Would you have understood the urgency of the situation? Or become mad?

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This occurred everal years ago, when I was a medical intern in the emergency room. It was a busy day at the ER and it was already 2AM. The medical staff is not in full force because of the hour (the others are not "on duty" and would be coming in at 8am. Fortunately for us, the patients we were seeing at that were not very urgent cases, mostly patients who just cannot wait till morning to be seen by their doctor but whose condition was not a matter of life and death. I was taking the medical history of a gentleman who was having colds. Suddenly, there was a commotion at the entrance. A patient was brought in by family members. Said patient was not breathing and his vital signs were very alarming. So, I told the gentleman I'm seeing that I will have to leave him for a while to attend to the dying patient but I would return as soon as the other patient is stabilized. Fortunately, the patient was revived. We then put him on monitors and a respirator. When I got back to the patient I was interviewing before the other patient was brought in, he scolded me that I should not have attended the other (dying) patient and left him since he came in first. I was so surprised. I thought that people would have understood that in an emergency room, true emergency cases come first. It's not a first come, first served thing because a few minutes would make a lot of difference in whether the dying patient lived or died. I thought what I did was right, given the circumstances (urgency of situation, limited number of medical staff). Apparently he doesn't think so...he thinks it's poor customer service on our part. What would you have done or thought in this situation?