Trauma patients who come through the door are not initially identified by their actual names. Each patient gets a trauma name that consists of a progressive two-letter code combined with a word chosen from an alphabetical list of randomly selected words. Giffords was listed under the pseudonym Baja LB.

Giffords staffer Ron Barber﻿ was Elk LB, and another injured staff member, Pam Simon﻿, was Cactus LB. Simon had been shot in the chest and Rhee said the bullet “could have easily injured her heart and killed her.” The bullet that hit Barber missed his carotid artery by a few millimeters.

Rhee writes that Giffords kicked her left leg when she came in. He figured out that it was in frustration because she wanted to speak but could not. The speech center on the left side of the brain, called the Broca’s area, had been injured.

He writes about keeping Giffords in a medically induced coma to limit the electrical activity in the brain and help the damaged brain tissue to heal. To do that, he put her on a drip of propofol and fentanyl, which are both fast-acting drugs. In 2009, a Los Angeles coroner’s report attributed pop star Michael Jackson‘s death to a lethal dose of propofol.