Paramedics struggle with the shock

BLOOD WAS POURING out of her body from three gunshot wounds.

Yet the female student was surprisingly calm and alert as paramedics worked to keep her alive.

"She knew what had happened to her, but her injuries were very serious," said Steve Shelor, captain of Long Shop-McCoy Rescue Squad. "She was probably calmer than I would have been in her situation."

In a makeshift triage clinic outside Norris Hall, Shelor and dozens of other emergency medical workers on Monday had tended to the wounded as best they could.

In some cases, no doubt, their doctoring meant the difference between life and death.

The young woman, whom Shelor declined to identify, would make it. But there were moments when Shelor wasn't so sure.

She had lost so much blood that paramedics feared she'd go into shock. They ran intravenous lines into both her arms. They pumped her body full of saline.

As they gingerly lifted her into the back of the ambulance, she looked into Shelor's eyes and asked for comfort.

"She asked me to tell her a story," Shelor said. "That kind of worried me. That kind of made me think that she was going to go downhill kind of quick. It seemed like a weird thing to ask."

Shelor said he wanted to fulfill her request, but there was too little time and too much to do.

During the three-minute ride to the hospital, Shelor worked at a frenetic pace, checking her blood pressure, pulse and oxygen levels.

"I wish I could tell you that I told her some big, long tale, but time passes quickly," Shelor said. "I told her to hang in there. I told her she was going to be OK."

Once at Montgomery County (Md.) Regional Hospital, the young woman was rushed into surgery. She is now recovering.

Like so many other EMS workers on the scene that day, Shelor said he tried not to think about the unspeakable carnage before him.

"Obviously you think about your own child when you are working on someone pretty close to their age," said Shelor, 52, the father of a 14-year-old son.

Dozens of EMS workers gathered last night at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Blacksburg to comfort one another. The private assembly allowed EMS workers to reflect and grieve.

None could remember an event so singularly tragic.

"There are some things you never forget," said Buford Belcher, captain of the Newport Volunteer Rescue Squad, one of a dozen squads called to Virginia Tech. "You learn to live with it and you learn to tolerate it, but you never forget. You never forget."

Belcher, 63, who did not attend last night's gathering, said the campus shootings brought back memories of when he responded to the murders of two hikers on the Appalachian Trail in the 1980s.

Other EMS workers recalled when 16 people were hurt in a 1996 balcony collapse at a Blacksburg apartment complex. And a 2001 natural-gas explosion in Radford City, 20 miles from Blacksburg, that killed three people.

But Blacksburg is not a place associated with killings. In its 2005-2006 annual report, the Blacksburg Police Department reported zero murders for the third straight year.

Virginia Tech Rescue Squad members Matthew Lewis and Matthew Green, both 21, said they're typically called to respond to alcohol-related accidents and illnesses on campus.

"It just didn't seem real," Lewis said.

On Monday afternoon, Belcher and two other Newport volunteers waited inside Norris Hall with a stretcher as police officers brought bodies down from classrooms. Their ambulance served as a hearse. They transported two of the 33 dead, including shooter Cho Seung-Hui, to the medical examiner's office in Roanoke, Belcher said.

"You do the job you're trained to do," Belcher said. "Then after it's over with, you sit down and reflect on everything and that's when it starts to get to you. It gets to you - I reckon I have to say it that way." *