been thinking about something, deeply, for a while now,” says Dr. Greg, dribbling the ball. “You know, I think soccer is a lot like a hospital.”

“Yeah, soccer,” he says, kicking the ball on his knee. “We go out onto the field each day and play our hardest. We dribble, we sweat, and we help our teammates out, just like in our jobs as doctors...”

“Here’s the thing about soccer,” you say, taking the ball from him and holding it to your chest. “In soccer, someone always wins, but in the hospital, everybody loses. I lost everything. I lost my dear doctor wife, and then right after that, I lost Dr. Antonia, my beautiful, hotheaded lover.”

“Soccer isn’t fair, Quentin, just like the hospital and just like life and love,” he says, slapping the ball out of your hands. “The ref is God, and God made some bad calls on your dead wife and ex-girlfriend, and I’m so sorry.”

“Dr. Hendrix,” you hear her whisper, “I’m dead. Very, very dead.”

“I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you now, honey,” she shouts. “I love you more than any man I’ve ever met. And remember: I’m a doctor, so I’d never lie to you.”

“Your wife lied to you. She lied to you because she slept with me, the king,” says the Chief. “She may not be allowed to lie to you as a doctor, but as a lover? As a lover, she lied.”

“Look out,” she shouts as the car skids. “I’m dead now. I’m dead now, and you never got any closure.”

Sirens; skidding; screams. An ambulance careens onto the field, interrupting the game that we call life.

“Knock it off, you two,” shout the paramedics. “A bus crashed into the Hoover Dam, and now thousands of women all over the country are going into labor.”

“Don’t you die on me,” you hear, your ears still ringing. “Don’t you let him go to the big goal post in the sky.”

“He’s back,” they yell. “Now, let’s kill him again, because that’s probably what he wanted in the first place. Good job, team.”

“Dr. Hendrix was alive, and now he is no longer alive,” says the saddened, disembodied voice of Dr. Underwood.

“My dearest friend lived several years as an amazing doctor, but he lived even more as an amazing husband and amazing lover. Luckily, his wife is dead, so he can join her now in the afterlife.”

“I know he’s looking down on us now from the big ER in the sky,” he continues. “Which is where we’ll all go someday, after traveling there from one of the big ERs on the ground.”

“All we can do in this life is live and love,” he says, pausing. “And that’s how Dr. Hendrix loved and lived.”

You sit in the back of your resident lecture muttering pensively to yourself while the Chief drones on and on.

“Now listen up, everyone, because I’m only going to say this once: The spine is connected to the brain, and the brain is what is in our head,” explains the Chief, looking out over your class of residents. “Pop quiz: Does anyone know what the purpose of the brain is?”

“The brain fills our head up and makes sure our head isn’t empty,” says Antonia, your hotheaded ex, smiling smugly at you. “It’s heavy, and it makes our necks strong.”

“Wow, kissing doctors is the best type of love,” whispers Antonia. “Doctors spend so much time saving lives—who knew that they could kiss?”

“Antonia is lying to you,” says the Chief. “We both kiss all the time and we’re both doctors. Ever wonder why I’m the king?”

“I hate you,” she screams. “I hate you because I’m hotheaded. I hate you because our relationship is over. And I hate you because hate is the opposite of love, and I don’t love you right now.”

“You’re not my doctor; you’re not my lover. And again, that’s the end of our relationship, to clarify.”

“Yes, Antonia, that is all technically true,” he continues. “But does anyone know what the brain actually does?”

“My wife was working on finding out exactly what our brains do, and you both know that,” you say, looking your professor and Antonia dead in the eye. “She was on the verge of something huge, something amazing—but even neurosurgeons don’t live forever. It seems like one woman and one doctor have absolutely no respect for her memory and her work.”

“The brain is what shuts down when you die,” you say, looking your professor dead in the eye. “My wife had her brain shut down a few years ago, and we couldn’t turn it back on. And here’s the thing about my brain—it won’t forget what happened.”

“Hey! What are you doing talking about your dead wife when there are emergencies outside?” yells an EMT as he bursts in the door. “There was just a fire in a fireworks factory and now 120 people have inoperable brain tumors.”

“They’re coming in fast and they’re coming in hot,” yell the paramedics, slamming through the hospital doors and sprinting down the halls. “We’ve got people hurt so bad that only doctors can fix them. Hendrix, don’t just stand there.”

“Hendrix! Hendrix!” yells Antonia, following you as you take off down the hall. “Don’t walk faster than me into another room. I’m slower because I also struggle in this hospital. Sometimes being in a hospital is hard for us surgeons.”

“Look, Hendrix, I slept with the Chief while we were lovers because I thought that’s what good doctors do,” says Antonia. “When I took the Hippocratic Oath, I said I would sleep with the Chief and that I’d do it a lot. I never stopped loving you, and you know that.”

“Look, Antonia, when you left me, it was hard. You left me as a lover, and I was very, very sad,” you say. “But when my wife died, she left me more; she left me not just as a lover, but as a doctor. She left this life, Antonia.”

“The day she died, I also took a Hippocratic Oath of my own, Antonia,” you say. “At her funeral, I stood at the podium and I vowed to never let anyone leave me ever again.”

