This program is a portrait of the ebb and flow of life within the Alfred Hospital's Trauma and Emergency Department in Melbourne, Australia. In a kaleidoscopic style, Mark Fitzgerald, the Director of Emergency Services takes us into the heart of his department - a place where dramatic, life-changing events occur with relentless regularity against a background of routine order. As staff and patients share their experiences of either unexpectedly arriving at the hospital or coming home from it every day, we discover what place the big questions about life, society and human nature have in an environment that by definition strives to maintain the mechanics of life from one moment to the next.