I've gone 16 years without having to respond to a mass shooting.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/04/pennsylvania.gym.shooting/index.html

I could have finished out my career without ever having done so, and I would have retired a happy person. Once again, an apparent coward with a chip on his shoulder has decided to play judge, jury and executioner to many people who never even knew he existed. Lives were taken, and lives were forever changed.

As this occurred in the township adjacent to the one in which I work, our EMS service responded, triaging, treating and transporting patients. Triage is particularly difficult when you are staring into the pale, lifeless face of somebody your age or younger - knowing in your heart of hearts that you could do everything your scope of practice, knowledge base and years of experience allow you to do, yet it wouldn't help. That in doing so, it would prevent you from helping others... so you leave them where they lay. These were mothers. Sisters. In-laws. Somebody's child. Lean and fit, dressed for a workout, and now lying in large pools of coagulating blood on a shiny wooden floor; eyes devoid of any inkling of life or soul or that which made them the unique women they must have been.

I am heartened by the teamwork I saw between EMS, Fire, and Police entities who set aside all politics and got the job done, as one Facebook friend noted, with valor.