Noah Wyle

I remembered the gang member that I tried to keep alive by squeezing two units of blood.

And she's just listing these names.

And she's, you know, getting teary-eyed.

And she finishes, and I said, my goodness, Mom, I was on a medical show for 15 years.

You never told me that.

And she said, well, that wasn't real.

I said, well, this one wasn't either.

And she said, but it felt real.

And it brought all that up for me.

Isn't that funny?

And so here I am in my own kitchen having this lovely sort of cathartic and catalytic moment with my mother.

And I asked her, I said, the four-year-old, when was that?

She said, oh, I think your brother was probably about four at the time.

I think that's why it hit me.

And then I thought to myself, oh, so you came home and you made us dinner that night and you helped us with our homework?

Wow.

That's 35 years it's been in there.

Came out last Sunday.

That's as hard as it gets.

We do these debriefs to try to give a sense of closure, meaning to difficult cases so that they won't linger.