Isabella "Izzie" Isaksen finds herself enrolled in a surgical internship at the ball-busting program that is Ohio Memorial General Hospital. She experiences the highs of performing challenging operations and the lows of watching helplessly as good people pass less than gently into that good night. She delights in her colleagues that never tire of recounting sometimes telling, sometimes hilarious "war stories" of surgical encounters past and present. She discovers that the price of survival in this place is different for each person; she must discard the warm embrace of faith to make sense of the tragedy that befalls the innocent throughout her year as a neophyte surgeon. She finds hope and confidence in herself by surviving the first year ordeals at the O.M.G. Hospital. Each chapter has a wry, gruesome, or salacious tale that shapes Izzie's character as a young woman endeavoring to succeed amidst the testosterone, emotional adolescence, blood, guts and pus that fuel this brave but sometimes bewildering world of injury and affliction.