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Half an hour after his first Haitian patient came rolling toward him on a gurney, the USNS Comfort's Capt. Daniel Shmorhun stepped away and took a breath.

"This is going to be a rollercoaster ride," said Shmorhun, who is a long way from his Kensington home.

The first two patients on the Comfort arrived by helicopters just before 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. They arrived from the USS Vinson, which was already in Haitian waters. One was a 20-year-old man with a head injury and a skull fracture who required a trip to the CT scanner at about 10:55 p.m.

The other was Shmorhun's patient, a young boy with a pelvic fracture and a bladder injury who did not know the location of his parents.

The boy, 6, was able to give a translator, Haiti native and Navy corpsman Yves Henry, his father's cell phone number.

The medical team had gotten mixed messages about the boy's status before his arrival, Shmorhun said. Surgery had been performed on the boy's abdomen within the past week. The boy had a slight fever but managed to keep his eyes open. A tube was draining fluid from his abdominal area.

"He had a lot of bricks fall on him," said Commander William Todd, a pediatric orthopedist who was at the child's bedside.

Both patients were described as being in stable condition. The first two patients' names were unavailable as of late Tuesday.

"We've got a lot of people here that will take care of him," Todd said.

Until about two hours before the patients' arrival, the ship's crew had been told the first patients were not due to arrive until early today by helicopter, forcing the medical teams and support staff to scramble.

The patients, both on gurneys, came in one elevator down from the flight deck, and they had about a 30-foot trip from there to casualty receiving's Bay 6, which is reserved for pediatrics. About 20 waiting medical personnel quickly divided into two teams and clustered around their cases.

Even though he had received information prior to the boy's arrival, such as X-rays and other diagnostic results sent over the Internet, "The problem is now we don't know the time frame and some of the nuances of what's going on," said Commander Sean Safford, a pediatric surgeon.

Soon after the 20-year-old man was wheeled into the CT scanner room, Navy medical staff could be seen running back and forth between the CT scanner and the casualty receiving room, grabbing needed supplies such as a drip bag.

Despite the short notice and the tension that rose over the course of Tuesday, the casualty receiving room was quiet. It was sanitary, clean and efficient. The doctors moved quickly but made little show and spoke to each other without raising their voices.

Just a few days ago, Henry, who grew up in Haiti and learned over the weekend that his grandmother survived the earthquake, was nervous about what he would see.

He sat beside the boy and asked him questions in Creole, translating the answers for the men and women who hold his life and his heart in their hands.

"He was very helpful. I thought he was going to be unable to help," Henry said. "He wasn't in any pain at all. He wanted some water."

His first interaction with a Haitian patient was easier than he expected.

"Now that I got this patient out of the way, I kind of know what to expect," he said.

Even though Shmorhun was in the rollercoaster's first car as it began to drop Tuesday night, he felt as though the medical team around the young boy handled themselves well.

"It's a good way to start," he said. "Everyone's done a wonderful job."