Just before sunset on January 12, 2010, a powerful earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Within a few terrifying minutes, over one-hundred thousand men, women, and children were killed. Thousands more were critically injured, and millions were displaced to rapidly erected tent cities or hospitals across the country. Swiftly came the international response. Health care professionals from every corner of the world dropped their work and descended on Haiti.

Phillip Scott was a no-nonsense, suffer-no-fools Seattle trauma surgeon. His response to his university dean’s memo looking for volunteers was, I’m not interested in charity work. It’s not my thing. After all, if you build a city of a million on cinder blocks on a fault line you’re asking for trouble, right?

But what happens when such a man is immersed in a catastrophic human tragedy? When the victims become human, not statistics?