SAVING KING
by Edison McDaniels, MD
Creative nonfiction
At 6:01 pm on On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King was shot. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 pm at St. Joseph's Hospital in Memphis, TN after a failed attempt at open cardiac massage. He was 39 years old.
King was standing on the balcony outside room 306 on the second floor of the Lorraine Motel when, in the words of biographer Taylor Branch, time on the balcony turned lethal and King's sojourn on earth went blank.
But did it? Did it do so immediately? Was King doomed the moment that bullet crashed through him? Is there any action that might have saved his life as he lay supine on that balcony, bleeding profusely from a wound to his right jaw and neck? He wasn't pronounced dead for 64 minutes. Was he, in fact, alive during that time? Was there ever a chance he could have been saved by the relatively crude trauma care of 1968? And how about today? If King was shot in 2021, might he survive?
This is a work of creative nonfiction that purports to show what happened in the 64 minutes after King was shot—an intense, dramatic recreation of the struggle to save his life back in 1968—and what might transpire if the same injury occurred today with our modern trauma system.
What, if anything, went wrong in 1968? Find out right here. Listen now.
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THE SURGICAL FICTION PODCAST is narrated by Edison McDaniels.
Edison McDaniels is a physician, surgeon, wordsmith, author, and audiobook narrator. More here: https://SurgicalFiction.com.
SUBSCRIBE and check back regularly for another episode of The Surgical Fiction Podcast. In the meantime, please REVIEW THIS PODCAST here: http://surgfict.biz/reviewSFP and scroll to the bottom of the page to rate and review. If you need more information, read or listen to my short episode “How to Review a Podcast” at https://apple.co/2N8oObh.
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Edison McDaniels is also an author. His many novels and other stories are available on Kindle. http://amzn.to/2cv2iFs
Thanks for listening. Please wear a mask to protect yourself and others until we can safely gather together again!
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