David Heikamp

David Heikamp was the laboratory director at Memorial Medical Center and a colleague of pathologist John Skinner. He appears in the account not as a physician making treatment decisions, but as a hospital worker who helped document the aftermath of the evacuation. His recollections supply a close witness’s view of patients who were still alive and of the effort to determine whether they could be moved. Together with Skinner’s notes, Heikamp’s observations became important evidence about the timing and circumstances of deaths at the hospital.

Role at Memorial Medical Center

On the Thursday after Hurricane Katrina, Heikamp and Skinner walked through Memorial Medical Center to check that people had left and to record the names and locations of the dead. Earlier in the week, the hospital’s medicine chairman, Richard Deichmann, and chief executive René Goux had asked Skinner to keep track of deaths. The two men’s later notes and memories therefore formed part of a deliberate effort to establish what had happened inside the building, rather than merely a retrospective account of a scene they happened upon.

Heikamp’s professional role was distinct from Skinner’s: Skinner was the pathologist who interpreted what they saw, while Heikamp was the laboratory director accompanying him and recording the hospital’s condition. The book does not describe Heikamp as responsible for deciding which patients should receive treatment or be evacuated. His importance instead comes from what he witnessed, what he remembered, and the practical part he played in trying to alert the evacuation team to a patient who might still be moved.

Witness on the Seventh Floor

On the seventh floor, Heikamp and Skinner encountered Anna Pou and nurse manager Mary Jo D’Amico beside a woman lying in a hallway near a nursing station. The woman appeared unconscious and was breathing intermittently with effort. The account does not identify her by name; based on her location and description, it suggests that she was probably Wilda McManus. Pou appeared to be trying to make the patient’s intravenous line work and then attempted to give medication by syringe. These details place Heikamp at a consequential moment in the hospital’s final hours, when the patient’s condition and prospects for evacuation were not self-evident.

The patient’s breathing had a particular effect on Heikamp. He was upset by it because his mother had breathed in a similar way for hours before she died the previous year. Skinner identified the breathing as agonal and told Heikamp that patients in that state had so little brain function that they did not experience pain. The exchange preserves both the physical observation and Heikamp’s personal association, while also showing that the two men understood the same sign through different immediate frames: for Skinner, it was a clinical condition to interpret; for Heikamp, it recalled his mother’s death.

Skinner later described asking Pou privately to let the patient be evacuated and offering to find someone to help carry her. Heikamp remembered Pou asking whether one of them could go to the helipad and tell the doctor in charge that another patient needed evacuation. He left to deliver that message. His departure matters to the limits of his testimony: he witnessed the encounter in the hallway and then went to seek help, but he was not present for every subsequent exchange Skinner had with Pou.

What Heikamp Could and Could Not Establish

After Heikamp left, Skinner went with Pou into a room with another female patient. Skinner tried to assess whether she was still alive and noticed a cardboard box containing what appeared to be syringes, gloves, tubing, and unopened medication vials; one vial contained morphine. Skinner, not Heikamp, saw and handled the vial. Keeping the sequence clear is important: Heikamp’s account concerns the hallway patient and his trip to the helipad, while the box and its contents belong to Skinner’s observations in a separate room.

Heikamp’s testimony nevertheless contributed to the larger evidentiary record. Skinner and Heikamp had set out to identify the dead and note where they were found, and their recollections helped investigators establish the timing of deaths. Heikamp’s memory that a patient was breathing, his account of Pou’s apparent efforts with the intravenous line, and his recollection of being sent to request evacuation all bear on the question of whether patients encountered near the end were still alive and whether an attempt was made to get help for them. They do not, by themselves, resolve every question about the medication given or the cause of any death.

Narrative Significance

Heikamp’s brief appearance gives the account a witness whose role is neither that of the clinician directing care nor that of the investigator later assembling evidence. He is a laboratory director moving through an evacuated hospital with Skinner, recording what they find and responding to a request for help. That position makes his testimony specific but bounded: he can recall what he saw, what the scene brought to mind, and where he went next, while Skinner’s separate observations supply other parts of the sequence.

The juxtaposition of Heikamp’s memory of his mother with the hospital’s attempt to determine whether a patient could still be evacuated also gives the scene a human and evidentiary tension. A familiar pattern of breathing is at once a personal recollection and a medical sign interpreted by Skinner. The account does not claim that Heikamp’s reaction changed the clinical decision, nor does it make him responsible for the patient’s treatment. Instead, his presence helps reconstruct a moment when the distinction between a patient near death and a patient who might still be rescued had immediate practical consequences.