When Lightning Strikes

An old-fashioned Midwestern thunderstorm had been brewing throughout the afternoon, making the paramedics' radios cut in and out. All we knew was that they were bringing in someone who had been hit by lightning. That's the kind of disaster that gives an emergency room physician nightmares, a potentially fatal accident she has never been exposed to before. "Well?" Vicky, the charge nurse, stood waiting for me. Don't panic, I told myself, lightning equals electricity, and I did have hands-on experience with people who had been shocked by an electrical circuit. The week before, I'd seen a construction worker who had somehow grabbed a very live high-voltage wire. It was so bad the paramedics had called him in as a "crispy critter." Lightning couldn't cause anything worse than that, I thought. It's the same process— an avalanche of electrons temporarily hijacking some human body part in order to complete a circuit. ...