"I Saw What I Saw"

You've just seen a car accident, and the police want to take your statement. You were there when it happened, but you were too focused on trying to find your ringing cell phone. You tell them what you saw, but what is it that you really saw? Did you see the parallel parked car try to merge into oncoming traffic? Did you see how its driver never checked to see if any cars were behind it? Did you notice how the car in the right lane slammed on its brakes to try and avoid hitting the car? Or was what you saw completely insignificant- the parked car 's engine powering on, and then its left passenger door being crushed? Our perspectives can be crucial in the real world, and what we think happened usually isn't what happened at all. In the Grey's Anatomy episode "I Saw What I Saw," the chief and the hospital board are faced with a very real problem- the mysterious and unexplained death of Cathy Becker- and have to sift through the statements of the thirteen doctors on the scene. In a crisis, people become less aware of the specifics of their surroundings, and only see what their looking for, or things that seems odd. They don't know who's standing in front of them, who they've just bumped into, they just interact and move on. People will push through a crowd to find something or someone, and they won't notice if a long-lost friend is the person they've just pushed aside. Crises make people unfocused- they see one thing happened, and judge it as completely normal, but if they had bothered to move closer and really see it happen, they'd realize there's nothing normal about it. For example, Dr. Lexie Grey watched as Dr. Alex Karev performed a cricothyrotomy on Mrs. Becker, who was working closely with Dr. Reed Adamson. Lexie said, "Dr. Karev seemed to have it under control," while Reed had a completely different account. "Karve seemed totally out of control...He was pale, shaky, just really unsteady....And he kept saying something about hitting her carotid." The perspective we have can affect the day's events. From one difference in perspective, a woman died. The truth is, our eyes only see what we tell them to look for, and what they actually see makes all the difference.