Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [60]
Stephen Pett, a thoracic surgeon, saw McCarthy curled on the cart and took charge of his care. Pett grabbed an orderly and wheeled McCarthy into ER Room 3, a small space with an exam table. Nurses cut off McCarthy’s clothes and started running IV lines into his veins. Pett, who specialized in chest injuries as well as heart and lung problems, carefully examined McCarthy’s body and found a small bullet wound in his right chest.
After cleaning the area with antibacterial solution and injecting anesthetic, Pett made an incision and inserted a chest tube. Only a trickle of blood emerged. Pett and another doctor then inserted a catheter into McCarthy’s abdomen. This time, blood poured out. The bullet had entered McCarthy’s chest, but had somehow passed into his abdomen and was now probably lodged somewhere in his flank. A doctor called for an operating room to be prepared for surgery.
Through it all, McCarthy was stoic. He seemed more concerned about the president than about himself.
Standing at McCarthy’s gurney was Paul Colombani, who had left the trauma bay and come to Room 3 to help treat the agent. In a few minutes, he would join the surgical team operating on McCarthy.
“What happened?” Colombani asked.
“I got in front of the shooter,” the agent said simply.
* * *
AS MCCARTHY WAS being prepared for surgery, doctors at the Washington Hospital Center, GW’s crosstown rival, were examining Thomas Delahanty, the wounded police officer. He’d been brought to WHC because the paramedics at the scene feared that GW would be too crowded with the other victims. In agony from the bullet wound in his back, he had left deep bite marks in the leather slapjack shoved into his mouth to help him fight the pain. While lying on the sidewalk, he had asked for a priest.
The bullet was nestled near Delahanty’s spine. The trauma team called in a neurosurgeon, who concluded that, with the bullet so close to the spinal cord, an attempt to remove it might do more damage than the actual wound. Doctors gave Delahanty pain medication, cleaned the wound, and pumped him full of antibiotics. Then they sent him to another part of the hospital to rest. For now, there was nothing more they could do.
* * *
WITHIN FIFTEEN MINUTES of the assassination attempt, the man who had caused all this havoc arrived at D.C. police headquarters. Hands cuffed, he sat between Agents Dennis McCarthy and Danny Spriggs as the police cruiser they had commandeered at the Hilton pulled into the basement parking garage and came to a quick stop outside one of the underground entrances.
Their suspect between them, McCarthy and Spriggs tumbled from the cruiser and then rushed toward the door and into the station’s cell block. McCarthy had his gun out: even in a police station, he was not going to let someone get close enough to kill the would-be assassin.
Once in the cell block, McCarthy shoved the gunman against a wall. Spriggs patted him down for weapons and pulled a number of items from his pockets. A police officer put him in a cell and slammed the door shut.
McCarthy took a seat outside the cell and trained his eyes on the assailant. No one was going to get near the blond man, nor would he have an opportunity to kill himself—not while McCarthy was guarding him.
Spriggs retreated to a small room and spread the contents of the man’s pockets and his black leather wallet across a table. He studied the array of items with intense interest. A Texas driver’s license informed Spriggs that his suspect’s name was John W. Hinckley Jr.; his age was twenty-five and his address was in Lubbock. From a Colorado ID card, Spriggs learned that Hinckley was five ten and weighed 175 pounds, had blue eyes, and lived in Evergreen. Spriggs also inspected three business cards, two belonging to doctors in Lubbock and another to a psychologist in Denver. He flipped through