LAS VEGAS — The victims just kept coming.
In private cars, in ambulances waiting four or five deep, from the walking wounded to the barely alive, they arrived in droves.
“I have no idea who I operated on,” said Dr. Jay Coates, a trauma surgeon whose hospital took in many of the wounded after a gunman opened fire from a Las Vegas hotel window on a country concert below. “They were coming in so fast, we were taking care of bodies. We were just trying to keep people from dying.”
As Sunday night led to Monday morning, the attack became the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history with 59 killed and 527 wounded.
University Medical Center of Southern Nevada was one of many hospitals that were overflowing.
“Every bed was full,” Coates said. “We had people in the hallways, people outside and more people coming in.”
He said the huge, horrifying wounds on his operating table that told him it wasn’t just the massive numbers that made this shooting different.
