Everyone needs help: routine, urgent, and emergent. Sometimes you need a hero. They are waiting for you in the Emergency Department. It’s a hell of a place to wait. Not the kind of place from which you send postcards, except for this one from the NLM: Operation Emergency Room.

Airway management is more complicated than the A-B-C’s. When you can’t breathe, the question becomes–as this poster asks in Slovenian– are you healthy? Are you?

Songs about putting someone under, making that first cut, and (gulp!) waking them up. The cover art is in Polish: Stopien ryzyka!

Songs for taking call— signout, triaging the ED, answering pages with PRNs, and working the floors. On the cover, Sir Wm. Osler, the patron saint of being on call, soars above it all with stoic detachment.

Songs about labeling specimens, spinning down platelets, and meeting someone at the blood bank. The picture is an NIH advert. Dial 64509 to check the turnip’s blood type.

One is better? Two is better? Songs about blindness and seeing. The cover art is a vintage eye chart. The middle row is for children and the illiterate.

Songs about getting lost inside your own head while hospitalized in padded rooms. The cover art is a vintage Japanese ad for haloperidol.

Songs *groan* from the heart and for mending broken hearts. The cover art is courtesy of the McGovern Historical Center.

Sleep and dreams are measured by the polysomnographic needle. When you reach Stage R, you may be seeing threatening animals, like this dream preserved at the NLM.

Birthing songs for NSVDs, VBACs, and even miscarriages. The cover includes what looks like a birthing cape. You may be an obstetrics superhero, but try something a bit more sanitary, please.