Dr Jack McKee is a successful surgeon at a leading hospital. He and his wife, Anne, have all the trappings of success, although Jack works such long hours that he rarely has time to see their son and has become somewhat emotionally dead to his wife. His "bedside manner" with his patients, in many cases seriously ill, is also lacking. The decorum in the operating theater is very casual and the chatter between him and his partner, Dr. Murray Kaplan, not particularly professional. (When a patient with a chest scar mentions her husband wants to know if it will go away, Jack responds that she should tell him that she is just like a "Playboy centerfold, because she has the staple marks to prove it.")