Transfiguration
“Wiens’s lips were fused, his jaw was clenched, and he was not getting enough air. Worried that he was slipping away, the paramedic injected him with a paralytic and performed a field tracheotomy—a common procedure in the military but one that she had never done before. A helicopter then flew Wiens to Parkland Hospital, which is a Level 1 trauma center, meaning that it can provide the highest possible level of care for such an emergency. President John F. Kennedy was taken to Parkland after Lee Harvey Oswald shot him—and, later, Oswald was taken there. The hospital also houses one of the country’s largest and best burn centers. It sees more than six hundred burn victims a year, but when a doctor there, a surgeon with twenty-six years’ experience, later examined Wiens he was shocked. People with that type of physical trauma rarely became patients. Usually, they died.
