These stories, reported and written in the eight months following the Boston Marathon bombings, as a group explore the psychological, physical, and emotional toll exacted on survivors and their caregivers, as well as their complex paths toward healing. They also examine the lessons learned from the twin blasts that April day on Boylston Street.
In the story about the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center nurses, Kowalczyk interviewed seven of the nine trauma nurses who cared for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the ICU, as bombing victims recuperated in rooms nearby. The nurses were deeply ambivalent and some feared for their lives because of public anger at him, but no one refused. They felt healing his wounds was their duty, and told theeparing him to face justice. But when one nurse called him “hon,” she could not live with herself and vowed not to refer to him by a term of endearment again.
In the story about the physical and occupational therapists, and nurses who cared for the bombing victims during their stay at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Lazar negotiated with hospital administrators to be able to spend several day, evening and overnight shifts at the hospital interviewing, and observing how their caregivers established trust and built bonds with these very traumatized patients to help them begin their recovery.
The story about the response of Boston hospitals to the Marathon bombing dug beneath the widespread praise they received for saving victims. The day’s utter chaos made missteps inevitable, and there were communications breakdowns and moments of confusion in those unfamiliar first hours, Kowalczyk found. In particular, some of the centers struggled with an unprecedented tide of unidentified patients who inundated their emergency rooms. An ambulance brought one woman to Massachusetts General Hospital with a handbag, but it wasn’t hers. It belonged to her best friend, who was killed on Boylston Street. Before the mixup was noticed, the family of the dead woman was told she was in a hospital bed.
For the final story in the package, Lazar followed for eight months one of the families most seriously injured in the blasts — Celeste Corcoran, a 48-year-old woman who lost both legs, and her teen aged daughter, Sydney, who nearly bled to death on the street. This story revealed in exacting detail the often zigzag path toward recovery, with post traumatic stress, triumphs, anxiety, and even moments of denial experienced by family members.