On Sept. 12, a freight train and a Metrolink passenger train crashed in Chatsworth, killing 25 people and injuring 135. The injured were taken to hospitals throughout the area, including UCLA Medical Center. Mark Morocco is an emergency room physician there.
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Stay close and see what I see. Stay close and see heroes.
The steel door of the trauma elevator opens. It's as big as a single-car garage, with only three stops -- the helipad, the emergency room and the operating room. Here they come from the first helicopter -- two ordinary men who had been trying to get home, the most routine of commutes, riding a train and dreaming of anything but getting off at this unexpected stop.
David White, our trauma tech, pivots the first gurney at the corner between the two main trauma rooms and the two critical-care rooms (for the less badly injured), waiting for a split-second decision from me. The young guy strapped in the basket is screaming about his legs, trapped in a tight, hot-orange splint. He goes to one of the backup rooms. The other passenger is silent and nearly still -- his cut clothing like a pile of dirty laundry on the gurney. He can't talk to me, his face somehow serene even though his skin is torn open, twisted and raw from some inconceivable force. He lights me up like a jolt of electricity. He goes straight into Trauma 1, fast.
Twenty people -- a knot of ER docs and trauma surgeons -- make a hole for his gurney. Marshall Morgan, the chief of emergency medicine, and Gil Cryer, chief of trauma, lead the team. There's maybe 60 years of experience between them. He's in good hands.
Another chopper is on the roof, and two more criticals are coming down the elevator. Is that four more then? I ask the nurse striding alongside. She shakes her head -- doesn't know. A helicopter medic runs past us. He needs his basket back. Then he's gone, steel basket jingling. What sound does a hero make?
I shortcut through still-empty Trauma 2 as we run back to Leg Man.
Without a word or an order, two experienced nurses assemble the drugs, the needles and cutting tools. Nurse Chris Battista and I make brief eye contact, and I know that they're both ready -- the edgy guardians at the center of every hospital's universe. What color are a hero's eyes?
In Room 3, Leg Man is screaming. Scissors are flashing, cutting him free of his clothing. I talk to him, going fast, asking his name and the basics -- Do you remember the accident? "No" Where is your pain? "Head and neck and legs." No medical problems, no allergies, no surgeries.
