The Emergency Room is the healthcare service most used by youths. Two principle phenomena bring them in: accidents and somatic manifestations. These have one factor in common : a body that is both agent and victim of adolescent disorders and acts. Using research conducted in five hospitals in Rome between 2000 and 2002, most notably at San Eugenio Emergency Services, we offer some thoughts on the clinical value and the evolving function of the onetime clinical encounter (meeting « just once »). Taking into account the different time schemes at play in this sort of meeting space – like crisis situations or the element of surprise – we will see how the Emergency Room interview can provide an opportunity for « creative risk » for a time, a long time within an instant, but also for a new perspective on the event the adolescent has experienced, if we can be receptive to his paralyzed time scheme and allow him to appropriate our own life history.