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Minutes later, the stab victim burst through on a gurney, his right leg smeared in blood pouring from a gash in his lower back. His heart rate was 160, about twice what is considered normal.

The second victim came in hooked up to an oxygen tank, going in and out of consciousness. The staff injected him with fluid to lift his body temperature.

‘‘Five to 10 minutes in a cold river is hypothermia,” Harbour said, watching cautiously as the patients were stabilized.

It was a typical Friday night at the Cheverly trauma center, the second busiest in the state with 3,100 trauma patients a year.

The closest other centers are the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, 30 miles away; Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, 15 miles away; and Washington Hospital Center in the District, 10 miles away. But even 10 miles could be too far for a trauma patient.

Amid a political firestorm whose worst-case scenario is a system-wide shutdown, the emergency room nurses and physicians are trying to block out the anxiety, going about their business treating patients at one of the grittiest emergency rooms in the region.

It’s a race to save lives every day, Harbor says. The trauma center staff is proud to have compiled a save rate of 97 percent.

But talks to save the cash-strapped hospital fell through last week, and state officials immediately began to lay the groundwork for closure, meaning the hospital system’s annual 180,000 patients would have to look elsewhere for healthcare.

To hospital employees, the stalemate was a new refrain to an old song, because the system has come close to the brink before.

‘‘Every year, the employees of the hospital go through this — up and down, up and down,” said Harbour, 55. ‘‘They’re almost calloused, because this happens all the time. One of these times, and it may be this one, the axe is gonna fall ... I have to be optimistic because I can’t stand the thought of what would happen to the patients.” This time the dire predictions have an added urgency.

Officials are still trying to find ways to keep the hospital open. Barring a solution, the board of operator Dimensions Healthcare was expected to meet Wednesday to decide the lesser of two bad options — closing the hospital and its affiliates or filing for bankruptcy protection, a move that also could lead to closing the hospital.

George Washington University medical resident Elizabeth Schoenfeld, 28, said patients will be at severe risk if the hospital closes. Because patients get prescriptions there, closure will likely lead to an increase in heart attacks, strokes and diabetes cases in the county as well, as medication runs out, she said.

Schoenfeld and Harbour described the environment they work in as the ‘‘golden hour,” or that first hour after a victim is injured. That’s the time period they have to save victims. If trauma patients have to drive 45 minutes up the road, they could die.

‘‘That first hour is a very critical hour ... not many people die at hour two or three,” Schoenfeld said.

Most trauma centers don’t see nearly as many patients as Cheverly, meaning the dispersal of all those victims would put a strain on the region. The R Adams Cowley center in Baltimore sees more than 6,000 trauma victims a year, but every other Maryland center, besides Cheverly, sees fewer than 2,000. Suburban Hospital, for example, sees about 1,400 a year.

With so much uncertainty, Harbour said patients with minor injuries have generally stayed away from the Cheverly hospital.

‘‘Many people even think that the hospital’s closed,” she said.

But victims with true emergencies have no choice.

At 7:55 p.m. Friday, another pair of unrelated calls came in. One, a pregnant mother in a car accident. The other, a victim who’d been hit in the head with a machete.

‘‘An extra 40 minutes up the road is the difference between life and death,” said registered nurse Terry Baker. He was waiting to receive a 21-year-old woman who was 21 weeks pregnant on the roof of the hospital as she was flown in by a jet black Maryland State Police chopper.

Downstairs, nurses checked on the machete victim, whose head was dressed in blood spattered bandages. He had been treated at the scene and rushed to the hospital, where the bleeding was brought under control.

Harbour said the patients will suffer more than the employees if the hospital closes. She talked about the ‘‘vacuum” that’s already waiting to suck up her qualified staff. Working at Prince George’s Hospital Center, she said, is a badge of honor.

‘‘We can find another job, but the community won’t find another hospital,” said physician Kate Douglass, 30.

The hospital system sees mostly uninsured patients, part of the reason it’s had so much financial trouble over the years.

Harbour said it would take a reputable academic institution like the University of Maryland to come in and save the ailing system. The university has shied away from the hospital, though, and its multi-million dollar debt.

Harbour said the equipment and the building are so old she has trouble attracting staff. Their ‘‘poverty spiral” prevents her from placing orders to replace the stretchers, or even the cardiac monitor that’s been there since the ‘80s. ‘‘They need to take a match to this place,” she said.

Laurel resident Ava Campbell, 51, who was in the hospital Friday for a minor car accident, said the facility has been her primary source of emergency care for most of her adult life.

‘‘This hospital’s done me well over the years,” she said.

She was there in 1989 when she was about to have a premature birth. They treated her and sent her to Providence Hospital to deliver the baby. She was there again in 1997 for a bad car accident, when she had to be pulled out through her windshield. She still has metal in her head from the accident. Then she returned to the hospital in 2001 for treatment after a minor motorcycle accident.

‘‘I hope they keep it open. I really do,” Campbell said.

The 3,100 trauma patients make up only a fraction of the emergency room visits every year.

Annually, 48,000 patients visit the Cheverly emergency room, while 36,000 emergency patients visit the Laurel Regional Hospital and 38,000 visit the Bowie Health Center. If the hospital system closes, all those emergency rooms will be gone, since they fall under the Dimensions system.

By 9 p.m. Friday, Harbour said the evening’s trauma patients had been stabilized. She’d been at work since 8 a.m., and was ready to head home. Once more, she mentioned the ‘‘ripple effect” closure would have:

Shutting down the second busiest trauma center in the state would be felt all the way through suburban Washington and up to Western Maryland.

E-mail Judson Berger at jberger@gazette.net.