THIS WEEK ON "NY MED," A TRAUMA SURGEON TREATS A MAN WITH A BIZARRE EATING DISORDER AND A HEART SURGEON TELLS YOUNG RESIDENTS TO SMARTEN UP

For a full year ABC News cameras had unprecedented access to document the mayhem and the miracles that occur daily inside the walls of Columbia and Weill Cornell Medical Centers -- the crown jewels of the prestigious New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City -- for the eight-part series "NY Med." Lutheran Medical Center also participated, adding a Brooklyn dimension to the series. In "Episode 104," which airs TUESDAY, JULY 31 (10:00-11:00 p.m., ET), viewers will meet the following patients, doctors and nurses:

Valeria Simone came to the U.S. as an illegal immigrant crossing the Rio Grande on an inflatable raft. Today she is one of her hospital's top trauma surgeons. A self-described "hot-blooded Latin," she flirts with male colleagues, cooks up a Tabasco sauce storm, and rescues colleagues when their patient starts to crash during surgery. In this episode she treats a man with a bizarre eating disorder that compels him to consume objects made out of metal.

Jan Quaegebeur is widely considered the world's greatest pediatric heart surgeon, a man who, colleagues say, can reconstruct a child's heart "out of spare parts." Here he must try to remove a tumor the size of a golf ball that is lodged in a four-year-old girl's heart, but her family knows that even the best may not be good enough.

In the ER, Diana Costine and Katie Duke struggle to restore a heartbeat to a man who arrives more dead than alive. In addition, Diana has a difficult patient who begins by insulting her and later decides he has fallen in love with her.

Len Girardi is known as an "old school" surgeon who believes that today's residents are coddled by only working 80 hours a week when once they would have had to work a hundred and twenty. He quizzes his young charges relentlessly and mercilessly. But watch him struggle with a patient's ruptured aorta in the OR, and like his residents, viewers will become believers in Len.

"NY Med" follows the irascible, compassionate and, at times, cocky attending surgeons who try to change the trajectory of lives by relying on sheer medical brilliance and a healthy dose of old fashioned good luck. The eight-part series takes a candid look at how cutting edge medicine often makes the difference, although even the best surgeons can find themselves flirting with disaster. The raucous ER staff trades jibes with strong-willed New Yorkers in moments that can be poignantly heartbreaking or off-the-hook hilarious. These doctors spend far more time with each other than with their families, developing complicated and intertwined personal relationships.

Terence Wrong is executive producer. Erica Baumgart and Chris Perera are supervising producers. Monica DelaRosa is series producer and Andy Genovese is the broadcast producer.