Through Hell and High Water

DR. BEN DEBOISBLANC

MEL LAGARDE

CHAPTER 15: SCAVENGING FOR FOOD, FEARING FOR THEIR SAFETY

By Jane O. Hansen | Saturday, May 20, 2006, 05:44 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

New Orleans — Susan Sanborn heard the sound but wasn’t sure what it was. It came from somewhere outside Charity Hospital. Was someone setting off fireworks?

Sanborn looked at another nurse, and he answered her question before she could ask it.

Yeah, that’s what it is, he said.

Gunshots.

For all the devastation it had done to Charity, the 5-foot-deep floodwater protected the hospital like a moat around a castle. Sanborn began to worry about what would happen when the water receded. People might storm the hospital — there were rumors of armed gangs.

On Thursday morning, Sept. 1, Sanborn’s unit got the order yet again: Prepare for evacuation. Staff pinned to each patient’s gown a plastic biohazard specimen bag that held a medication list, a discharge summary from the physician and the name of the person’s next of kin. Under the critical patients’ arms, they tucked paper bags filled with three days’ worth of medicine.

More than 48 hours after losing their emergency power, Charity doctors had abandoned hope that the government would come. They had begun taking patients by boat to Tulane Hospital’s parking garage to be flown out by helicopter. But Sanborn had no idea where they were going or who would care for them. She assumed someone had arranged for their continued medical care. But she still worried about their fate.

The student nurse’s dedication to Charity patients extended to the institution itself. She was so proud of her hospital. She knew a few co-workers didn’t feel the same attachment. They considered Charity a hellhole.

So what if it wasn’t a new, shiny, state-of-the-art hospital? Sanborn loved the rough-and-ready place, a Bellevue of the South that served the neediest. She felt at home there. Her own childhood had been tough, and she knew what it was like to be abandoned and live on welfare. Some of her patients shared similar backgrounds, and she didn’t mind giving back to people like herself.

One of her patients was a native of Ecuador, an illegal immigrant who had come to this country to make a better life for his family back home. Then he had been in a car accident and lost his leg below the knee. On the note she pinned to him, Sanborn wrote: Next of kin: U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Please try to find his family.

The staff had run out of spine boards for carrying patients down to the ramp outside Charity’s emergency room. When a resident asked Sanborn whether she had a screwdriver, she broke into a nurse’s locker to get one. The resident removed the legs from tables, and they taped patients to the tabletops.

After she helped carry down all the unit’s patients, Sanborn sat down and cried out of exhaustion and relief. Among those who had gotten out were two elderly men from a nursing home who had been dropped off at Charity earlier in the week. They had arrived on ventilators, unable to talk and with no medical records. Sanborn felt particularly protective of the men — one black, one white — whom the staff, not knowing their names, had dubbed Ebony and Ivory.

All nine of her unit’s patients were going to make it, she believed. They were going to live.

The patients were gone from Sanborn’s unit by 1 p.m. Thursday. But word began to filter through the hospital that there was no plan to evacuate Charity’s staff and faculty.

Some staff members called Don Smithburg, CEO of the state’s public hospitals, in tears. Smithburg had been at the state command post all week in Baton Rouge. He understood their despair and felt angry and frustrated by his inability to effect their rescue. Some were young and fresh out of school. This was the first disaster they’d faced. They felt helpless, forgotten and afraid.

With the patients gone, the goal on Sanborn’s unit was to set up camp. With no water pressure, she and another nurse devised a makeshift toilet. They found a bedside commode, then searched for plastic bags to line it.

Sanborn had come to the hospital prepared to ride out the storm, with cans of tuna fish, crackers, peanut butter and water. Others had done the same. And at least once a truck had dropped off some packaged food. Now Sanborn made trips to vacated areas of the hospital, scavenging for half-used jugs of water, granola bars and other food that had been left behind.

Remaining on the unit were Sanborn, eight nurses and two of their children. How can we shut down the unit so we’re safe? her supervisor asked.

Even if the floodwaters did not recede, they began to fear that those inside the hospital were growing as desperate for food and water as those outside. Sanborn didn’t mind sharing her provisions; she just didn’t want anyone to hurt her for them.

They locked what doors they could, then moved tables and chairs against them. The main entrance could not be locked, so they set up a barricade of supply carts. If anyone entered, at least they would hear them.

Like most public hospitals, Charity had holding cells for prisoners requiring medical care. The nurses asked one of the prison guards whether he would mind sleeping in their unit. When he said he had six handguns, Sanborn asked him something she had never before contemplated:

Can you teach me to shoot?

TOMORROW: At Tulane Hospital, preparing for the worst, hoping for a Chinook. Chapter 16 of 22.

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