There are just some things they don’t teach you in nursing school. One is how to be a caring human being. The second is that, if you’re a caring human being, and you’re a nurse, you’re never really off the clock. Such is the case with Lorisa Loy a Las Vegas nurse who jumped into action last year during that city’s – and this nation’s – deadliest mass shooting at a country music concert.
Journal Gazette From the Las Vegas Journal Review: The man lay hysterical and bleeding on top of Lorisa Loy in a stranger’s truck bed packed with shooting victims, hurtling toward one of the valley’s hospitals. Loy knew three things about him: he was an Asian man, he appeared to be in his 30s and he was bleeding badly from two gunshot wounds to his leg. “They were trying to say our truck was too full. I said ‘he needs to go now,’” said Loy, a Sunrise Hospital nurse. “I said ‘put him on my body, if that’s what it takes. He needs to go now.’”
Las Vegas Review-Journal After a gunman rained round after round of bullets into a crowd of more than 20,000 people at the Route 91 Harvest music festival Oct. 1, Loy was one of the concertgoers who bolted into action to help the wounded. There were 58 people killed. The man who rode to the hospital on top of Loy is among the more than 500 who were injured. On the way to the hospital, Loy whispered to him and kissed his head, trying to divert his attention and make him feel safe. “I think I kissed this man’s head 10,000 times,” she said. “I said ‘you’re going to be OK, your bleeding is controlled now. We’re taking you to the hospital. You’ve got to stay with me. You’re awake, aren’t you?’” She never got his name. It’s one of her only vivid memories of that night. She spent hours loading the wounded into a truck bed. She tended to their injuries as the driver sped to a valley hospital. Loy told him to spread the victims to different hospitals so they didn’t overwhelm any one. They made trips to Sunrise and Desert Springs — there wasn’t time to drive farther. Loy can’t recall the color of the truck. She doesn’t know the driver’s name. She doesn’t remember how many trips they made to hospitals or where she was when she jumped out of the truck bed and heard her ankle snap and pop. It took her a few days, until her sister flew in, for the pain to really hit and for Loy to see a doctor.
CBS News Loy was one of the many unsung heroes that night in Vegas. The first thing she did as soon as the shooting started was to help and elderly man in a wheelchair find his brother and get out of the area. After that she spent her time triaging victims and helping them get to the hospital. It’s no telling how many lives she helped save that night, but George Cook, the man in the wheelchair, felt there was a greater power at work. “Someone put Lorisa there to keep me around for my kids,” Cook said. However she got there, many people are alive today because of her.