When four expectant mothers went to Alta View Hospital over the weekend, their dreams were of giving life, not of having it taken away.
But death was at the forefront of all of the victims' minds two days later."I'm not going to live through this night and neither are any of you guys," Richard Worthington reportedly told the nine people he held hostage.
"We were very scared. I thought I was going to die," said nurse Margie Wyler. "I think most of us thought we were going to die at that point."
Others - hiding from the gunman in their hospital rooms unbeknown to Worthington - also worried about being discovered and shot. But their overriding concerns were for their newborn babies.
Jae Lowder of West Jordan had handed her infant son to nurse Susan Woolley about 11:30 p.m. so she could get some sleep. The nurse wheeled young Bryan out of the room and shut the door. Seconds after the door closed, Lowder heard the scuffles and screams.
"I heard him shoot down the hallway. . . . He said he wanted the babies," she said. "I knew that Bryan was left out in the hallway."
Too frightened to open the door, Lowder sat paralyzed in her hospital room listening intently as the gunman screamed and cursed. She heard Worthington go into the next room and order some hostages to lie down on the floor. Then he ordered Woolley to bring the baby into the room.
What came next, she recalled tearfully, was her most frightening moment.
"I heard another shot, and I just knew he'd shot my son." She could hear Bryan crying in the room next door. "Then he got quiet after the gunshot."
The mother of five said she cried and frantically paced the floor in her room, still unsure of what to do. Later, she heard someone hit her door.
"My first thought was, `I'm dead. He's in here now.' " A man entered her room and pointed a gun directly at her. He then took her hand, embraced her and quietly said, "Let's go."
The SWAT team member took her downstairs. "I kept asking them, `Please get my son.' They kept saying: `I will. I will.' Yet nobody could get him," she said.
When the hostages were released late Saturday, Lowder was finally reunited with her boy. "It was the best moment of my life because I thought he was dead all the time," she said.
She continued to clutch him tightly Sunday afternoon and said she has not let him out of her arms since the ordeal ended.
Cindy Adamson had just given birth to her daughter Chelsea by Caesarean section Friday. She was sleeping in her hospital room when she woke to the sounds of screams. Her baby was outside her room in the nursery.
Knowing she could not call the nurse for help, she called her parents, who told her they could hear a lot of sirens heading toward the hospital.
"I kept thinking, `Where's my baby?' and `How can I get my baby?' " she said.
An hour later, a SWAT team member entered her room pointing a gun at her."I thought I was going to be dead. It was my turn."
The officer rescued the Sandy mother of two by picking her up and running. Just as Lowder had done, she begged him to stop at the nursery and get her baby. "They said no, that they'd send someone back to get her."
Once she was outside, a nurse told her she had taken her baby out and the two were reunited at Cottonwood Hospital.
Adamson said she has relived the nightmare many times since the incident.
"Every time I hear even running, I jolt awake and think something was happening all over again," she said.
Cheryl Bowen, Riverton, was nursing her newborn Alisha late Friday. Karla Roth, who was killed during the ordeal, had just told her to call her when she finished nursing. Bowen then heard glass break and a woman scream.
"I yelled out what was wrong and then thought I'd better not say anything," she said.
Bowen took her daughter and hid inside the bathroom for two hours. "I had gotten up twice that day, so luckily, I could walk." Members of the SWAT team also took her and her newborn to safety.
Christan Downey, 22, was in labor with her first child when the gunman stormed the hospital. Wyler was helping her when Worthington burst through the door carrying a rifle and a handgun and demanded to know where Dr. Glade Curtis was. He then left but later forced Woolley to the room at gunpoint.
The gunman ordered his hostages to the third floor. Downey's bed didn't fit into the office, so the nurses carried her into an office on a sheet. She gave birth to the ninth hostage - Caitlin - on the floor of the office.
"She was almost born right before he came in. We prolonged it for about four hours," Downey said.
The new mother credited her 19-year-old sister, Carre Downey, "for keeping Mr. Worthington calm" during the ordeal. She said Worthington left them in the room by themselves for the most part, but he had wired the room and threatened the hostages not to leave or they'd be blown up.
Hospital administrator Doug Fonnesbeck laughed that Downey may receive some kind of discount on her labor/delivery bill.
The incident is going to affect the participants for some time, said Jennie Wyckoff, a social worker at the hospital. The victims should expect to go through several different kinds of emotions.
"It's going to be a roller coaster for a while," she said. "I'm feeling the same thing. I spent the whole day with the Lowders yesterday, and it was sort of a nightmare."
She said she will be checking on the victims regularly and plans to have them get together at some point to discuss the incident, which should help them deal with it better.
"It's the kind of thing the Vietnam vets went through - post-traumatic stress disorder," Wyckoff said.