Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [58]
Without hesitating, Giordano looked at Gens and Price and said, “You better let me do this one.” Normally he would have let them handle the procedure—in fact, he hadn’t inserted a chest tube in years. But he thought it would be irresponsible to put such pressure on the two residents. If mistakes were made, he wanted to be the surgeon to own them.
Giordano asked for the chest tube and a No. 10 scalpel. The scalpel, made of high-grade steel, was about as heavy as a fountain pen but so sharp that it cut through skin with the slightest pressure. Giordano told Reagan to relax and then went to work.
He began by slicing into the skin about eight inches below Reagan’s left armpit and pulling apart the tissue with his gloved fingers. He gently pushed a Crile clamp, a skinny scissorlike device, into a two-inch gap between two ribs. With his fingers and the clamp, he pried away fat and muscle, mining a hole into the president’s chest cavity. The space was slightly too small, so he had to force the clear plastic tube through. He slid it eight inches into Reagan’s chest and sutured it into place before attaching it to a Pleur-evac device, which suctions out and collects blood. Blood started pouring into the Pleur-evac’s plastic container.
As the tube began to relieve some of the intense pressure in the president’s chest, Reagan became calmer. An anesthesiologist gently patted his right shoulder and leaned down to his ear. “Everything is going to be okay,” he said.
Looking up from the gurney, Reagan spotted Jerry Parr, one of the few familiar faces within view. “I hope they are all Republicans,” he said through his mask. Parr smiled, but he was too anxious to laugh. Reagan would repeat the line later, to better effect.
One nurse monitoring the president’s vital signs was startled by his attempt at humor; given his condition, she didn’t think it was a good time to be joking around. Another nurse was amazed at how calm Reagan seemed. And everyone working around the gurney was impressed by his courtesy.
“I don’t mean to trouble you,” the president said to one of his doctors, “but I am still having a hard time breathing.”
* * *
WHEN NANCY REAGAN rushed through the hospital’s emergency entrance, trailed by her Secret Service agents, Mike Deaver was waiting for her.
He broke the bad news right away. “He’s been hit,” Deaver said.
“But they told me he wasn’t hit,” Mrs. Reagan said.
“Well, he was. But they say it’s not serious.”
“Where? Where was he hit?”
“They don’t know,” Deaver said.
“I’ve got to see him,” she said. “Mike, they don’t know how it is with us. He has to know I’m here!”
As she approached the ER, Mrs. Reagan spotted Dan Ruge in the hallway.
“Oh, Dan,” she said, nearly in tears as they embraced.
The scene around the first lady was chaotic. Secret Service agents and police officers ran past her in the hallway; police radios squawked as officers and hospital security teams chased away medical students, onlookers, and even reporters. (At least one journalist had already been discovered hiding by a bank of telephones.) Mrs. Reagan and her agents were ushered into a small office near the ER. There she was joined by several friends and associates who had rushed to the hospital, including Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada, a longtime Reagan supporter and advisor.
One of Mrs. Reagan’s friends gripped her hand; then he began to sob. The first lady did not break down, but her mind flashed back to November 22, 1963, when she’d been driving down San Vicente Boulevard in Los Angeles and heard a radio report that President Kennedy had been slain. She prayed that history would not repeat itself, and she kept telling herself that the hospital’s doctors knew what they were doing and that she had to stay out of their way. But she desperately wanted to comfort her husband. She was not accustomed to being kept away from him, especially under such dire circumstances.