[I found this on his computer in a file entitled "Ideas for Memoirs". He had never told me this story, it's amazing]
Bonnie and Clyde Barrow were killed on May 23rd, 1934 by a posse of State police from Texas and four other southern and southwest states where Bonnie and Clyde had teamed up with local gangs to rob banks and murder thirteen people including nine police officers. I was 14 years old at the time and like everyone else had followed the extensive news of their wicked cruel exploits reported on radio, newspapers and Pathe movie news.
This 80th anniversary story reminded me of an ER visit at Parkland Hospital in 1949 when I was resident in charge of ER. One night when I was on duty and after a very busy night, had finally gone to a bunk in sleeping quarters for on call ER residents about 1:30 am. Thirty minutes later, Johnny the evening ER orderly who had been doing his job for years (everybody loved the low key elderly light skinned black man), knew how to handle grouchy residents who were sleep deprived when he had to awaken them again after a short nap. He gently shook me and I responded to say that I was awake. He said I was needed in the ER, and turned to walk away, but I fell back asleep before I got up. Johnny expected this and had waited in the hall for about three minutes before coming back to wait for me to rise to my feet, then we went together down the elevator to the ground floor ER to see a police escorted patient named, Baldy Whatley, a widely known drug addict, murderer, gangster and habitual criminal who had killed Clyde Barrow’s mother. He had been sought after by a local gang for revenge.
Baldy did not have a life threatening injury. He had been shot through the gastrocnemius calf muscle, and was sitting on the exam table, whimpering, coddling with both arms his shot leg bent at the knees. I needed to examine him, and asked him to release his hugged leg and lie down, so I could determine whether the through and through shot had injured bone, nerve or blood vessel. He did not respond except to continue baby-like whimpering about his pain and asking for a shot of morphine. I repeated my request three times without any response, finally said to him that I wasn’t going to be able to help him until he allowed me to examine the wounded leg. Lack of sleep had shortened my patience, and his cowardly behavior had disgusted me, so impulsively I did something I had never done before, or since, to a conscious aware patient in his right mind. With my wrestling background, I forced him into a pinfall, his back flat on the table with his leg extended flat on the table, wrested his arms loose, so I could see the wounds, then asked the nurse to have the police come in to hold him while I examined the extent of injury. ( I should have asked for the police first, but reflex action had dominated.) In today’s mores and regulations, I would have needed his signature of approval for the exam, and if he refused send him out without treatment. That would have violated my ethics code, and never entered my mind.
Examination showed no evidence of injury to bone, vessel or nerve, so with local anesthesia, I debrided damaged muscle adjacent to the bullet track, inserted a rubber drain into entrance and exit wound after thorough irrigation with saline solution, applied a dressing and sent him to the ward for observation where he would be under police guard. I wrote orders for a non-narcotic pain medication prn, and watch him for withdrawal symptoms.
I hoped for the next few days that I had not become a figure for revenge from a gang descended from one that the notorious couple had formed in the five states they terrorized. Clyde Barrow’s sidekicks were still angered at Baldy for Clyde’s Barrow’s mother being shot.
