Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [66]
Standing next to Aaron, Gens looked closely at Reagan’s lips through the clear oxygen mask and for the first time saw the blood on them. Gens also noticed spots of blood on his teeth. Leaning close to the president’s ear, Gens asked him what had happened.
“I coughed up blood in the car ride over,” Reagan said through his mask. “I am still having trouble breathing, but it is better since you inserted the tube.”
“You are going to be all right, Mr. President,” Gens said.
As a precaution in case Reagan’s condition began deteriorating rapidly, the trauma team attempted to insert a large-bore IV line into his right jugular vein. This would allow them to quickly pump more fluids into the president.
Again Gens leaned close to Reagan and spoke to him. “We’re going to put a line into your jugular vein in the neck, and in order to do that, I’m going to lay you flat.”
Earlier, the president’s gurney had been elevated to a 45-degree angle, which alleviated some of the pressure in his chest. The plan to lower the bed again seemed to make Reagan anxious. “But I’m short of breath,” he said. “If I’m lying down, it’ll be more difficult to breathe.”
“It’s only for two minutes at the most,” Gens said.
Once the gurney had been lowered and the president was horizontal, a surgeon tried to slip a needle into the neck vein. When he couldn’t find the vein on the first attempt, he tried a second time and failed again. Reagan began complaining of increasing chest pain. After two minutes, the surgeon abandoned the attempt, and nurses returned the president to the 45-degree position.
By now, the X-ray image of Reagan’s chest had been developed and brought to the trauma bay. Back in the radiology suite, Dr. David Rockoff had closely studied the film. The left lung seemed to have re-expanded, which was good news. But when Rockoff examined the image of a bean-shaped piece of metal that was presumably the bullet, he couldn’t determine its precise location. The bullet might be lodged in the lung, near the heart, or even in the heart itself. There was also the terrifying possibility that the bullet had nicked and weakened the aorta. If that had happened, the artery could rupture at any moment.
Now, holding the image aloft for Aaron in the trauma bay, Rockoff commented that the chest tube was in a good position. But the metal fragment seemed small and deformed, which suggested that the bullet might have fragmented either before entering the president or upon impact. If it had somehow broken apart inside the president, there could be other pieces of shrapnel somewhere in his body.
Rockoff also told Aaron that he didn’t know the caliber of the round. Turning to a Secret Service agent, Rockoff asked: “What caliber bullet was it?”
The agent, who hadn’t heard any specifics about the weapon or the bullet, asked another agent to find out. Using a phone near the trauma bay, that agent called the FBI, which had confiscated Hinckley’s gun.
After the agent hung up a few moments later, he reported—erroneously—that it was a .38-caliber bullet. Rockoff was shocked: a .38 is a sizable shell, and the object on the X-ray was too small to be a .38. This suggested that it was indeed just a fragment. Rockoff and Aaron believed that if there was more shrapnel inside the president, it was most likely in his abdomen, where any number of organs and blood vessels could be hemorrhaging. Concerned, the trauma team ordered another X-ray, this one of the president’s belly.
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EVER SINCE ARRIVING at the hospital, Nancy Reagan had been politely pestering doctors and nurses about when she would be permitted to see her husband. The hospital’s acting chief of surgery, Dr. Neofytos Tsangaris, was deputized to act as the liaison between the first lady and the trauma team; when Tsangaris asked whether Mrs. Reagan could