The victim was a woman in her late 60s or early 70s who, in despair, had pointed a pistol at her chest and pulled the trigger. As she lay in the emergency room of a small hospital in California's Central Valley, her condition presented no great medical challenge; it was fairly straightforward compared with many of the messy youth shootings that confront E.R. doctors nowadays. Yet the woman's attempted suicide proved to be an epiphany for the young physician who attended her. It not only altered his life and career but also would affect countless other victims of gunshot wounds--and would...
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