In those days, the County trauma room is still on the third floor of the old building. The Butcher Shop, as we call it, is just a small room with three stretchers lined up, side by side, separated only by curtains.
I’ve been there many times before to check up on victims, and I know that hundreds have been brought back from the dead, right here in this little shop of horrors. Hundreds of gangbangers like Junior, and dozens of police officers, alive today because they ended up here, but even here there are limits to what they can do.
One time I find myself standing in an inch of blood on the floor. All three stretchers are occupied, and each occupant’s chest has been cracked open, so they can hand-massage the heart. That’s definitely a measure of last resort, and I have yet to meet someone who has actually survived that particular procedure.
Those three guys didn’t fare any better, and their gaping chest cavities are getting sewn up with those two-inch stitches, the ones they reserve for the dead and the dying. I’m destined to receive a few sets of my own, just a few years down the road.
Another memory, forever etched in my mind, is when Officer Perkins is brought here after he’d been shot, that first day of March, 1992. I’m still assigned to Bt. 1224, and the dispatcher announces that a 3rd District officer has been shot, and that he’s en route to the County.
I get there just as the ambulance pulls in. The first person I see is my original FTO. She has accompanied the injured officer in the ambulance, and she’s covered in blood. She’s clearly shaken, but in control, as always.
"It’s Perkins," she says, shaking her head, "and it’s bad…"
Normally, Officer Perkins works a foot-beat, but today he was reassigned to work a beat car I know all too well: Beat 311.
At 61st and Wabash, he spots a guy wearing a long black leather coat, matching the clothing description of a burglary-offender who’s been active in the area. In fact, Stanley Davis has only recently been paroled, after serving 20 years for Murder, and he has no intention of going back to prison.
Davis is not the burglar suspect Perkins is looking for, but that will soon be immaterial. Perkins pulls alongside Davis and calls out for him to stop. Davis continues to ignore him. Perkins exits his squad car and approaches Davis on foot. As he tries to frisk him, a struggle ensues.
Davis is carrying a .357 Magnum revolver in his waistband, and that alone will violate the conditions of his parole, and will send him back to prison to serve out his original sentence of 25 to 100 years.
At some point, Officer Perkins senses that Davis has a weapon of his own, and reaches back to his holster to pull his service-revolver, but Davis gets to his gun first and fires four rounds altogether, two of which strike Officer Perkins, and one of them lodges in his brain.
I know him only as a fellow officer, someone you see in the station or on the street, but never worked with him as a partner. Nonetheless, it is a sobering experience to see a fellow officer, once so strong and full of vigor, now struggling to hang on to life.
With a bullet lodged in the brain, you would expect the victim to be unconscious, but, in my experience, that is the exception rather than the rule. Sadly, that is the case here as well, and Officer Perkins’ death-struggle goes on for two more hours. His heart stops four times, and four times he is revived, but not the fifth. Finally, mercifully, he passes on: forty-five years after he’d been born, right here…in this same hospital.
Although spared the agony, Junior ultimately doesn’t hare any better. By the time I get there, he’s no longer on any of the three stretchers. When I ask the Duty Nurse, a pleasant but tough old Penguin, with her freshly-starched uniform, and the air of a combat veteran, she simply points to a bed all the way at the other end of the cavernous recovery hall:
"He’s over there," she says, "with his mother and his girlfriend."
And so he is. Wrapped in clean white linens, but a tiny figure in the otherwise empty Victorian hall, the two women at his side, holding his hands in theirs, unable to bring themselves to let go…
"They’re grieving, " the nurse chimes in, as if further explanation is still necessary, and so they are.
I watch them for a while from a distance, reluctant to intrude on a ritual that has taken place millions of times throughout human history.
They are not sobbing, as you might expect, just quietly caressing his face and his hands.
It occurs to me that they have always known it would end this way…they just hadn’t known when.
* * * * *
The photo shows the old County Hospital as it appears today, fenced in and shuttered. It sits here, awaiting its fate, along with the old Rush, Presbyterian St. Luke’s Hospital across the street.
Posted by Andre’s Street Photography on 2013-09-25 18:31:31
Tagged: , J.P. – August 31, 2013 – 70D – , PILSEN , 12th District , Beat 1233 , Sacramento Chaidez , Junior , Chicago Police Department , Chicago , gang vilence , gang turf , gang territory , gang violentce , gun violence , murder rate , Cook County Hospital , Rush, Presbyterian, St. Lube’s , Fatall shot , grieving , Chicago Police , Officer Robert Perkins , March 1, 1992 , Parole , Murderer , violate parole , Stanley Davis , Serving time for murder , original sentence , 25 to 100 years , Andre’s Street Photography , Andre Van Vegten , Chicago Cop: Tales from the Street , Amazon.com , Amazon.co.uk , Kindle , e-book , KDP , Kindle Direct Publishing
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