HBO's pulse-pounding medical drama, The Pit, is back for season two, fresh off critical praise and five Emmy wins.

Its unflinching look at a single emergency room shift struck an especially deep chord with one group, front-line health care workers.

To understand why I travel to the actual pit, the real Pittsburgh hospital that doubles as a key location in the show.

It's part of our ongoing series on the intersection of arts and health, part of our canvas coverage.

The moment everybody needed me the most, I wasn't there. Couldn't do it, but choked.

In the final moments of season one of the pit, Dr. Michael Robbie Rabinovich, played by Noah

Wiley, delivers a wrenching emotional unraveling after an especially grueling shift in the ER.

It's the mental exhaustion, just seeing people on the worst day of their lives and trying

their best to help with those people. Unfortunately, there's also not a ton of time to sit down and

kind of grief until later maybe in your shift or maybe when you get home. For Dr. Brent Rao,

the scene is more than just a compelling storyline. He's lived it. Hello, sir. Hi, I'm Dr. Rao.

Here at Pittsburgh's Allegheny General Hospital, Dr. Rao, is known as the real-life Dr. Robbie.

He oversees the emergency department.

When you first saw the pit, what felt most true to your own experience?

The raw emotions that they do show, especially in that first season, the things that I think

a lot of us carry with us are probably more the losses, the downs, sights, sounds that you'll never forget, screams that you'll never forget, and unfortunately

carry those with you.

I think we all do in health care, especially in the emergency department.

In the series, Allegheny General Hospital, the large nonprofit hospital on Pittsburgh's

North Side, becomes the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.

The production team filmed the lobby and all the exterior shots on site.

And those real-world details also informed the set back in Burbank.

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