“But you didn’t show up to her funeral, Antonia, did you? You were her best friend, and all you did was run off with the Chief,” you say. “That day, I vowed to cure everything that was broken...”

“Dr. Hendrix, shut your doctor mouth,” she says, touching your lips. “Maybe, sometimes, we can’t be good doctors without being good lovers.”

“Hey! What are you doing kissing when there are hundreds of people flatlining?” yell the paramedics, bursting into the locker room. “There are 100 sick people, and all their hearts have stopped. Someone, perhaps a doctor, stop them from dying.”

You remain in the darkness of Harvard General, kissing the soft lips of the beautiful doctor Antonia.

“I’m glad we’re kissing each other again,” you say. “Sometimes it’s so hard being in a hospital when you’re not kissing other doctors.”

“I like kissing you so much that I don’t want to stop kissing you,” she says. “I want to go somewhere other than Harvard General and kiss you. And I want to do that forever.”

“Let’s do it, Antonia. Let’s be doctors who are in love. Let’s run away to a place only we know, somewhere we can live the life that two doctors in love deserve.”

“The only thing you two deserve is to be doctors in my hospital,” says the Chief, swinging open the locker room door. “Doctors, not lovers. No doctors of mine are ever allowed to be lovers, except if they’re loving me.”

“All right, everyone, get ready. This is not a drill,” you yell at your nurses. “I’m the doctor, so I say we cure them until they’re better. Don’t stop curing them until they’re feeling normal again.”

“Not so fast, Hendrix. Don’t you have someone you should be loving, not curing?” says the Chief. “Antonia, your ex, is a better lover and doctor, so she’ll be taking these patients from you. Unless, of course, you’d like to fight me for them?”

“Chief, I’ve been wanting to fight you like a man since the day I started working at Harvard General,” you say, taking off your gloves. “You slept with Antonia and you slept with my dead wife before she was dead, so now I’m going to punch you in the face.”

“That’s only if I don’t hit you first,” the Chief says, swinging his arms at you. “This is for being a doctor I don’t like in my hospital, and this is for my manhood, to prove my masculinity.”

“Stop it, you two, or I’ll stop loving both of you,” says Antonia, snapping at both of you. “I like how masculine you are when you fight, but I also hate how masculine you are when you fight.”

“Sometimes, Antonia, being a doctor isn’t easy; sometimes it’s hard. Really hard,” you say, staring her dead in the eye. “We come to work each morning and all we do is act perfect. We’re perfect doctors, perfect lovers...”

“No, we can’t. When the Chief and I were fighting right there, we were fighting as rival lovers, not as doctors,” you continue. “Doctors are perfect; lovers are not. If you’re a lover, you take, but if you’re a doctor, you give. Simple as that.”

“Maybe if you had cured your relationship instead of loved it, you would still be together with Antonia,” says the Chief. “And maybe your dead wife would still be alive today.”

“Hey! What are you doing waxing poetic when there are hundreds of people flatlining?” the paramedics yell, bursting through the operating room doors. “There are 100 sick people, and all their hearts have stopped. Someone, perhaps a doctor, stop them from dying.”

“Get in here quick, Hendrix. The patients are all dying, and we have to save them,” says Dr. Underwood, checking the heart rate monitor. “None of us know what to do. You’re the only one who can save these people who are near to death.”

“Nothing I’m doing is working,” says the Chief, slamming the chest of a patient. “I’m the best doctor at Harvard General and I still can’t do it. I’m the king, but sometimes even the king can’t beat death.”

“Dr. Hendrix, you’re our only hope,” says Antonia. “Quick: What would your dead wife do? After all, she’s dead, and none of us are. Maybe she’s the key to making these people not die?”

“Honey, I’ll always love you, even if I’m dead, which I am,” she says, smiling from the great beyond. “But to keep these people from being dead like me, you’ll have to be both a lover and a doctor.”

“Follow my lead,” she says. “First, place your hand on their heart; that’s you being a doctor. Now, place your mouth on their mouth; that’s you being a lover.”

“It’s called CPR, honey: the ultimate act of love and medicine. Do it like you tried to do to me when I was dying. It’ll work this time, because the dead version of me is here to help. Just have faith.”

“Look, Antonia, she’s not alive anymore, but me, you, and the Chief are,” you say, grabbing both by the hand. “It’s simple: The Chief is my doctor, you are my lover, and I’m the bridge between you.”

“Together, we have all the passion we’ll need to cure these patients,” you say. “Together, we are Harvard General, dammit, and together we don’t let people die.”

“Antonia, you hold their hands. Chief, you give them the right medicines they need to get better. And me? I’ll pray to the God of love and the God of medicine that these both work.”

“It’s working! Your unconventional methods are working!” yell the paramedics. “Keep doing those unconventional methods!”

“I’m so proud of you, honey,” says your dead wife. “You stopped everyone from dying like I did.”

The ER, of all the places to work and love, is never an easy place to work or love...

...You’ve got old mean doctors...

...incredible lovers...

...people of different races...

...and dead wives...

...But in the end, there’s no other place you’d rather work, and there’s no other place you’d rather love...

...Harvard General is where you were born, and it’s where you will die. But in between, you’ll love a lot, save a lot, and learn a lot. That’s an ER guarantee.