Rhode Island Hospital officials had long been planning a mural of modern medical care; The Station nightclub fire provides them with the subject.

06/09/2003

BY GINA MACRIS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The "patient" in the hospital johnny had the reddened face and arms of someone who was recovering from burns.

One arm rested in an elevated position on a bulky foam support. A blood-pressure cuff was wrapped around the upper part of the arm, tethered to a laptop computer on a rolling stand at the foot of the bed. And one leg was bandaged from thigh to ankle.

Rhode Island Hospital staff, including Dr. David Harrington, a burn specialist who happened to be on duty the Februrary night of The Station nightclub disaster, yesterday swarmed around the woman in the bed.

She was Terri Maine, who got her red face and arms from strategically applied makeup. Maine is a registered nurse who worked with the colleagues around her in caring for burn victims who kept rolling into the emergency room after the Feb. 20 fire.

Journal photo / John Freidah Artist Warren Prosperi, left, creates a mock medical scene to photograph with models Terri Maine and Lilia Amaral, both nurses. At left is his framed study of a bedside scene from 1863.

The dramatic tableau, temporarily set up in the lobby of Rhode Island Hospital's Ambulatory Patient Center, was one piece -- albeit a critical one -- of a project that began a few years ago when hospital trustee Lisa Van Allsburg came to her fellow board members with an idea.

Van Allsburg, the wife of noted children's book author and illustrator Chris Van Allsburg, had been taken by a realistic mural depicting the first time ether was used in general surgery, in 1846, recalled Dr. Edward A. Iannuccilli, chairman of the hospital's board of trustees.

The mural, by artist Warren Prosperi, hangs in the "Ether Dome," the operating theater on the top of the Bullfinch Building at Massachusetts General Hospital where the historic event occurred.

Van Allsburg proposed asking Prosperi to similarly commemorate the history of Rhode Island Hospital, and the Rhode Island Hospital Foundation agreed to finance the project, Iannuccilli said.

Yesterday, Prosperi moved among the medical personnel-turned-actors, checking and double-checking the most minute details before the digital photography was to begin.

Prosperi said he hoped to come away with perhaps 300 still photographs that would guide him in creating a painting that would serve as a study for the mural, one of two that he will paint in the main lobby of the hospital.

The study for the other mural, on display yesterday, depicted patient care in 1863.

One is not sure the patient receiving primitive care inthe 19th-century scene will go home, said Iannuccili, looking at the painting, but it will be clear that the burn victim is well on the road to recovery.

Dr. Joseph Amaral, president and chief executive officer of the hospital, said the overarching theme of the project is to give patients and their families a sense of the comfort and dedication of the staff.

While the 19th-century surroundings of one mural and the high-tech environment of the other will provide stark contrasts, the common thread will be the people, he said.

"It should be soothing and draw you in," he said.

Prosperi said he was looking for the same kind of body language in the contemporary setting as he had captured in the 19th-century scene, which was produced with professional reenactors.

He said it will take a month or two to paint a study of yesterday's scene to complement the painting of 19th-century care. Once the second study is approved, he said, painting the murals will take another year.

The reenactment of contemporary care had originally been planned for January but never occurred because of scheduling conflicts, hospital officials said yesterday.

A month later came the disastrous fire, which sent 43 patients through the doors of the emergency room in a seemingly never-ending stream.

"It changed all our lives forever," Iannuccilli said.

And because of chance, the tableau modeled yesterday will not only depict the art and science of modern medical care but will serve as a subtle tribute to the work of the staff in one of the hospital's defining moments, said hospital spokeswoman Polly Stiness.