"The injuries were just amazing. This man was brutal. There was not a shooting victim that didn't have less than three bullet wounds in them," said Dr. Joseph Cacioppo. He was one of the many off-duty doctors and nurses who called in to help at Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg, Virginia, after Monday's campus rampage.

Three bullet wounds in each person he saw.
33 dead including the gunman.
17 wounded remain hospitalized.
Two hours between shootings.
25,000 Virginia Tech students.
Four major and one minor surgeries performed on Monday. None overnight.

It's hard not to focus on numbers. It's what journalists default to when big news breaks. A little more than 24 hours ago, the first reports said that one person was wounded and one person was dead. There was an audible gasp at the news conference when the number of dead increased to 20. By the time the final toll - 33 - was announced, we were already on our way to Virginia.

I'm part of a large CNN team in place in and around Blacksburg. Legions of correspondents, crews and producers from every network have descended. Satellite trucks dot the campus. Our mission here, as medical journalists, is to get beyond the numbers and to tell the stories of people at the heart of this tragedy. We want to hear about the heroic doctors and nurses who saved lives yesterday -- the life-and-death decisions. We seek to understand what the community will learn from this unparalleled trauma. We're working hard to bring you answers.

CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta will be joining me this afternoon. What do you want to learn from our reporting? What details are you waiting to hear? Were you just as staggered by the numbers as we were?