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The nurse stood above the young boy watching his heart beat and his lungs expand and contract through a large surgical incision that went from his upper chest to his abdomen. All the critical veins and arteries had already been cauterized, stapled and sutured. The surgeon had left just minutes after finishing his last cut to attend to other patients, leaving her to close the incision.

There had been a drive-by shooting on Columbia Avenue. Five teenagers had been shot not including her patient. Two of them were already in the morgue. DOA. The other three were in the adjoining operating rooms. She could hear them screaming. There had been seven other shootings that night. A typical Saturday night. She’d barely had time to wash the blood of one victim from her hands before the next was wheeled in. It was like being a battlefield nurse. West Philadelphia, like South Philly, and North Philly, had become a warzone.

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