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Running Out of Time
At large hospitals, emergency rooms are open around the clock. Generally, at smaller hospitals, personnel are on an "on-call status" after-hours. It takes time to gather a medical team. Carter didn't have much time.That morning, however, the Sidney Health Center happened to have a fully staffed emergency room. When Aaron rushed through the doors with Carter in his arms, Dr. Edward L. Pierce immediately took the boy into a medical bay. Confirming the uneven pupil dilation, Pierce ordered a CT scan. The CT suite staff -- the very team Aaron worked with -- was on hand at that hour. When they completed the scan, they gave Aaron the images, and with a trembling hand he put them up on the light board.
His legs buckled. The scans showed a large gray shadow -- a massive hemorrhage inside the skull. Aaron had seen patterns like this before -- and the outcome had never been good. With colleagues gathered around him, he wept.
In the emergency room, medical personnel were frantically working to stabilize Carter. There was no brain surgeon in Sidney. The closest Montana hospital able to treat brain trauma was in Billings, 250 miles to the southwest. They called for an air ambulance, but with the plane more than an hour away, Carter might not make it.
Carter's life functions were rapidly deteriorating. Nurses intubated the child, using a hand bag to force air into his lungs to keep him alive until the plane arrived.
Then a return call came from Billings. Doctors there felt that given the severity of Carter's injury, he'd be better off flying to Denver, where there was a neurosurgical center with a pediatric intensivist. Denver was 550 miles distant. Billings would send a medically equipped plane for the trip.
But Carter almost certainly didn't have that much time.
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