With imagination and an eye for detail, writer and physician Jay Baruch takes readers on an unsparing ride through the strange landscape of contemporary health care to experience the bizarre, ignored, or misunderstood challenges facing healers and the ill. In this collection of short stories, communities shoulder unrelenting burdens, optimism is held with caution, and people ration their dreams and their sanity. Baruch’s vivid storytelling captures the emotionally fraught and absurd challenges he has faced during his twenty years as an emerging physician. The stories in What’s Left Out ask readers to take risks, to make leaps into unfamiliar territory, and, like the larger health care enterprise, to develop comfort and trust in the untraditional and unexpected.