An Ohio teenager's case illustrates how a flawed medical system can change a life.

Leigh Clark braces herself in the doorway while making her way outside without wearing her leg brace (Skip Peterson / Dayton Daily News).

DENVER--Leigh Clark was bleeding to death on the operating table when Dr. Phillip L. Mallory got the emergency call at home and rushed to Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center.

"At that point, the object was just to get her off the table alive," said Mallory, then chief of general surgery at the hospital. "It was one of the most frightening circumstances I'd ever been into."

Clark was supposed to have a routine 45-minute procedure to diagnose the cause of her severe abdominal pains. But instead of making a small incision just through her abdomen wall, Dr. Daniel Lim punctured the main artery carrying blood to her right leg.

Clark, who now lives in Westerville, near Columbus, survived. But at a price: eight more surgeries, months of pain and a body forever marked with scars. "A 16-year-old gymnast is now permanently crippled," a confidential Army record says.

"It's very hard," said Clark, a University of Toledo student. "It's really, really hard to soak it up when you're 16 years old."

What happened to Leigh Clark that July day in 1993 was more than an isolated mistake by a single doctor. She was the victim of a health care system that operates without the most significant safeguards protecting civilian families from medical malpractice.