April Fugere, a nurse on duty at New Orleans's Charity Hospital, talked to U.S. News yesterday by phone (below) about the plight of the hospital's patients and 1,200 staffers. U.S. News senior writer Josh Fischman reached Fugere again today. Here's an update about the situation at Charity, in Fugere's own words:

"We were elated last night, because we got all our patients out. At least from my unit, surgical intensive care. We had to find spine boards and carry them down several flights of stairs. There are still patients in the emergency department, and I think there are some in the psychiatric unit.

"And there are lots of patients who died. I don't even know how many. They are laying them out in a hospital stairwell, in body bags. They want to keep us from getting sick, so they are keeping them away from us.

"Two state troopers just walked through the halls, carrying big assault rifles and shouting. They said there was a plan to get us out–the 12 hospital staff remaining on my unit. Our patients are gone, so our work is done. They said they were going to bring in airboats to get us. There's about 4 feet of water around the hospital, so they can get boats to us.

"But we've heard all this before. Our hopes are constantly lifted and dashed. This morning the hospital had a big staff meeting and told us there was no plan to get staff out. It's incredible that we've come here to save lives, and they'd just leave us here.

"Right now some of us are talking about trying to make it out ourselves. We told that to one of the troopers, and he said, 'I'm not going to tell you what you can and can't do.' See, we've been told so many different things by people that we don't know whom to trust. They've told us before that we were getting help, and then nothing happened.

"So we don't know if it's better to stay here and wait for help or try to make it out on our own. It's gross and nasty here. We've had no running water for days. But outside, it seems very scary. People are getting attacked; people are getting killed.

"This morning, finally, they brought us some rations. Each of us got a bottle of water to drink and one of those small cereal boxes of Special K. And they also brought us a giant, industrial-size can of pineapples for everyone to share. My kids–my two kids are here with me–didn't want pineapple. But I told them, 'You have to eat. We don't know when we're going to get a chance to eat again.' "

HEADLINE: "We're afraid. And we want to get out of here."

DATE: 20050901

April Fugere, a registered nurse, works in the surgical intensive care unit at Charity Hospital in the heart of New Orleans. At noontime today, Fugere breathed a sigh of relief as the National Guard evacuated some of the hospital's patients. But now, Fugere says she, her two teenage daughters, and the other staffers must fend for themselves. Fugere talked by phone with U.S. News senior writer Nancy Shute about the ordeal. Here's a look at the inside of Charity Hospital, in Fugere's own words:

"We've been running out of everything. We had no clean linen to clean the patients with. Food was being rationed. We had to do manual ventilators because the emergency generators were flooded; then they brought us other generators.

"The stench is unbelievable. This is five days' worth of stench. We still have to urinate and defecate. We thought if we can just get the patients out of here. We were feeding the patients whatever we had: liquids, Resource, Boost. Some of them were on tube feeds, but we were running out of that, too. Fortunately, we got them out before we ran out of IV fluids. One coded last night, but we were able to get him going.

"We had patients with fevers; we didn't have ice. There was nothing we could do to cool them off, except for giving them Tylenol. It just lifted my heart so much to get the patients out of here. There were times that I was crying over my patients. They understood. They were really, really wonderful even though they were nervous as heck. Everyone just did great as far as how they dealt with it.

"We've got a generator and flashlights, but we've been running out of batteries. We can't call out. I have my two children here with me; they're 15 and 14. It's just been really, really hard. We've been hearing every day they're going to get the patients; we actually carried a ventilated patient down the stairs manually bagging, and then they said operations were shut for the night, so we had to carry him back up the stairs.

"For breakfast I had a Boost shake and half of a granola bar. Fortunately, we had water. They've been rationing out the water, but food is really scarce. I said to my kids, 'Here's a Boost and two handfuls of cereal; I don't know when more is coming.' They don't understand the reality. My daughter wants to call her friends; I said, 'Baby, you're not getting it. Things like you knew don't exist anymore.' There was a man in the Superdome that jumped. We heard reports that they're breaking into the hospital to steal the medicine. It's all from the local news, from people calling in.

"We're afraid. And we want to get out of here. This is just insane. They have to drop a whole bunch of people in here and install martial law. We're really afraid that they're going to charge us here. We fall apart and then pull ourselves together. There's a lot of tears. It's an ICU step-down unit. We're pretty used to critical care, but it was impossible to do drips; our batteries were running out. We couldn't do drip feeds; we had to do bolus feeds for the patients that could handle it. We were just praying every day that they would come. It's just been trying to get through every day without losing everybody. That's what scared us the most, that if we didn't get help, people would be dying.

"It's hot. We haven't had a bath in days. When I finally get out, I'm going to have a bath, have a good meal, and have a Southern Comfort and Coke. People could leave; nobody's holding 'em at gunpoint. But we've got water around the hospital; I don't want to go walking in that water. It's nasty, nasty, nasty, nasty. I know that there is a breach in the levee at the 17th Street canal. I live in Bellechase. They were trying to patch it up. After the storm, we had a little bit of water and it went away. We went for a walk around the hospital. When I woke up the next morning, it was flooded.

"The people who are left here in the city are the poorest of the poor. They had no way out. The only reason I'm here is that I had to come to work. If I wasn't on activation, I would have been gone. My mom is in Georgia; I talked to her yesterday. I said things are kind of bad, and we need help; call whomever you can. That's when I still had cellphone service.

"I was up at 4 this morning. I can't sleep. The kids slept on and off, but not well. My daughter's saying, 'I'm about to faint it's so hot in here.' This is scary. We want to get out of here. We want to get out of here."

A few hours after U.S. News talked to Fugere on Thursday, her sister called with an update. There are still patients in the hospital, and there's talk of moving patients from the emergency room to Fugere's unit. "She's really scared," says her sister. "They don't have any food; they don't have any water. The governor says on the radio that there aren't any snipers, but she hears people shooting outside."

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