A county jail inmate lay in a padded restraint in a hallway, his head bleeding. A man sat in a wheelchair, weeping in the packed waiting room. Physicians at HCMC's emergency department debated whether a stabbing victim needed surgery. A nurse cradled a phone, getting a handle on capacity: Of 23 ER patients needing admission to the hospital, only five had beds. "That leaves 18 people without beds," the nurse said. "And 30 in triage, which will probably only get longer. Their longest wait back here is 24 hours." Dr. Jim Miner, HCMC's chief of emergency medicine, ducked into the tiny physicians' break room. Here, away from scenes of chaos and desperation, he could take a breath. This was the height of summer, known here as "trauma season." For the past several years, Minnesota's busiest ER has hardly gotten a break: COVID and overdoses and gun violence and more, society's problems all funneling here. Layered on top of it all has been a spike in abuse of health care workers, from freque...