Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/1079661
t m c » p u l s e | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 9 26 Increasingly, districts are hiring school resource officers to protect students from dangerous situations, including mass shootings. They are usually armed. School resource officers are commissioned, sworn law enforce- ment officers—not security guards—trained to move directly to any threat, as quickly as possible, and then to neutralize the threat to prevent loss of life or injury, according to The National Association of School Resource Officers. An estimated 20 percent of all U.S. K-12 schools, public and private, are served by school resource officers. John Barnes had been a school resource officer for just four months when he rushed toward the sound of gunfire at Santa Fe High. Barnes spent nearly 25 years as a police officer with the Houston Police Department, 10 of those patrolling some of Houston's toughest neighborhoods and another 13 doing detective work, making a name for him- self investigating sex crimes. In January 2018, hoping to slow down a bit and prepare for retirement, Barnes began working at Santa Fe ISD. Despite more than two decades in law enforcement, May 18, 2018 was the first time Barnes had ever been shot. * * * * * * * * When Ashley was finally able to see her husband in the intensive care unit (ICU), his skin was void of color, ashen, "almost all the way through," she recalled. His body was freezing to the touch. Barnes came close to losing all the blood in his body, Mileski said. "It's difficult to describe the ravages of severe hemor- rhage," the trauma surgeon later explained. "He had lost as much blood as a person can lose and still survive. Honestly, I was surprised he did survive. I didn't think his kidneys were going to come back, or his lungs, for as sick as he was. But he got lucky." Barnes cannot recall anything from his first week in the hospital. In all, he spent nearly three weeks in the ICU, undergoing dialysis to support his kidney function. On June 6, he was discharged and sent to TIRR Memorial Hermann in Houston for inpatient rehabilitation. Then, on Wednesday, June 20, he was finally well enough to go home. Nine days later, he celebrated his 50th birthday. In August, Barnes made a special trip back to UTMB. He and his wife, with coffees in hand, spent a morning in the ER and at Sealy Hospital, meeting the people who saved his life. Nurse Abby Anderson, one of the first to treat Barnes on that May morning, spoke up. "We never get to see this side. We send people that were in your condition to the OR, or up to the ICU, and then we're done," Anderson told Barnes. "We may find out from the trauma team later how they're doing or, you know, what happened, but that's it. That's as far as we get. You know, I've been doing this for five years, and there's always patients that stick with you, and you stuck with me for some reason." Standing in exam room 102, where crisp white sheets stretched across an empty bed, Barnes grew emotional, thanking those who surrounded him for, in his words, being so good at their jobs. He knew how much that mattered; ballistic analysis would eventually reveal that Barnes' aggressive march toward the alleged shooter kept the teen- ager contained, that despite classrooms full of students It's difficult to describe the ravages of severe hemorrhage. He had lost as much blood as a person can lose and still survive. Honestly, I was surprised he did survive. I didn't think his kidneys were going to come back, or his lungs, for as sick as he was. But he got lucky. — WILLIAM "BILL" MILESKI, M.D. Chief of trauma services at UTMB Barnes gets emotional in August 2018 while visiting with members of the team who cared for him at UTMB. VISIT TMCNEWS.ORG TO WATCH A VIDEO FEATURING JOHN BARNES.