AFTER THE RIOTS: THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS : A Hospital in the Eye of the Storm : Emergency care: At least 150 people hurt in the riot were treated at Daniel Freeman. The facility is a victim itself, anticipating a loss of up to $2 million because of uninsured patients, overtime and loss of revenue.

It was just after dusk on Day Three of the Los Angeles riots when another dead body was wheeled into the frenetic emergency room at Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital.

A shooting victim lay moaning nearby. A county coroner’s transport team arrived to fetch a body. A National Guardsman in camouflage pants rested in a wheelchair, suffering from a stomach ailment.

And as the sirens wailed outside, weary employees braced themselves for more bodies, more gunshot wounds, more signs of a city at war with itself.

Daniel Freeman is about two miles west of the now-infamous intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues where trouble first flared Wednesday night. That placed the hospital near the front lines of the riots and transformed its 15-bed emergency department into a MASH unit of sorts.

“It’s going to be a long night, eh?” said one white-uniformed woman.

A colleague quickly retorted: “Don’t say that.”

The pace ebbed and flowed in the hospital’s U-shaped emergency department with its pale-blue walls and striped curtains cloaking patient beds. Workers scrambled to greet each ambulance, then relaxed and returned to routine tasks.

A little girl in an examination room wailed endlessly. Two employees arrived with huge trays heaped with sandwiches and fruit juices for the staff and paramedic workers.

This Catholic hospital was an eye in the storm, a safe harbor for at least 150 of those believed wounded in the strife--ranking it the third-busiest among the 83 hospitals in Los Angeles County treating riot victims. Twenty victims were admitted to Daniel Freeman and about half remained there this week. The hospital also reported three deaths.

Among Daniel Freeman’s patients is Reginald O. Denny, the white truck driver beaten nearly to death, who attracted special mention by President Bush in his speech about the rioting last week. Denny’s presence has drawn swarms of reporters and television camera crews to the hospital’s doors and kept its switchboard busy with calls from well-wishers across the United States.

But most other riot victims are unsung, unnoticed and too poor to afford health insurance. While the national media provide daily reports on Denny’s condition, the 365-bed hospital caring for him is anticipating a riot-related loss of between $1.5 million and $2 million this month--largely because of uninsured victims, overtime costs and loss of revenue.

About 75% of the riot victims treated at Daniel Freeman have no private health insurance, officials say. In fact, most of the 233 critically ill riot victims in Los Angeles County have no way of covering their hospital bills, said David Langness, spokesman for the Hospital Council of Southern California.

Like many private hospitals, Daniel Freeman was struggling with cash-flow problems even before the riots and announced in March that management employees would take temporary 10% salary cuts to prevent layoffs.

And the past week’s surge of injured has inflamed tensions between Daniel Freeman and nearby Centinela Hospital Medical Center, which closed its emergency room to non-obstetrics paramedic ambulances three years ago. Although Centinela did lift that rule Wednesday night, Daniel Freeman employees say that at least one gunshot victim was turned away from Centinela and routed to another hospital.

The drama that has unfolded over the past eight days at Daniel Freeman touches on such sweeping medical issues as ambulance access and the cost of treating non-insured patients.

But the staff has had little time to analyze that drama. Indeed, several staff members and volunteers interviewed last week could not recall exactly how many hours they had been working to aid riot victims.

Paramedic student Christopher Garrison, 26, of Irvine, who assisted in the emergency department Friday night, vaguely remembered sleeping for two hours on a mattress on the floor of some back room.

He added: “I know we got here at 3 o’clock in the morning--some morning.”

The emergency department’s medical director, Dr. Bayliss Yarnell, was just finishing his shift last Wednesday evening when the first reports of violence surfaced. He would finally leave for home Thursday night, about 36 hours after he arrived.

“I felt like an intern,” Yarnell said.

The first victim to seek aid at the emergency room was a nun of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, the order that operates the hospital.

