In the early morning, The Massachusetts General Hospital was notified by Harvard University that some students, at that time occupying a university building in protest of ROTC, might be brought to the hospital for treatment of injuries after their forcible removal from the building. This occurred at 5 a.m., and although some fifty students were reportedly injured, none were brought to the MGH.

At 5:45 in the morning, the last of the emergency-ward residents got to bed, sleeping fully clothed, sprawled on a cot in one of the treatment rooms. Taped on the door to the room was a piece of paper on which he had written his name and "Wake at 6:30." Across the hall in another treatment room, two surgical residents were sleeping; in a third room, one of the interns.

Even without the Harvard students, it had been a busy night. Shortly before midnight, the EW had admitted two college students with pelvic fractures from motorcycle accidents, and both had been taken to surgery; later on, they had also admitted a forty-one-year-old man suffering from a heart attack, an eighty-year-old woman with congestive heart failure, and a thirty-six-year-old alcoholic with acute pancreatitis. An elderly man with meta-static carcinoma and renal failure had died at 3 a.m.

There had also been the usual number of patients with sore throats, coughs, abrasions, lacerations, foreign bodies inhaled or swallowed, bruises, concussions, dislocated shoulders, earaches, headaches, stomachaches, backaches, fractures, sprains, chest pains, and breathing difficulties.

At 6:30, some of the junior residents and interns were up, doing lab studies and checking on the patients who had been admitted for observation to the overnight ward, adjacent to the emergency ward. The ONW limited patients to a three-day stay; it was designed for patients who required a period of observation longer than a few hours, such as those with suspected gastrointestinal bleeding or those with severe concussions. However, in practice it was also used for patients who were severely ill but could not get a bed at the time they arrived, because the hospital was full.