Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [69]
“How do you stop the bleeding?” Mike Deaver asked.
“Well, we’ll clamp it or suture it, or if it isn’t necessary, it could be a wound that would heal itself,” Aaron replied.
After telling Mrs. Reagan he would keep her informed, Aaron politely excused himself and left to change into his surgical scrubs. The first lady was escorted to the trauma bay, where doctors were getting ready to move the president. She walked straight to her husband’s bed and clasped his left hand, despite a recently inserted arterial line that jutted from the top of it.
Now, as the trauma team began rolling their patient toward the OR, Dr. Sol Edelstein, the director of the emergency room, took his place at Reagan’s feet, his back to the hallway down which they would be traveling. Edelstein, who had just arrived at the hospital after racing from his home in suburban Maryland, deliberately shuffled backward as slowly as he could. Partly, he wanted to act as a speed brake to prevent IV and blood lines from being jostled as the gurney moved down the hallway. But he also hoped to instill calm and a sense of purpose. Rushing led to mistakes, and there could be no errors today.
As the procession moved slowly down the narrow hallway, Mrs. Reagan continued to hold the president’s left hand. David Gens clasped the first lady’s waist and pulled her close to the gurney so she wouldn’t bang into objects in the hallway. “Watch your legs, they might get hit,” he said protectively. “Watch your legs.” He could see that Mrs. Reagan was frightened.
The gurney inched between the nurses’ station on the left and the examination rooms on the right. Rounding a corner, the procession encountered Jim Baker, Ed Meese, and Mike Deaver, as well as two other aides. Baker and Meese had arrived at the hospital only a few minutes earlier; upon entering the emergency room, they had spoken to a doctor who told them that the president was in bad shape and might be bleeding to death. Shell-shocked, they were waiting anxiously for a chance to see him for themselves.
Despite his condition and all the commotion, Reagan spotted his Troika immediately. Speaking through his oxygen mask, the president got in the first word. “Who’s minding the store?” he asked.
Then he winked at Baker.
The gurney rolled on, its route to the OR crowded with doctors, nurses, Secret Service agents, and police officers. The trip seemed to take a long time, and when the procession finally reached Operating Room 2, an anesthesiologist couldn’t find a handhold on the gurney that would enable him to guide it through the doors. In the end, he grabbed one of Reagan’s feet to pull him into the room.
At the door to the OR, David Gens turned to Mrs. Reagan and gently told her that she had to say goodbye. “You can’t go any further,” he said.
The first lady leaned over and kissed her husband on his forehead. “I love you,” she said.
* * *
ONLY A FEW minutes before the president’s trip to the OR, Arthur Kobrine had visited the radiology suite, where a CAT scan machine was taking X-rays of Jim Brady’s brain. Kobrine, who would soon be operating on the press secretary, carefully studied each image of his patient’s head as it appeared on a small monitor in the lab. Halfway through the CAT scan’s run, he stopped it; he had seen enough. The images revealed bullet fragments scattered across the front of Brady’s brain and a huge blood clot forming in the right frontal lobe. The damage was devastating, and Kobrine didn’t want to waste any more time before getting Brady to the OR.
Brady’s wife, Sarah, had rushed to GW from the couple’s home in Arlington; now a social worker opened the radiology suite door and told Kobrine that she was waiting outside. The surgeon found Mrs. Brady sitting in a chair in the hallway and took a