dr. jack sava led the team. what condition was he in? >> dr. ell, when he left the trauma unit, he-- he did not have a-- blood pressure that anybody could find. so that's obviously sort of hovering on the border between life and death. >> o'donnell: to keep scalise alive, two minutes after he arrived, they began something called a massive transfusion protocol. dr. sava says it's a method of delivering blood that's been improved by hard lessons learned on the battlefields of iraq and afghanistan. >> dr. sava: the blood bank will just start sending blood in-- in all the right combinations. the blood cells, the platelets, the plasma. it all comes in a cooler. and a cooler comes every 15 minutes till you call and say, "stop." so-- >> o'donnell: how many units of blood did steve scalise use in the first day? >> dr. sava: i think he got roughly 18 to 20 units of blood in the first day. >> o'donnell: how much blood is that? >> dr. sava: that's a lot. that's more than you have in your body. >> o'donnell: doctors operated to stop the bleeding, then emplo