In these often intense and searing personal essays, a lawyer describes her seesawing emotions over a misdiagnosis of what she was told was an inoperable tumor--and her anger at her physician's cavalier attitude about the mistake; a physician formerly employed by an HMO rails at the accepted practice of managed care organizations finding legal loopholes to trump a patient's needs; a physician wrestles with the idea of doctors policing themselves, knowing he is powerless in the face of an incompetent colleague. An expansion of a special issue of the journal Creative Nonfiction, this volume of essays by patients and their caretakers, physicians, and health care providers is intended to serve as a foundation for future dialogue and a means to begin to heal the wounds in our health care system. The accompanying 80-minute audio CD contains three of the essays read by actors and a panel discussion of the ethical dimension of the issues raised.