![]() ![]() “Where are you shot?” Bowerman asked each patient. They worked in a strange stillness, a quiet shock that filled the ambulance bays. He stood in the alley leading to the ambulance bays, bathed in flashing lights as he and Debbie Bowerman pulled people out of vehicles. “Ten more,” Director of Emergency Services Dorita Sondereker always told him. “How many more can you take?” a commander from the Clark County Fire Department asked every few minutes. All shared one last name, a silent family brought together by bullets.ĭebbie Trauma: Female, gunshot wound to the chest.Įddie Trauma: Male, gunshot wound to the head.įreddie Trauma: Male, gunshot wound to the belly. First names were assigned alphabetically, like hurricanes. Patients who couldn’t tell a doctor their name took on a new identity. There was no time to build medical records or create charts, so doctors wrote notes directly on patients’ bodies. Nurses stuffed the medicine into the pockets of their scrubs, along with the blood bank’s entire supply of O-negative. Behind everybody trailed a squadron of Environmental Services staff, who ripped off bloodied bed sheets and mopped up trails of blood.Ī hospital pharmacist unlocked the stock of drugs used to intubate patients. Transporters pushed patients inside, where they met doctors and nurses carrying spare gloves and IV bags. The staff's collective attention shifted to the ER. Then the sirens arrived, carrying their wounded. Hospital transporters brought every gurney and wheelchair they could find downstairs, and Menes pointed them outside, to the two curved drives that led to the ER’s sliding doors. MacIntyre directed six surgical residents there to stand ready. “I need every operating room open,” Menes said. Dave MacIntyre, put crash carts in the trauma bays, four curtained-off areas that took up two walls in the ER.ĭoctors in place, Menes found a secretary at the front desk and told her to call every surgeon and scrub tech she could find. Menes sent the other ER doctors to the diagnostic area, a group of half-rooms just behind the waiting room. A doctor outside could filter through waves of patients and ensure a hospital’s resources went to the most critically injured. But he learned that the most important position was at the front door. He thought that was the most important place to be. As a medical resident in Detroit he worked a Super Bowl, stationed in a room that would fill with victims if terrorists struck. Menes decided he would stand in front of the hospital, where the life-and-death decisions would be made.
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