The call comes in around 4:15 p.m. A man was involved in a motorcycle crash and is being rushed by ambulance to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo.

Within minutes the hospital's trauma team is mobilized, dozens of specialists circling from around campus and falling into assigned places like tumblers in a lock. Pages go out to doctors, nurses, a surgeon, a radiation tech, a social worker, a chaplain. In the entertainment world, they'd call it showtime. These people call it Thursday afternoon.

On this particular day, the patient is conscious and responding to questions, but clearly in pain. He is stripped down, and the team crowds around him, monitoring his vitals and checking different body parts for injury.

The "primary survey" -- a quick, acronym-friendly check of airways, breathing, circulation, disability and exposure -- comes up clean, so another specialist wheels in an X-ray machine. Then it's off to the CT scanner for more tests.

Between stations, a physician assistant named Adam Phillips asks the man why he wasn't wearing a helmet.

"I just did my hair," comes the response, though it could be influenced by the morphine another team member just injected into the patient. "Can you imagine putting a helmet on that?"

'That was a good day'

Life as a member of UVRMC's Trauma Service is unpredictable. One day, you could spend your whole shift filling out paperwork and waiting for a call; another, you could be praying for relief as back-to-back patients come through the door, clinging to life with barely a heartbeat.

As a member of the team, though, you can count on one thing: You, and all of your colleagues, wouldn't be there if you weren't passionate about saving lives. It just wouldn't be worth it. With that goal in mind, all the pressures of the workplace fall into the background.

Robert Sheen, a nurse practitioner on the service, has seen his share of tough assignments and tough times during his four years here. But don't let anybody tell you he doesn't love his job.

"Some of the patients that we've seen, I had no reason to believe that they would survive, let alone thrive," he said. "It is such a rewarding feeling to see a person I never thought would make it in the first 24 hours walk out of the hospital with a bright future ahead of them."

The job's clearly not all sunshine and dandelions; it's also fraught with technically exacting and emotionally trying duties, and quite a few long nights. Sheen said it's not altogether unusual to start an early afternoon shift and not emerge into the fresh outside air until the following morning.

A couple weeks ago, six trauma patients were rolled into the hospital within one afternoon, each requiring the entire team's attention.

"It seems like every couple of weeks we get this crazy period where everything hits at once," he said. "That's when I ask myself, 'Man, don't they have an opening in dermatology?' "

By contrast, Phillips said all the chaos is part of what attracts him to the job. Earlier this month, he spent nearly 21 hours straight in the ER before there was enough of a lull to head home around 3 a.m. Though it can be -- and often is -- exhausting, it's worth it, he said.

"It was just one person after another after another after another," he said. "Those are the days when I'm driving home that I think, 'That was a good day.' "

'There's going to be tragedies'

There are days when not everything goes well. There are days when a badly injured patient comes in and, though the hospital is obliged to do everything it can to help, it's clear the chance of survival is low, said Dr. Craig Cook, trauma medical director. He said it's a doctor's duty to remain objective in those situations -- but it isn't always easy.

"In order to do our job correctly, in the heat of the moment you can't be emotionally attached," he said. "Kids that are seriously injured that I cannot save -- I have a very tough time with that."

The other team members made no qualms about it: Letting a child die on your watch is the hardest part of the job.

"Those are the times when it's extremely difficult to face the next patient," Sheen said.

But circumstances often compel team members to do just that, with little or no time for recuperation. Yes, they are seasoned professionals who are accustomed to working in the face of death, Phillips said, but they are not machines -- and the emotional tolls can add up.

No training can prepare you for that, he said.

"The nature of our job just puts us in circumstances where there's going to be tragedies," he said. "Whatever I did receive just wasn't adequate for the issues that do come up."

Phillips said there is a counselor on staff, but team members seldom pay a visit. Instead, they just get back to work -- though each member carries the memories like scars, their eyes glossing over for a quiet moment when they're asked about the cases they remember most.

For Sheen, it's a kid that died a while ago from injuries he sustained while sledding at a park.

"That was something that really bothered me," he said. "Those are things that you don't forget."

'Go home and hug your family'

Most of the injuries the trauma team sees on a daily basis are from car and recreational vehicle crashes, and most happen during the summer. Encountering such things every day has a way of changing one's personal feelings and habits, Cook said.

"My kids aren't going to have an ATV," he said. "These sorts of things I see too often on a daily basis."

Sheen agreed, adding skateboards and trampolines to the list. But he said his experience has led to a split in his personality: Though he's more protective of his kids now, he's less worried about their injures after they occur. Seeing the worst-case scenarios can shift one's confidence in unusual ways, he said.

Families also feel the exhaustive effects of the long hours demanded by the Trauma Service, Cook said. As a surgeon, it's not uncommon to work a 40-hour shift, he said. That requires a certain level of understanding from loved ones.

"I miss more family functions than I make," he said. "But there are lives that are saved that otherwise would have been lost."

Somewhere between the late nights, the long hours and the victories and defeats, the trauma team strikes a balance. Whether it's in their nature or it's the result of refinement forced upon them by dire situations, they appear to live reasonably well-adjusted lives while dealing with life and death on a daily basis.

At the end of the day, Sheen said, there's only one thing to do.

"Go home and hug your family," he said.

And maybe, if everything works out just right, someone else will get the chance to do the same because of the team's efforts.

"I know that I'm extremely lucky that I'm not dead, and I'm extremely lucky that I'm not paralyzed," said Alisha Walton, a Provo resident who broke her neck in a scooter crash earlier this month and is now in recovery. "I love these guys here. They're the best."

• Ace Stryker can be reached at astryker@heraldextra.com.