Nurse Helped Preemies In Storm

In the days following Hurricane Katrina, one New Orleans hospital with hundreds of patients, including 18 babies in neonatal intensive care, was apparently forgotten in the chaos.

But The Early Show correspondent Melinda Murphy reports there were nurses inside, helping those tiniest patients make it through.

Imagine what it was like, Murphy implores, to be responsible for the lives of the sickest babies, already struggling to survive, all the while wondering if anybody was ever coming to the rescue.

"We were forgotten and we were left there to die, and … it seemed to me, that nobody was doing anything about it," says nurse Cheryl Ory.

She was one of some 20 medical personnel in the neonatal ICU, trapped inside University Hospital, fighting to take care of its most vulnerable patients, the 18 newborns.

"A lot of the babies' temperatures were going down, so we had to double wrap them in blankets," Ory says.

As if the job wasn't tough enough under normal circumstances, after the flooding, the power went out.

"The nurses would have to hold (the babies) next to them, in order for them to maintain their temperature," Ory says.

"So they were using their body heat to warm them?" Murphy asked.

"Right. Exactly."

None of the equipment was functioning: no baby monitors, no lab tests, no phones.

Ory was able to use a cell phone, but only to text message to her best friend in Denver.

"I was just really afraid, because I knew what was going on when the power went out, and it really scared me," says the friend, Joni Doheny.

So, Doheny tried desperately to reach authorities to send in help. She called FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), an ambulance service, the governor of Louisiana, her own governor. She even tried a news station.

Everybody told her the hospital had already been evacuated."I got angry and I said, 'Look, there's nurses, doctors, there's babies, there's critical-care people. They did not ask to be there, so I don't want to hear how they did not evacuate. And I need help."

Ory says, "The babies were surviving, but we were all talking amongst ourselves how they were starting to get a little bit quiet. And we were getting a little concerned."

With temperatures soaring, hospital staff cut their scrubs into shorts. They ate very little.

"One morning we had Pop-Tarts and apple sauce," Ory says. "And another day, they gave a little scoop of tuna and some pears."

Desperate, they put signs in the windows and shined flashlights at night, hoping to be noticed by someone, anyone.

Then on Thursday, a ray of hope. A boat came to rescue them, four babies at a time.

"Now," Ory urged, "picture: it's raining. We got the little babies out in the open. They're already cold. The rain's getting on 'em. They're getting wet."

"Could they die?" Murphy asked.

"Yea, most definitely," Ory replied.

But the boat returned with the babies. Rescuers had pulled up to two hospitals, seeking a temporary refuge.

At one of them, ""There were about 7 or 8 men with guns yelling at us, telling us to get out of there and go back," Ory says.

One of the other nurses also shouted.

"She said," Ory recalled, 'I hope you all burn in hell for this. If it was your baby, you wouldn't want your baby to be left behind either.' "

Seeing no alternative, they went back to University Hospital.

Ory admits she fell apart, and called Doheny, using the one cell phone that worked.

"It's a voice I'll never forget as long as I live," Doheny stresses.

Recalls Ory, "I said, 'We're going to die here. They're gonna leave us here. We're never gonna get out of here. They tried to take us and we got turned back at gunpoint.' I was hysterical. I was frantic."

But Doheny had finally found someone willing to listen: John Matessino, the head of the Louisiana Hospital Association. And Ory made a frantic call to him.

"She was screaming and crying," Matessino says, "and I could barely understand what she was saying. She said, 'I need help. And I need somebody to come help us and I need somebody to come help us with these babies.'"

The next day, Friday, help finally arrived.

"The whole weight of our world was just lifted off of our shoulders," Ory remembers. "As we were flying through the air (in the rescue helicopter), the sense of relief, knowing that this was actually getting done, finally… I don't think there was any more anger left."

For the parents, Murphy says, it was pure joy, to see their babies again.

Keisha Williams and Terrance Harris say Cheryl and the rest of the staff are true heroes.

"Thank you, university nurses and doctors!" Williams exclaims.

Ory doesn't see it that way: "I wouldn't say I'm a hero. I would say I was just doing what I thought needed to be done in a time of need."

Ory stressed that she wasn't the only one trying to get help for the patients at University Hospital. And it was with all their efforts that the rest of the hospital was evacuated that Friday.

And all 18 babies are alive and doing well.

Ory is resting now, but says she definitely wants to return to being a neonatal ICU nurse.