This sad turn of events had prompted this day’s visit. Mike, along with one of the physician assistants working with him, and the patient’s son squeezed into the tight space of Exam Room 15 in the Watkins Cardiovascular Clinic at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. According to witnesses, the son seemed angry but never raised his voice. He began by insisting that Mike look up the toxicity profile of amiodarone, one of several drugs that his mother had been prescribed following her surgery. Based on his personal interpretation of the data available online, the son had concluded that this drug killed his mother.
No one expects to face a killer within the confines of a hospital.
“You did not tell me or my family the detrimental side effects of this drug, and my mother’s dead because of this,” he said.2
Although Mike disputed this assertion and tried to reason with the son for the next 40 minutes, nothing he said would placate the son. Realizing that he was falling woefully behind schedule, Mike stood up and started to leave the room, having asked the physician assistant to depart several minutes earlier.
A patient and his father waiting in the exam room next door recalled hearing the sound of a table sliding on the floor followed by the sound of three gunshots. The first hit Mike in the thigh and the second in his back. He burst out of the room shouting, “Run, run, he’s shooting; he’s shooting!” before collapsing to the ground. Then came the blast of the third bullet, piercing the skull of the shooter: a death by suicide.
The cardiovascular operating rooms are situated a mere three floors below the site of the carnage, a quick descent on the hospital elevators. Despite an exhaustive effort spanning 11 hours, Mike could not be rescued, leaving his young family shattered in the wake of these two bullets. His wife, Terri, was seven months pregnant. She gave birth to their fourth child, Mikaela Jane Davidson, on April 4, 2015. Terri and their four young children survive him.
Sadly, Mike’s near-final words, uttered to a colleague as he was about to meet the son, presaged the outcome: “Watch this, he’ll probably shoot me.”2
The Doctor as Target
No one expects to face a killer within the confines of a hospital. I hope that I never again hear the voice on the hospital loudspeaker system imploring patients to “seek immediate cover. Active shooting incident on Shapiro 2.”
