Pou and two nurses, the public outcry that follows, and a grand jury unsure about charging a doctor who has become a beloved hero to the people of New Orleans. Experts pore over tissue samples and other evidence and conclude that homicides have been committed.Ĭhapter 9 reports on the arrest of Dr. Witnesses are reluctant to point fingers, but they do describe suspicious behavior on the critical-care floors. Within hours, all these patients are dead.Ĭhapter 8 follows government investigators Butch Schafer and Virginia Rider as they look into reports of mass deaths at Memorial hospital. Anna Pou and a few others agree to take responsibility, injecting a dozen critical patients with morphine and sedatives. No longer able to care for the most seriously ill patients, and skeptical that those patients can survive the much-delayed evacuation, a group of doctors agree on a plan to put the patients out of their misery.

That help, however, may have come too late. Memorial’s corporate parent, Tenet Healthcare, responds in a hesitant and disorganized manner that makes the situation worse until the corporation finally manages a coherent response. Mistakes, confusion, and bumbling affect both hospital staff and emergency rescue organizations. Communication with the outside world is spotty, and messages are sometimes garbled or misinterpreted. In fits and starts, rescuers arrive to evacuate some of the most fragile patients along with a few staffers and their relatives. Critical-care machinery no longer can function, indoor temperatures and humidity rise to dangerous levels, and the seriously ill lie unprotected, their condition worsening by the hour. In Chapters 4-7, floodwaters pour into the basement and damage important equipment, which causes backup generators to fail. Elevators and air conditioners no longer operate the building’s temperature begins to rise in the summer heat. Katrina hurls itself against the hospital, shattering windows city power and water fail, and the hospital must rely on electrical generators. A LifeCare medical facility transfers many of its patients to Memorial hospital to ride out the storm. Memorial hospital becomes a shelter for patients, staff, their relatives, and a few local residents who trust the huge building to protect them. The first three chapters provide background on the Memorial Medical Center of New Orleans and describe the harrowing wait there as Hurricane Katrina approaches in late August 2005. Author and physician Sheri Fink has won two Pulitzer Prizes: the first is for the news article on which Five Days is based, first published in The New York Times in 2009 the second she shares with a team that reported on the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

Five Days at Memorial is a bestseller and winner of several literary awards.

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink