It's the lucky few among us who are spared the panic and confusion, the shouting and antiseptic smells, unique to a hospital emergency room.
When the crisis passes happily, and may all crises pass happily, we return to blessed normalcy, wiping the frightening images from memory.
Minneapolis artist Anita White has taken a different approach.
From December 2016 to May 2017, White documented her family's sometimes harrowing medical experiences, and the quiet heroes who pulled them through, by creating dozens of pen and watercolor sketches.
White drew in ambulances, in hospital rooms, "and in the lowly places like the corner of the emergency department waiting room."
She drew, she said, through panic, anxiety and healing. The result is "Drawing Through Crisis With Courage and Humor," a collection of watercolor pastels, large and small, on display through mid-October at Hennepin County Medical Center in downtown Minneapolis.
White, of south Minneapolis, was a regular visitor to HCMC when her 77-year-old husband, Josh, suffered one medical challenge after another, including heart and lung ailments. She never left his side, and she never left her sketchbook behind.
"Drawing helped me keep track of the facts, and allowed me to navigate the deep philosophical waters one comes to with medical uncertainties and crisis," she said.
