Doctor fled and left 45 patients to die
Cancer specialist took agonising decision to desert the sick at flooded hospital and save fiancée from Katrina
THE last time Dr Scott Sonnier saw any of his patients alive was the morning the New Orleans levees broke two weeks ago.
As the flood waters began to surround the Memorial Medical Centre, the cancer specialist took the decision to leave the sick behind and flee with his fiancée.
It was a dilemma over which he will agonise for a long time. Could he have saved more lives had he stayed? If he had remained behind, would his fiancée have died?
The authorities removed 45 bodies from the centre on Monday, the worst fatal loss uncovered since the flood provoked by Hurricane Katrina receded and a reminder of the horrors that may still be to come.
Hospital officials say it is unclear how those left inside, many of them elderly, perished. On the day that Dr Sonnier left, an emergency airlift rescued more than 200 patients and medical staff, but the terminally ill and those deemed too weak to travel were left, presumably to die.
Little is known about those who did not survive but they were not necessarily the poor, uncared for by the state or forgotten by relatives. The Memorial Medical Centre is one of the city’s most prestigious private hospitals.
Family members and nurses were “literally standing over the patients, fanning them”, said Dave Goodson, an administrator. A spokesman for the hospital’s owner, Tenet Healthcare Corp, said none of the deaths resulted from lack of food, water or electricity.
Dr Sonnier, 33, fears those left behind met a terrible end, as fi rst the hospital’s water and then its power failed and emergency medical supplies ran out. “The suffering must have been unbelievable,” said the doctor, who returned to the hospital this week with his fiancée, Zoe Larner, 30, to collect medical records.
“In the days since the hurricane I’ve spent time thinking about what I could have done if I’d stayed,” he said. “But I also know that I had to get my fiancée out of the city.”
Dr Larner, who works at another New Orleans hospital, was robust in his defence, arguing that he faced a dilemma that nobody should be forced to confront. “No one should have to make the choices Scott had to make,” she said. “It is disgusting what happened here. Even if the patients were dying before the evacuation, we must never leave them behind again.”
The car park this week was still fi lled with stagnant pools of contaminated flood water and a thick layer of black mud. On the road leading to the main entrance lay piles of rotting waste and dirty bedding.
Inside, surgical gloves, oxygen tanks, and IV drips lay scattered on the floor. Beds were covered with crumpled and dirty linen. The stench was overpowering. In the hospital’s small chapel it was obvious where one body had lain; a pool of blood had soaked into the floor.
Dr Sonnier had stayed in the medical centre during the hurricane. Emergency generators supplied the hospital with electricity. “The hospital had an emergency plan in the event of a hurricane,” he said. “We worked in shifts and kept treating patients.” Incredibly, the day after the hurricane, Dr Sonnier performed a bone marrow transplant.
Then came the fi rst reports of the breach in the city’s levee and the rising flood waters.
Dr Larner made frantic calls from their home nearby. “The water was rising so quickly that I knew I had to leave it at once if I was to get her to safety,” said Dr Sonnier. As he made a fi nal round, disorientated patients were wandering the wards.
What happened to the sick and frightened after he abandoned the building can now only be imagined.
Yesterday, the owners of a nursing home in Baton Rouge where 34 people were found dead were arrested and charged with negligent homicide.
State officials said the accused had declined their offer to lay on buses to evacuate the residents, who drowned. KATRINA ONLINE Opinion and pictures telegraph. co. uk