him he was smart. Kids aren’t born without hope. But it’s easy to grow up where we grew up, seeing death and destruction around us all the time, and think it’s normal. And it’s also difficult to hope for a life you’ve never seen beyond the television screen, to believe it is truly within your grasp.
Like a survivor pulled from the wreckage over a pile of dead bodies, I stood in that hospital room wondering:
Why? Why me? Why had I survived? Why had I made it out?
The guilt felt so overwhelming that I couldn’t think clearly.
T he brothers kept coming. Night after night. Week after week. Young men, wasting their skills and smarts on the streets, young brothers who reminded me of the person I used to be. Then came one whose physical appearance made me do a double take.
It was an uncharacteristically hot day in April 2001 when I heard a commotion in the ambulance entrance outside the hospital.
“We need a stretcher over here!” a security guard yelled.
He was the first to notice the guy who had somehow lifted himself from a nearby sidewalk and stumbled around the corner to the glass doors of the ambulance bay. He was pounding on the door with the little energy he had left. His bloody hand streaked the clear glass a dark red.
“We need help now!” the guard persisted.
I grabbed the first free stretcher I saw and dashed with other hospital workers toward the noise. Outside, the patient I would come to know as Legend lay slumped against the door. His tattered flesh oozed blood from quarter-sized holes all over his body. We lifted him onto the gurney and ran at top speed toward the resuscitation bay. I was glad I’d worn my Nike sneakers with my scrubs that day. Comfort was important, and so was the ability to move fast.
“Doc, I’m going to die,” Legend uttered, spitting up blood. He was determined to get the words out: “Please tell my family, my kids, I love them.”
I looked down to reassure him and was startled by what I saw: His face resembled mine. Legend appeared to be in his late twenties, like me, with the same muscular medium build, the samehoney-colored complexion, and the same neat, short haircut. He seemed dazed, and his eyes followed my every move. He reached up for my hand and attempted to speak. Instead, more blood spurted out.
“Hang in there, man,” I said. “You are not going to die.”
But who was I fooling? The more clothes we cut off, the more bullet holes I counted. Legend had taken two gun blasts to the abdomen, another two to the chest, and there were two superficial wounds. The high-caliber bullets had torn through his vital organs. The floor in the trauma bay was now slippery with his blood, and I struggled to keep my footing as I maneuvered quickly around the bed and hooked him to a heart monitor. His blood pressure was low and his heart rate high. Another member of the team inserted an IV to deliver a saline solution and blood. He was struggling for air, so I hurriedly inserted a breathing tube in his mouth to connect him to a ventilator. With obvious bullet wounds in the chest and trouble breathing, he most likely had a collapsed lung. I needed to insert a chest tube, and quickly. I’d done it only twice before, but I knew better than to hesitate. My years of street sports always helped me through tricky times like these. Back then I’d had the confidence I needed to go for the winning shot in pickup basketball. I talked myself into that same zone now as I grabbed a scalpel and made a two-inch incision on the side of his chest:
You’ve got this. You can do it. Stay calm and steady
.
Next, I probed the cavity with a blunt instrument, trying to make my way to the lung. It took only a few seconds to puncture the connective tissue and reach it. A whoosh of air and then a rush of blood spurted out of the hole. The lung had collapsed and looked like a crumpled wad of paper. As the built-up pressure inside the chest cavity escaped, the shriveled lung began to re-expand. I
Like a survivor pulled from the wreckage over a pile of dead bodies, I stood in that hospital room wondering:
Why? Why me? Why had I survived? Why had I made it out?
The guilt felt so overwhelming that I couldn’t think clearly.
T he brothers kept coming. Night after night. Week after week. Young men, wasting their skills and smarts on the streets, young brothers who reminded me of the person I used to be. Then came one whose physical appearance made me do a double take.
It was an uncharacteristically hot day in April 2001 when I heard a commotion in the ambulance entrance outside the hospital.
“We need a stretcher over here!” a security guard yelled.
He was the first to notice the guy who had somehow lifted himself from a nearby sidewalk and stumbled around the corner to the glass doors of the ambulance bay. He was pounding on the door with the little energy he had left. His bloody hand streaked the clear glass a dark red.
“We need help now!” the guard persisted.
I grabbed the first free stretcher I saw and dashed with other hospital workers toward the noise. Outside, the patient I would come to know as Legend lay slumped against the door. His tattered flesh oozed blood from quarter-sized holes all over his body. We lifted him onto the gurney and ran at top speed toward the resuscitation bay. I was glad I’d worn my Nike sneakers with my scrubs that day. Comfort was important, and so was the ability to move fast.
“Doc, I’m going to die,” Legend uttered, spitting up blood. He was determined to get the words out: “Please tell my family, my kids, I love them.”
I looked down to reassure him and was startled by what I saw: His face resembled mine. Legend appeared to be in his late twenties, like me, with the same muscular medium build, the samehoney-colored complexion, and the same neat, short haircut. He seemed dazed, and his eyes followed my every move. He reached up for my hand and attempted to speak. Instead, more blood spurted out.
“Hang in there, man,” I said. “You are not going to die.”
But who was I fooling? The more clothes we cut off, the more bullet holes I counted. Legend had taken two gun blasts to the abdomen, another two to the chest, and there were two superficial wounds. The high-caliber bullets had torn through his vital organs. The floor in the trauma bay was now slippery with his blood, and I struggled to keep my footing as I maneuvered quickly around the bed and hooked him to a heart monitor. His blood pressure was low and his heart rate high. Another member of the team inserted an IV to deliver a saline solution and blood. He was struggling for air, so I hurriedly inserted a breathing tube in his mouth to connect him to a ventilator. With obvious bullet wounds in the chest and trouble breathing, he most likely had a collapsed lung. I needed to insert a chest tube, and quickly. I’d done it only twice before, but I knew better than to hesitate. My years of street sports always helped me through tricky times like these. Back then I’d had the confidence I needed to go for the winning shot in pickup basketball. I talked myself into that same zone now as I grabbed a scalpel and made a two-inch incision on the side of his chest:
You’ve got this. You can do it. Stay calm and steady
.
Next, I probed the cavity with a blunt instrument, trying to make my way to the lung. It took only a few seconds to puncture the connective tissue and reach it. A whoosh of air and then a rush of blood spurted out of the hole. The lung had collapsed and looked like a crumpled wad of paper. As the built-up pressure inside the chest cavity escaped, the shriveled lung began to re-expand. I
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