Through Hell and High Water

DR. BEN DEBOISBLANC

MEL LAGARDE

Chapter 17: BIRTHDAY OF LIFETIME -- AND AN UNEXPECTED GIFT

By Jane O. Hansen | Monday, May 22, 2006, 12:44 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

New Orleans — When Charity Hospital administrators asked for volunteers to escort patients across the street, then ride out with them on military helicopters, Granville Morse was one of the first to raise his hand.

Man, take care of patients and ride on a Black Hawk? said the emergency medicine resident. What could be better?

Others volunteered, but they all agreed “Granny” should go. This was his 34th birthday.

It was Thursday, Sept. 1, and for the first time that week, something the Charity staff had been told would happen finally did. Two military trucks with beds that sat high off the ground showed up to help evacuate the hospital’s sickest patients, ferrying them across the water to Tulane Hospital’s parking garage.

One of the patients was a boy named Jacob, about 8, who had been dropped off at Charity earlier in the week, along with five other critically ill patients from a nursing home. He had a feeding tube in his stomach and a tracheotomy for a tube into his lungs. He had no parents or other relatives by his side.

In Tulane’s stifling garage, Morse helped care for Jacob and other Charity patients. He was there when two of them died. And like Dr. Ben deBoisblanc, who had led the exodus from Charity, he watched as helicopters landed and took off from the rooftop, not with critical Charity patients but with healthy Tulane people.

Finally, at about 9:30 Thursday night, a Black Hawk arrived that could take three patients who could sit up and two on stretchers. One would be Jacob.

Who knows the patient? the man in charge of air traffic asked.

Morse raised his hand.

You’re going, the man said.

Morse climbed aboard the aircraft, and they began loading the patients. But Jacob’s spine board would not fit.

Just hand him to me, Morse said. Jacob was soaked in urine and sweat. Morse cradled the child in his arms.

Although it was dark, the young resident got his first glimpse of Katrina’s devastation that night as the helicopter headed for Louis Armstrong International Airport. Like others at Charity, his isolation had kept him from knowing the scope of the disaster. He cried as they flew over the city.

He could see tiny lights below — the flashlights of people still trapped on rooftops, waving for help.

The evacuation continued late into the night. John Holland would not rest until he got all of Charity’s critical patients out. The Georgia pilot had arrived the day before and volunteered to run air traffic control on the Tulane roof. If a military chopper with no seats landed, he put as many Charity stretchers on board as it could hold.

It was a painstaking process, just as it had been two days earlier when they evacuated Tulane’s critically ill patients. Chinooks, which could each hold 50 to 60 passengers, had suddenly quit coming. Jim Montgomery, Tulane Hospital’s president, heard from his daughter that Gov. Kathleen Blanco had just announced Tulane had been completely evacuated. She was only off by about 400 people, he thought.

Holland got on the pilot’s radio in the aircraft he had flown in on from Georgia. This is an emergency, he said. Could someone please come get these patients?

To Holland, it was the good Lord who then sent the Coast Guard. It was after midnight when its chopper arrived. Holland loaded the last three of Charity’s sickest patients; two were on ventilators.

After the Coast Guard chopper lifted off, there was silence on the rooftop. Many of those remaining broke down. The more than 30 critical Charity patients who had come to the Tulane parking garage before noon were finally gone. It had taken a little more than 12 hours to evacuate them. All but two had survived.

Under a starry night, about a dozen exhausted Charity staff lay down to sleep on the concrete floor of the parking garage. Dr. Ben was there. So was Granville Morse. He had flown back to the rooftop after dropping off Jacob and the other patients at the airport.

It was hot and humid, and some slept sitting up against the wall of the helipad to catch the slight breeze. Others slept one floor below the roof, where they had cared for patients. They scrunched up their scrubs shirts to lay their heads on. A few slept on stretchers.

Well, this is a good way to end my birthday, Morse thought. I’ll never forget this one.

Sharing the rooftop were Tulane staff members, including Associate Vice President Sharif Omar, Chief Nursing Officer Danita Sullivan, and Montgomery. Mel Lagarde, the Hospital Corporation of America executive who had stationed himself at Tulane, was also there.

Sullivan had finally gotten used to the heat, cutting off the pant legs of her scrubs to cool herself. It was still 90 degrees, and now she was freezing as sweat evaporated from her skin. She scrounged around and found three washcloths and placed them strategically on her body for warmth. Dr. Norm McSwain, Charity’s trauma director and Tulane medical school’s chief of trauma surgery, was tucked inside a red plastic hazardous materials bag, his head poking through a hole and resting on diapers.

Before closing his eyes, Morse got up to go to the bathroom. Trying to be discreet, he sneaked off to a corner of the rooftop. As he was about to relieve himself, a call came from above.

Hidey-ho, Doc!

Morse looked up. Huddled on the fire escape of a hotel about 10 feet away was a group of people. They had been living there to escape the heat inside the hotel. The helipad crew had seen them barbecuing food earlier in the week.

As they talked to Morse, the building’s owner appeared and asked whether he needed anything.

Morse looked down at the hard concrete.

Yeah, do you have any pillows?

The man disappeared inside. A few minutes later, dozens of pillows floated down from hotel to helipad.

Morse was elated. Wow, this is great.

The Charity and Tulane staffs were not on the best of terms. But just as death unites enemies in a cemetery, disaster had united them on the roof of the parking garage.

As Morse walked around the roof, he made no distinction between his Charity colleagues and the Tulane staff. Distributing his precious cargo, he felt a little like the pillow fairy.

ON WEDNESDAY: An explosion, a Marine’s arrival and a staff’s departure. Chapter 18 of 22.

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