Dawnsinger

Within days after Katrina, the story began to unfold about the ongoing horror under way inside some of New Orleans' hospitals.  Email from the sister of a doctor trapped in one of the hospitals told of the frantic race to get critically ill patients above the flood waters . . . fear of drug-starved looters pillaging . . . lack of oxygen, sterile equipment and food . . . agonizing heat and the torment of suffering and dying patients.

But the most disturbing image of all  . . . even more disturbing than the piling of corpses in the stairwells as patients died . . . was the accusation that New Orleans doctors had begun mercy killings - lethal injections - in a last-gasp decision to stop the torment.  Too horrible to imagine at first - like the apocryphal tales of babies being raped in the Superdome - this story refused to go away.  And before the water was drained from the city, investigations were launched into claims by other doctors and nurses who refused to go along with the euthanasia.

Today we learned that a doctor and two nurses from Memorial Hospital have been charged with second-degree murder in the deaths of four patients.  Attorney General Charles Foti, in an afternoon press conference, said the trio deliberately killed the four patients with a lethal cocktail of morphine and depressants.

Stories on the probe itself have been gruesome.  Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard ordered toxicology tests on dozens of storm victims from a number of local hospitals, noting that the severe decomposition made the investigation tough going. 

This nightmare, which has been lurking in the background since late 2005, is touching a raw nerve in New Orleans.  At NOLA.com today, letters to the editor so far have been unanimously supportive of the doctor and nurses, and criticizing the prosecution of the case.  And the site's daily poll - admittedly unscientific - shows 76 percent of respondents saying it is wrong to prosecute the medical staff.  The common theme is criticism of Foti for charging medical staffers who were doing their best to relieve the torment of patients in the hellish chaos of the drowning city. 

And everyone is now bleeding from emotional wounds torn open again, and with the prospect of reliving the horror stories from the hospitals.