On an old baseball field, makeshift medicine

Then comes Barth Phillips, 48, who has pneumonia and pleurisy, inflammation of the lung linings. After him is Betty Guidry, 54, diabetic with no insulin. Unfortunately, the Dome's makeshift pharmacy just ran out, too.

Johnson calls out: "When's the insulin coming?"

No answer.

"WHEN'S THE INSULIN COMING?"

Answers take time. There are, give or take, roughly 50 doctors, paramedics and nurses on hand to treat the Dome's 11,375 new residents. So, Johnson puts on a happy face, then puts Guidry on a transport to a nearby hospital.

This day, triage got some new equipment: tables. The tables are arranged in a line. On one side slump patients, on the opposite, their saviors. Dr. Evan Melrose, 36, of Texas Medical Center, is one.

"Overwhelmed?" he asks. "No. Not yet."

Melrose is one of the Big 10 — doctors who can prescribe medicine. They're taking dicey patients first: the ready-to-stop hearts, the congested lungs — anybody who is "on deck" for a stroke.

His pen is fast at work for Annie O'Neal, 62, who has heart disease. O'Neal fled New Orleans with the clothes she wears, a purse and five Walgreens bottles. "I grabbed my meds," she says, "then my money."

Above a missing person announcement, above one gentleman's sandpapery rendition of "Amazing Grace," Melrose shouts instructions to O'Neal. A volunteer rushes up, holds out a palm of tablets. Apparently, a sick woman was going to swallow them, not knowing what they were.

"Anybody know what these are?"

"I don't read palms," Melrose jokes, and points to a garbage bin.

That produces a smile from the next patient, Shirley Oliver, 50, formerly a cook at the Superdome. Oliver's blood pressure is off the chart, perhaps because rescuers plucked her and her daughter, son, and four granddaughters off a rooftop, then left them on an overpass.

Describing her odyssey, her face clouds, her shoulders quake, and the tears start. "My mother was in a hospital when the storm hit. They evacuated her. But I don't know where she is."

Melrose mops his brow, lowers his gaze.

Later, he says: "You try to focus on the task at hand, you know? But when you see what's in their eyes ... well, I've found myself pushing back tears."

Another volunteer to the triage unit is Mary Clair Haver, 37, native of Lafayette, La., obstetrician. Many young, pregnant women are coming off the buses, ready for delivery.

Earlier, two doctors and four nurses raced up the stadium ramps and frantically searched the fourth-level bathrooms for a woman in labor. Then a pregnant 17-year-old approached Haver, panicked because she hadn't felt the baby move all day.

Haver sighs. "We don't have fetal monitors here. We don't have the basics. All I could was feel her. And I didn't feel the baby kick."

Just then, Kyrisha Miner, 27, wobbles over. Her ankles are swollen, her blood pressure is up. "How many babies are in there?" Haver jokes.

"One — I hope!"

Her baby is due on Sept. 7. But Haver says they need to induce the birth right away.

"Today?" Miner gasps.

"Today."

When the woman is gone with a list of instructions, Haver says, "It too dangerous. I'm taking no chances. Not with her."

Then she's back to the triage table, for a heart patient. A long day is about to get longer.

How long?

"As long as they need me here."

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