There’s an old joke among people who work in emergency medicine: What do you call a motorcycle speeding past you? An organ donor. While obviously very sexy and cool, riding a motorcycle is just about one of the most dangerous things you can do on the road. Thousands of people die in motorcycle accidents every year, a number that would probably be much higher if most motorcyclists weren’t wearing helmets. This is pretty common knowledge for non-bikers; the guys who rip through Sturgis, South Dakota, every year; and, most important, the emergency doctors at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.
So then why on earth is Dr. Robby blasting down a Pittsburgh bridge without a helmet? On Friday, HBO Max released the opening scene of The Pitt’s highly anticipated second season, which features Robby (Noah Wyle) motorcycling to work on what we can only assume is a bike he bought in between seasons one and two (crisis alert!). The sun is rising, he’s got a slight smile on his face, and the wind is — upsettingly — whipping through his hair.
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I am concerned for my close personal friend and physician, Michael Robinavitch. Early in last season’s premiere, he went to the roof only to find his night-shift counterpart, Dr. Abbott, standing on its edge. “This is the job that keeps on giving,” Robby told him, “Nightmares, ulcers, suicidal tendencies.” This time around, with the trauma of the Pitt Fest mass shooting presumably still weighing on him, it seems that Robby is the one who doesn’t care if he lives or dies.
This does not bode well for Robby’s already precarious mental state, nor, frankly, my own. I need him to pull it together. Annoyingly, he manages to slip into the hospital without anyone seeing that he had left his dome exposed to the elements. In a perfect world, Nurse Dana would have seen him roll in and beaten the shit out of him. Fingers crossed she sets him straight later in the episode.
