The Laramie Project
By Moises Kaufman and the members of the Tectonic Theater Project

On October 7, 1998, a young gay man was discovered bound to a fence in the hills outside Laramie, Wyoming, savagely beaten and left to die in an act of brutality and hate that shocked the nation. In one of 200 interviews conducted by the Tectonic Theatre Project members, one ER doctor tells about his involvement.

DR. CANTWAY:

I was working in the emergency room the night Matthew Shepard was brought in. I don't think that any of us, ah, can remember seeing a patient in that condition for a long time - those of us who've worked in big city hospitals have seen this. Ah, but we have some people here who've not worked in a big city hospital. And, ah, it's not something you expect here.

Ah, you expect it, you expect this kind of injuries to come from a car going down a hill at eighty miles an hour. You expect to see gross injuries from something like that - this horrendous, terrible thing. Ah, but you don't expect to see that from someone doing this to another person.

The ambulance report said it was a beating, so we knew.

Your first thought is... well, certainly you'd like to think that it's somebody from out of town, that comes through and beats somebody. I mean, things like this happen, you know, and it happens in Laramie... it offends us.

Now the strange thing is, twenty minutes before Matthew came in, Aaron McKinney was brought in by his girlfriend. Now I guess he had gotten into a fight later on that night back in town, so I am workin' on Aaron and the ambulance comes in with Matthew. Now at this point, I don't know that there's a connection - at all. So I tell Aaron to wait and I go and treat Matthew. So there's Aaron in one room of the ER, and Matthew in another room two doors down.

Then two days later, I found out the connection and I was very... struck! They were two kids! They were both my patients and they were two kids! I took care of both of them... of both their bodies... And... for a brief moment... I wondered if this is how God feels when he looks down at us. How we are all his kids... our bodies... our souls... And I felt a great deal of compassion... for both of them...

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