Blue Jeans

NYT, Eric Curran (3rd year, Temple Univ Med School):

PHILADELPHIA — I remember the first time I saw a teenager die. He came to Temple University Hospital in the back of a police cruiser with three bullet holes in his chest. He was wearing bluejeans that had turned red. 

The nurses cut them off and threw them at the end of the bed. The bluejeans that were no longer blue dangled for a while, eventually falling into the puddle of blood collecting underneath them. After nothing more could be done to save him, the bed that held his thin body was rolled away, leaving streaks of blood across the floor.

As a first-year medical student, this image haunted me. I think it always will.

Over and over, young Americans from Parkland, Fla., to North Philadelphia are carried into ambulances and the back seats of police cars and rushed to a hospital. The emergency room nurses and doctors lift them onto stretchers. If they are awake, they may ask if they’re going to die. The doctor tells them no.

Once inside, the trauma team yells out locations of holes in their body. The medical student tapes paper clips to each bullet wound so that they’re visible on X-ray. If the heart stops, doctors break through the sternum with a mallet and a chisel.

Two gloved hands hold the heart and start to squeeze. More nurses and more doctors help inject medicines. They place paddles on the lifeless heart. If God or luck or physiology allows, it beats again. And then the wheels on the bed spin toward the operating room and leave those horrible red streaks on the floor, red shoe prints all around them.

In the wake of the struggle to save a human life, a silent, splattered room remains. Gauze, tubes, shirts, gloves, pants, tape and sneakers lie scattered. Hospital workers come in and wash away the blood. They bring mops, towels, brushes and trash cans, and work with respect and grace, on hands and knees. The room must be cleaned quickly because another young victim could be wheeled in soon.

I started photographing this room out of the helplessness and despair I felt about these senseless deaths. I wanted the violence to stop. I asked if I could hold a camera. Not to capture the dead and dying. They deserve privacy and respect. But I wondered if capturing and sharing the moments after lives are saved and lost could help Americans understand what is happening.

I place plastic covers over my shoes. Sometimes I hear screams — the loved ones receiving news that their son or daughter, brother or sister, spouse or partner, has been shot to death.

Temple University Hospital treated 481 patients with gunshot wounds last year, and 97 died. In this one hospital in one neighborhood in one city. As a country, we lost nearly 40,000 lives to guns in 2017. These images are here to show you what happens. And to inspire change. Because here, in America, shouldn’t bluejeans stay blue?

So far, in 2019: 40 mass shooting incidents (most recent = yesterday, 16 FEB 19), 72 dead, 121 injured - as reported by Gun Violence Archive.