[Cooper:] As we pointed out, 28 survivors are still hospitalized tonight. They've been shot. All but six of them are being treated to the hospital behind me the Orlando Regional Medical Center. One of them is a 20-year-old woman named Patience Carter. She was in Florida on vacation, her first time here. She wrote an incredibly moving poem about the shooting and what she saw and how she feels about surviving when so many others didn't. She read her poem from the hospital today. We think it's important to hear it.
[Patience Carter, Orlando Shooting Survivor:] The guilt of feeling grateful to be alive is heavy. Wanting to smile about surviving but not sure if the people around you are ready. As the world mourns the victims killed and viciously slain, I feel guilty about screaming about my legs in pain because I could feel nothing. Like the other 49 who weren't so lucky to feel this pain of mine. I never thought in a million years that this could happen. I never thought in a million years that my eyes could witness something so tragic. Looking at the souls leaving the bodies of individuals, looking at the killer's machine gun throughout my right peripheral, looking at the blood and debris covered on everyone's faces, looking at the gunman's feet under the stall as he paces. The guilt of feeling lucky to be alive is heavy, it's like the weight of the ocean's wall is crushing uncontrolled by levees. Like being drug through the grass with a shattered leg and thrown on the bag of a chevy, it's like being rushed to the hospital and told you're going to make it when you laid beside individuals who lives were brutally taken. The guilt of being alive is heavy.
[Cooper:] The guilt of feeling lucky to be alive is heavy she said. We wish Patience Carter strength in days ahead. Our chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now. He's have exclusive access inside the hospital over the pass a couple of days. I mean it's remarkable to realize just sort of how many people are working on people like Patience and on other survivors. I mean, it takes so many people, there's so many multiple wounds at times.
[Sanjay Gupta, Cnn Chief Medical Correspondent:] From the moments they literally entered the hospital, there have been dozens of people involved, the doctors and nurses all sorts therapists and, you know, the psychological impact, what you're hearing is survivor's guilt combined with post traumatic stress. This can be individualized. People respond in the situation so differently. It could be very powerful and it could be surprising even to the person who experiencing, if they don't quite now how to describe it at first. And what's also interesting is sort of being around these community for sometime is even people outside of the club, people who just live in this community can also have a competitive survivor's guilt. You know, they lived when others did not, typically in situations where people are targeted, for example, something like this versus natural disaster, survivor's guilt is going to be more common.
[Cooper:] You know, to be fair. You and I have been in a lot of places where a lot of terrible things have happened. And I often get a lot of questions from friends but also tweets from people saying, well, how can people in their moment of grief, you know, appear so calm and talk, how can Patience have the strength to read that out in a press conference. How can a mother who just lost her son smile while she's talking about her son? And, I mean, we all react to grief different. I mean...
[Gupta:] I don't know.
[Cooper:] But like there are a lot of people who are lot more composed than I'm able to be.
[Gupta:] Yeah, I don't think I should do it. You know, when I see some of these parents for example are talking about their children. I think part of it is a sense of empowerment you know you feel so you've lost all control.
[Cooper:] And they want people to know about their loved ones. You know when somebody dies violently, you don't want to just remember how their life ended, you want them to know how they lived their life.
[Gupta:] That's right and they feel like they can be that that messenger and also again with these survivor's guilt, the part of it is also honoring the people who died. You have such self-preservation when you're being targeted like this, that you want to save your own life but then you start to think about it, reflect, could I have done more to save other people's lives as well? Doctors and nurses people here, that's part of their role as well you know the doctors have been describing how they behaved when these patients started came in how the patient came in. One of the doctors spoke quite a lot about this. Take a listen.
[Dr. Kathryn Bondani, Orlando Regional Medical Center:] Our first patient was relatively stable, awake and talking to us, and we thought maybe they're all going to be like this and that would be great. And then we quickly got two or three more that were very critical in nature. We quickly got about five patients and that was a lot for us and we thought maybe that was going to be it and then they started ling up in the hallway. They weren't being brought in by ambulances. There was no paramedics coming in and giving us support and dropping them off they were being dropped off in truckloads and in ambulance loads where our amazing nurses and techs were putting them on stretchers and rolling them in to us and telling us that another patient is here, another patient is here, another patient is here. And quickly our trauma bay became folding capacity and we had to move people out.
[Gupta:] You know, beside the words that she's saying, you can hear sort a little bit of that cathartic nature of what she's saying as well getting some of this out there, but Anderson they were bringing patients in, in pickup trucks, typically you get some sort of advance notice, A that are patients are coming...
[Cooper:] She can figure out how the triage things...
[Gupta:] Triage.
[Cooper:] ... the priority.
[Gupta:] They give you some idea about the pattern of injuries are they really had no idea I mean the last time I think you and I saw something like again was in a war zone.
[Cooper:] Right.
[Gupta:] For something patients just show up and so it was that sort of feeling for a period of time but they were empowered to be able to do something about it and I think that's a lot of how they get through this psychologically again.
[Cooper:] Right, and for many of these doctors, I mean but obviously never seen unless they had military training, they've probably never something at this level.
[Gupta:] Right and the number of wounds I mean these patients had, just because of multiple gunshot wounds. But also, you know, we talk about the bullets, the way they behave once they get on the body, they tumble, they loss someone can be shot one or the body which is where you focus your attention, but all of a sudden the bullet has travel causing damage throughout the body. And the patient may look OK, blood pressure is OK and five minutes later they're completely unstable. So it's a lot of monitoring, a lot of diligence but they have to spend besides just operating and taking care of them.
[Cooper:] Yeah, well Sanjay it's great that you have some access, appreciate you can talk to us, thank you very much. Sanjay Gupta. Just ahead, we'll continue to remember the victim's brother of nursing student Amanda Alvear share his memory, she posted a Snapshot video right when the gun fire started. It's the last images her family has of her. They also learned about her brave actions before she died when we continue from Orlando.