A week has passed since Kathleen Giblin, a New York City probation officer, came upon the devastation in Car No. 3 of the 5:33 to Hicksville, but it seems to her as if time has stood still.
She was riding the train a car or two behind the one where 23 people were shot, and when the train came to a halt at the Merillon Avenue station in Garden City, N.Y., Giblin, who trained as an emergency medical technician, ran up to a police officer and asked if there was anything she could do.What she encountered after the officer whisked her through a frantic mob of escaping passengers is something Giblin is having difficulty making sense of.
"I did what anyone else would have done," Giblin, 27, said on Monday as she sat in a Probation Department office in downtown Manhattan. "I walked into probably the most horrible thing I will ever see in my life. Now, people are saying to me, `You're an angel' and `We're so glad you moved into the neighborhood.' . . . I can't seem to get a grip on this."
In the end, she was one of dozens of medical technicians, rescue workers and police officers who encountered the ghastly scene at the Long Island Rail Road station.
When Giblin entered the car, she saw six or seven passengers slumped in seats and on the floor of the car. "There was one body. He was deceased," she recalled, her voice breaking. "There was another body. He was deceased. Another gentleman was lying across the floor. They all had multiple gunshot wounds."
She did what she could for them. And then she noticed Kevin McCarthy, 26, who would become important to her.
Since the incident, she says she sleeps only in short spurts and is reminded of the images she witnessed in the most mundane of situations.
"It's been hard," she said, adding that her husband has been understanding, even though he can't fully appreciate what it was like. "I've been irritable, I've been moody. He's like trying to put everything back to normal. And I will just start to cry."
At the urging of colleagues, Giblin saw a psychologist at North Shore University Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center in Manhasset, N.Y., who counsels trauma victims. But to the probation officer, there is an even more valuable form of therapy at the hospital: the recovery of Mc-Car-thy.
The Mineola resident had been shot in the head and critically wounded during the rampage; his father, Dennis, seated next to him, was killed. Giblin was the first technician to reach the younger McCarthy. Although severely injured, he was conscious, she said.
By then, ambulance workers had begun to arrive with rescue equipment.
"I looked at the monthly ticket in his shirt pocket to see his name," Giblin recalled. "All I could read was `Kevin' and nothing else. I was telling him, `Kevin, they're coming. Kevin, we're going to get you out of here.' I held onto Kevin. I put a neck collar around his neck to try and stabilize him."
When it was over, after McCarthy had been placed in an ambulance and a police officer told her, "You did a good job, kid," Giblin went home in a taxi, her clothes and shoes covered with blood.
After a sleepless night, she could not get Kevin McCarthy out of her mind. And so, on Wednesday, she drove to North Shore Hospital to find out how he was doing.
A hospital administrator introduced her to McCarthy's mother, Carolyn, who greeted her warmly. "She said, `Thank you,' " Giblin said, recalling her surprise at how poised the mother was and her own embarrassment at her words of praise.
In the days since, McCarthy has continued to make progress.
Giblin follows McCarthy's recovery as if he were her own close relative. Though there have been unpleasant moments in the last week she said she wants to do more to help him recover. To that end, she is helping to raise money for the Kevin McCarthy Fund, established by the family to raise money for the young man's treatment.
"Kevin," she said, "left such a mark on me."