The first thing you feel is the heat. Even on a warm, sunny day, the patient rooms and hallways of the burn unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital are heated to 85[degrees] F. For the most severely burned, that's still not warm enough; with so much skin scorched away, the body can no longer keep up the temperature that internal organs need to function.
Within an hour of the second plane crash, a dozen patients--all with life-threatening burns--had been speeded by ambulance to this, the nation's leading burn unit, which by perverse happenstance is located about 100 blocks from Ground Zero....
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