这部作品是关于2005年卡特里娜飓风袭击新奥尔良时一家医院发生的极具争议性的医疗事件。在飓风袭击后，医院失去了电力和通讯，被洪水围困，医护人员和病患们陷入极度困境。面对缺乏救援和急剧恶化的环境，医院内的医生和护士不得不在伦理和道德抉择中挣扎。一些患者因无法获救或无法承受痛苦而接受了致命药物注射，引发了激烈争议。
这部作品通过深入调查和采访，展现了灾难时期医护人员在道德和生死抉择中的压力和挣扎，同时也探讨了医院应对极端灾难的准备和政府立法下医生责任豁免等议题。作者用细腻的笔触描绘了人性在绝望环境下的表现，引发了对生命、责任以及医疗伦理的深刻思考。这部作品不仅获得了普利策新闻奖，还被评为21世纪最优秀的新闻纪实作品之一，并获得了多项重要奖项的认可。
Sheri Fink
谢丽•芬克
斯坦福大学医学硕士、医学博士，医生，后成为《纽约时报》医疗卫生记者、灾难及冲突地区救援人员。她借助自己的专业优势，多次报道灾区和战场的医疗情况，其中2010年以卡特里娜飓风事件的报道获得普利策奖、美国国家杂志奖、美国记者奖等大奖，并出版了多本关于医疗、疫情的著作。
2020年，芬克开始涉足电视制片领域，与Netflix制作了获艾美奖提名的疫情系列纪录片，Apple TV美剧《医院五日》的制片人
芬克还常年围绕应急准备、新闻学等主题进行讲座，是杜兰大学Celia Scott Weatherhead公共卫生与热带医学学院国际健康与可持续发展系兼职副教授。
JCAHO had nothing to say about how realistic emergency plans had to be. Like biblical passages, the standards were written in a way that invited a generous range of interpretations.
For a moment, Gershanik considered the larger reality, the competing priorities that had emerged as waters suffocated an entire city. He was only doing what is ingrained in a doctor —advocating for his own patients — but now he saw that the struggle to save lives extended far beyond the two critically ill neonates in the helicopter, or Memorial’s entire population of sick babies, or even the whole hospital, much as it had seemed like the universe when he was back there.
They said the conditions in the Superdome are breaking down, and it is a madhouse. Now, again, this is all hearsay from the folks who are leaving the dome, that there have been a couple of murders, people committing suicide jumping from the balconies, rapes, everything.
Looters had stolen drugs. Corpses were rotting. "The hospital was like a death camp." In his closing argument, TV attorney Alan Shore claimed that New Orleans was not part of America after Katrina. Different norms applied. "During that horrendous week, the United States of America was nowhere to be found." Only the doctor, by helping the patients go peacefully, retained her "innate sense of humanity”.
译文纪实(共174册)，这套丛书还有《寻路中国》《与荒原同行》《鱼翅与花椒》《造假的科学家》《老后两代破产》等。
