Photos by Sam Nalven

Victims of car accidents, house fires and other life-threatening injuries usually end up at Maricopa Medical Center, the Valley’s busiest trauma hospital. Follow along with Dr. Marc R. Matthews as he makes the rounds one busy Friday evening, dashing between lives hanging in the balance.


The night begins with a trauma victim who was involved in a fatal crash on Interstate 10 earlier in the evening. The victim, a soldier stationed at Fort Huachuca, was the passenger in a car driven by another soldier. It crossed the median near Casa Grande and struck another car head-on, killing both drivers, according to media reports.

Dr. Marc R. Matthews is on duty at Maricopa Medical Center in central Phoenix, doing triage for multiple cases and supervising other doctors’ work. He steps in to assist Drs. Le Le and Patrick J. O’Neill.

Dr. Marc R. Matthews, director of trauma at Maricopa Medical Center

Matthews: Dr. Le, what are you doing?
Dr. Le: Washout, re-exploration, possible closure. A 30-year-old motorcycle accident with a pretty much exploded spleen.
Matthews: Exploded spleen! OK. Was the patient dying when he presented?
Le: He went straight to the OR.
Matthews: So you gotta get up there [near the diaphragm] looking for a subphrenic abscess – all that stuff. How does the bowel look? Is the bowel dusky or not?
Le: No, it looks good.
Matthews: Looks good? All right.
Dr. patrick O’Neill: The key to him is, if the number of pulse ox [the measure of oxygen saturation in the blood] looks bad, you want to try to dovetail the tail of the pancreas and make sure that’s not the problem.