The nun was driving from the hospital to a convent with three other sisters when their car was pelted with rocks and bricks. She returned to the hospital, where she was treated for bruises and cuts on her arm and cuts on her face, according to hospital officials who said the nun does not want to be identified.

A stream of victims began arriving at the hospital’s doors, many in private vehicles. They had been shot, stabbed, cut, beaten, burned.

“They all seemed to have bloody heads, bloody faces,” recalled Sister Mechtilde Gerber, a nursing supervisor who assisted the emergency-room staff into the early morning hours. “The patients were coming in so fast. They needed gurneys. They needed IVs.”

Gerber, 73, is a 33-year hospital veteran whose traditional white habit and relentless energy has earned her the affectionate nickname “the white tornado.” She was working at Daniel Freeman when the 1965 Watts riots broke out, and the impact on the hospital then was “nothing like” last week’s unrest, she said.

The images of last week’s wounded remain with her. There was the 13-year-old boy brought in on his mother’s ironing board for lack of a stretcher. The profusely bleeding man whom friends carried straight through the emergency-room waiting area. The man severely burned on his arms, chest and face who told her, “You know, I was on fire.” Most victims treated that first night were black or Latino, emergency workers said. Of the first 11 patients admitted, only one--Denny--was Anglo. Their ages ranged from 16 to 43.

Watching the staff cope was “kind of like watching MASH on television,” hospital Executive Vice President Peter Bastone said.

Yarnell was amazed by the number of victims.

“Everything we saw that night, I’ve seen before,” the emergency department director said. “What was unique and exceptional was the volume.

He added: “This whole thing has focused a lot of attention on this emergency room and this part of the city, but really, the war out there has been going on for a long time. . . . There really is a kind of urban warfare that’s being waged here all the time.”

The riots have also focused attention on relations between Daniel Freeman and nearby Centinela Hospital Medical Center, which three years ago drastically cut its emergency room service. Centinela made the move after seeing a dramatic rise in the number of patients unable to pay their bills.

Daniel Freeman officials say the hospital’s mission is to treat all patients regardless of ability to pay.

When the violence erupted Wednesday, Centinela officials say, they notified the county that they would accept paramedic ambulances. They say they treated a total of 64 patients believed to be injured by the riots, most of whom arrived by private vehicles; none are known to have arrived by paramedic ambulance.

Daniel Freeman officials say a Centinela emergency employee late Wednesday declined to accept a man wounded by gunfire, a man whose paramedic ambulance was instead routed to Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital in Marina del Rey. But Centinela officials counter that the call came when they were dealing with two critically hurt patients and others waiting for care and were too busy to accept another patient.

Ironically, the surge of dead and wounded has forced Daniel Freeman to delay the launch of its $5-million maternity unit.

The medical bills, meanwhile, are mounting. The Daniel Freeman Hospitals Foundation has launched several riot-related relief funds, including one earmarked specifically to help pay the medical expenses of uninsured patients. As of Tuesday, the foundation had received about 1,000 pieces of mail, with about half containing checks, but the contributions have not yet been tallied, a spokesman said.

The publicity surrounding Denny has given the hospital unexpected national prominence. On Monday, eight television cameras and scores of reporters were lined up at a hospital press conference with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and talk show host Arsenio Hall.

Gerber, “the white tornado,” led them on a tour of the hospital, and later said she is grateful the hospital played a role in helping the wounded.

“There’s nothing else we can do but help them out,” Gerber said. “I know it’s hard on the running of the hospital sometimes, because we do have patients who don’t have much to give us. But I’m sure it will all work out in the end.”

On the Front Lines Inglewood’s Daniel Freeman Hospital, a 365-bed Catholic facility grappling with budget problems, was one of the busiest centers in the county for treating victims of last week’s riots.

Daniel Freeman Memorial Hospital Location: 333 N. Prairie Ave. in Inglewood

Beds: 365

Staff: 1,200 employees; 500 medical staff

Ownership: Catholic nonprofit hospital operated by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. Affiliated with Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital in Marina del Ray.

Riot casualties: Treated 150 people believed injured in the riots, admitting 20. Three deaths.