Horror and humanity in Joplin

JOPLIN, Mo. - Looking back, they remember the quiet - as a last deep breath before dying.

In Saint John Regional Medical Center, newborns padded nursery in cribs. Fans hummed in an intensive care unit.

Emergency room nurse Tracy Hernandez checked an older woman at once - one of the rare cases of serious emergencies every day.

In the operating room in a corridor on the second floor, an orthopedic surgeon James "Dusty" Smith opened an infected hip.

One floor above, John Seay, a 60-year-old mechanic from Welch, Oklahoma, visited with his 83-year-old mother.Frail congestive heart failure, she doubted she would be better and chose a pink dress for her funeral.

Then, in the west, the air starts to turn. An announcement on the Status of gray speakers hospital warned of a tornado potential. Prepare.

Nobody panic. These calls are routine in Joplin, zinc and lead mining town carved into the rock and fields of Tornado Alley.

Nurses from the windows shades to protect against debris. They drove to the equipment rooms on patients randomly to be moved there.

"Chance" because the storm was not expected to hit. Visitors looked on waiting room televisions with nonchalance. Radar showed funnel clouds followed north.

In front of St. John, Amanda and Bradley sitting German in a friend's house with their son, James, 9, and Brody, 6, heedless of the weather alert. Small hail fell. The friend threw hailstones fun in the house.

"We were joking about it," Amanda would say German. "We hear the sirens all the time storm."

What no one anticipated was the black monster developing in the west, two miles outside their windows.The sky turned green-blue violent.

Run Condition Gray: Get patients to safety!

***

May 22, an EF-5 tornado slammed to the ground in Joplin, its 200 mph winds scouring a three-quarter mile wide, six-mile long strip of devastation in this city of 50,000.

Saint-Jean was zero. For 115 years, the hospital system established by the Sisters of Mercy had cured the disease in the community and injuries. Within seconds, the symbol of nine floors to take care of the city itself would be seriously injured.

Yet in many ways the story of what happened inside the Saint-Jean could better withstand a microcosm of what has been around Joplin that night.

My Apologies – 6/13/2011

To the bride in Caddy’s Bar in St. Petersburg, Fla.:

Where do I begin? I’m sorry that your name is Crystal (or is it Krystal?). I’m sorry that you got married at a beach bar in Florida where the bar rules are written on a sign in Pirate-speak. I’m sorry that your first dance was interrupted by a drunk woman in a leopard tank who put her arms around you when all you wanted to do was let your dearly beloved grope your ass to Super Freak. Luckily I have a feeling you’ll have the opportunity to get it right on your one-year anniversary.

To the guy on my flight with the back-of-neck-roll and troll-like-stature:

I’m sorry my friend and I used you as an example of the type of person who should have been weeded out by natural selection. I can explain. We were riffing on a joke about ugly Americans and you happened to be in eyesight and perfectly depict what we were talking about – you understand the mix-up. You’re probably very nice and compassionate and generally a good guy and you probably never have to use those neck-pillows that the rest of us need on flights.

To everyone I’ve come in contact with for the past month:

I’m sorry that Doctor – nay, Physician’s Assistant – Kevin didn’t figure out that I have had Strep throat for a month. According to Kev, my “over-active gag reflex” made the throat culture he took potentially misleading. My feelings were hurt that I couldn’t produce a helpful throat culture, but not as hurt as when I went back to the doctor, and K-Town wasn’t available, so I saw Larry who took two throat cultures and said “where’s that gag reflex that Kevin was talking about?” I guess that didn’t hurt my feelings as much as it made me feel vaguely like a slut. And by the way, Larry is a Nurse Practitioner. I don’t know who wins in a fight between a Physician’s Assistant and a Nurse Practitioner but I know they both can write prescriptions and speak vaguely enough at cocktail parties so that people think they’re really doctors.