RELEASE, BUT NO relief. As I had for so many nights, I relived The Call. The afternoon. At 3:39—I know because every TV station in America reported the exact time—we received a call that there’d been another psychotic group of teenagers who lost their minds and blew half their former classmates to bits. This time it was no rural school in Arkansas or Colorado, but right in Manhattan. All the hospitals in the area would be receiving the wounded. My mind did a hop, skip and giant leap over the unthinkable: that the school might be Stuyvesant. That my son might be one of the wounded.
I was head of the ER. I called on every available doctor, intern, and resident in the hospital. Ordered more nurses. Made sure we had extra fresh frozen plasma. Stationed all the extra beds. I called in all available surgeons. We were ready. Within minutes the ambulances screeched in with the paramedics in states of panic like I’d never seen. I directed who to do what to whom. Blood spouted and leaked from the children’s shredded bodies. Their howls pierced and echoed throughout the halls. For this brutality, there was no preparation. Parents already clamored in the waiting room wanting to KNOW! And so, desperately, quietly, did I. But I had lives to save, and then one of the stretchers barreled in and I saw Castor. My boy.
I heard the paramedic’s voice—“multiple bullet wounds—one to the chest cavity, bp dropping rapidly, heart taching at 130 …”
The first patient you have who dies is forever marked on you. Mine was a fifty-four-year old woman named Elise Rosenberg. She came to the hospital for minor arm surgery, which went fine. A blood clot had formed and then went to her heart while she was in recovery. Everyone warns you of the first-death trauma. Doesn’t help. You think about quitting. If there’s something you did wrong. You can’t understand the harrowing fragility of life resting in your hands until it happens. How a patient or family member’s life is forever changed by the delivery of unforgiving news; how fast the promise of tomorrow can end; that time is merciless. And so begins an emotional hardening and denial. There is no other way to survive. I was no different, never confronting the possibility that “it” could happen to my child, my wife … Although deep inside I had imagined and repressed many horrors, you know the day of reckoning will, one day, inevitably come.
When mine came, shock took over. It’s astounding how much pressure and pain the body and emotions can absorb. Suddenly time slowed, a long tape delay to my brain, which blocked the message: my son is dying. I didn’t, couldn’t fail now. I couldn’t. I touched his arm pretending to find his fading pulse. I told one of the residents to prep him for immediate surgery in the OR. I didn’t dare tell anyone he was my son. I moved onto the other children and two teachers who lay bleeding, moaning, struggling for their lives. I detailed who and what and in what order things should be done. This was my job. I had trained all my professional life for the Big Emergency.
Quietly, I asked one of the volunteers to call my wife at home, studio, cell phone, and tell her to get to the hospital right away. She did not ask why.
The signal came that Castor was prepped and ready. I chose to operate on him, for if he died then I would blame no one, only myself. I prayed to the god of Abraham and Isaac and all gods to help me spare my son’s life. He was conscious and I whispered in his ear, “I love you” and he whispered back in his last seconds of consciousness, “Where’s mom? Can I see her?” I bent over and kissed him and hugged him. And then, as I attempted to remove the bullet from his chest cavity … A voice penetrated saying aloud what I knew, “Stop, he’s gone.” I clenched my jaw, my arms and hands cradled him, and I held my breath until someone, I don’t remember who, removed him. I felt like my insides were collapsing—my life was disappearing with his life.
I still don’t know how I continued that day. It’s as if someone else took over my body. I worked until all who we could save were saved. Two more children died that day in my emergency room. One of them named Bobby Skirpan. Eleven others, who were seriously wounded, survived.
Finally, I asked a nurse to bring in Sarah, who arrived hours too late. I went into my office. I stared at her red eyes and beaten face. From each of us came no words. Only silence.
Then I broke down.