Waiting at a Texas Hospital for Children Who Never Arrive

It was a Tuesday. The morning text from Pam, the nurse who supervises the children’s unit at our hospital said that we had no beds open and that “early discharges will be appreciated.” I spent the morning rounding with my team of resident physicians, going from room to room, examining sick or injured kids and planning for the day. This toddler, whose lungs were still fragile from premature birth, would need more time on oxygen.

“We’ll get right on it,” I said. The call lasted a minute. I looked up, and my team was silently staring at me. “We need to get ready for a pediatric mass-casualty event,” I told them. “There is an active shooter at an elementary school in Uvalde.” They were still silent. I realized that I needed to teach these young people how to get ready to care for a huge influx of children with gunshot wounds.

We ran through the list, quickly deciding who we could safely send home, and who we could send from our intermediate-care unit to the regular unit, to make room for I.C.U. patients. I asked one resident to call the lung doctor to see if we could send home one of her cystic-fibrosis patients who would be able to take her antibiotics by mouth. I called the rehabilitation-medicine specialist, Dr. Jeannie Harden.

In the next room, a first-time mother, whose baby had been diagnosed with a skin condition, was worried about starting solid foods. What if a food allergy made the blistering come back? I sat on the bed next to her. “It’s hard when kids get a new diagnosis. You have to also remember all the ways your baby is healthy, and to enjoy the usual stuff. I wouldn’t restrict solid foods,” I said.

She called me immediately, reminding me to focus on the needs of the kids I was already responsible for, and not discharge anyone who wasn’t safe to go home. “There are always a lot of rumors,” she said. “We don’t know how many kids will be coming, and it could take hours.” She was right. I needed to be the beta-blocker, to keep everybody’s pulse low.

My daughter, a pediatrician, had the same experience at Yale New Haven Hospital trauma center waiting for Sandy Hook survivors. None ever arrived. She's never forgotten.

78 minutes is a long time when you’re bleeding out.

If this is not a turning point in your country's perplexing addiction to guns, your country is irredeemably lost.

The problem with the 2nd Amendment is that the American people's right to bear arms against tyranny has been overtaken by tyranny's right to bear arms against the American people.

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