When regular customers entered Alta Peluqueria D'Magazine, the salon run by Luis Conde and Juan Rivera Velazquez, they were greeted like family, with exclamations, hugs and kisses. Mr. Rivera was a hairstylist with a sense of drama: He would swing customers around so they faced away from the mirror to cut their hair. Once finished, he would spin them back to witness their transformation.

For Mr. Conde, 39, and Mr. Rivera, 37, D'Magazine was their life's work. They opened the salon a decade ago in Kissimmee, south of Orlando. Three years before starting the business, the two men, both born in Puerto Rico, became a couple. They lived together, worked together, and on Sunday, they died together.

Mr. Conde and Mr. Rivera were two of the 49 people killed in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The attack occurred at Pulse, a gay nightclub, during its regular Latin Night. The vast majority of the victims were either Hispanic or of Hispanic descent, most of them Puerto Ricans like Mr. Conde and Mr. Rivera. They were one of three couples killed in Sunday's shooting.

Their deaths have left a community bereft. On Wednesday, a steady stream of customers, relatives of customers, and family members of the two men arrived at the salon. Some dropped off flowers, adding to the dozens of bouquets already there. Others stopped to say a prayer or take a picture. Friends had left notes and messages in chalk on the sidewalk and walls: "I will remember you forever," "We love you guys," "Two wonderful and talented beings."

Some of the people who came to the salon had more than one connection to the tragedy, underlining its impact on the Puerto Rican community in particular. Miriam Guttierrez, 46, said her cousin Noemi was close friends with the two men and was supposed to meet them at Pulse that night, while her daughter was friends with another victim, Gilberto Silva Menendez. "I'm still in shock," said Ms. Guttierrez.

Next door to D'Magazine, Jennifer Alzate was sitting in her office at Jealse Scooters, a motorcycle shop. She has known Mr. Conde and Mr. Rivera since she was a teenager and her office shares a wall with the salon. On weekdays, she would lean her head against it to hear the music pulsing on the other side – and sometimes, if she really loved the song, she would run next door to dance.

In February, she fretted to Mr. Conde that she would love to get her hair done before her birthday but instead had to take care of her one-year old son. He told her to come anyway: Bring your son and I'll take care of him, he said. Ms. Alzate said she has wept so much in recent days that she feels as if she is out of tears.

Mr. Conde – who simply went by "Conde" rather than Luis – managed the salon and oversaw a small boutique selling accessories and makeup on the premises. Mr. Rivera was a talented hairstylist who was always in demand. "Never did I see Juan sitting down," said Stella Siracruz, co-owner of Tomato Express, a grocery store in the same complex as the salon.

The salon is a family business: Mr. Rivera's mother, Angelita, also works as a hairstylist there. For Mother's Day, the two men treated both of their mothers to an extended long weekend at a nearby resort hotel.

Three doors down from the salon is a gun shop. Two employees, who said they weren't authorized to talk to the media, spoke briefly about Mr. Rivera and Mr. Conde. "They were very friendly, very pleasant people," said an employee, as he piled small boxes of ammunition into a larger container. Mounted on the back wall was an array of assault rifles.

Both sharp dressers, Mr. Rivera and Mr. Conde loved to dance and listen to techno music. They were devoted to their small dog, Juicy, whom they nicknamed "Tutu." On their forearms, they had matching tattoos. They worked hard to make the salon a success, exchanging tips with customers on how to market the business and increase traffic to the mall.

On Wednesday night, the community was scheduled to gather at the salon for a vigil to honour Mr. Rivera and Mr. Conde, ahead of their funerals later this week. Friends said they expected hundreds of people to attend.

Wanda Merced will be among them. For the last six years, Ms. Merced, 60, has come to the salon every month to see Mr. Rivera, often bringing food – like her famous chicken lasagna, which the couple loved, even though they were trying not to eat meat. The men called her "Wandita" – an affectionate diminutive that she had only heard from her own grandmother. In a small diary, Ms. Merced pointed to the date of her next appointment: this Friday at 10:30 a.m.

"They were excellent, excellent people," she said.

Marc Levy was in bed, sleeping the light slumber of a doctor on call, when his beeper went off in the wee hours of Sunday morning. He reached for it and saw an alert for a mass-casualty situation. In the past, when Dr. Levy, a pediatric surgeon, had received such alerts, he knew they were the precursor to a training exercise. But receiving one in the middle of the night meant this was no drill.

He called Chadwick Smith, the trauma surgeon on duty at Orlando Regional Medical Center, to ask if he needed help. Dr. Smith, sounding stressed, said yes. Within moments, Dr. Levy was in his car, driving at 160 kilometres an hour on the highway, trying to close the distance between his home and the hospital.

He ran into the emergency room and was pointed to a shooting victim. Dr. Levy quickly assessed his injuries – two bullets had torn through an arm and a leg and a third had entered his flank – and took him upstairs. Dr. Levy scrubbed his hands and arms and entered the operating room. About six minutes had passed since he had arrived at the hospital.

The shooting at Pulse nightclub occurred about four blocks away from Orlando Regional Medical Center. As injured people began to arrive at the emergency room, doctors and nurses were woken in the middle of the night and rushed to help. That included surgeons such as Dr. Levy, who works at a children's hospital in the same complex.

"We're used to seeing gunshot wounds, we're used to seeing a multitude of injuries," said William Havron, a trauma surgeon at the hospital, at a news conference. But "this was a somewhat surreal experience – just patient after patient after patient."

The patients had wounds all over their bodies, some caused by a handgun and others by an automatic rifle, sometimes at close range, wreaking enormous damage on soft tissue, the chest and the abdomen. In total, 44 people arrived at the hospital in two waves. Nine succumbed to their injuries shortly after arriving.

On a normal night, the hospital has two operating rooms available for emergency surgeries. But on Sunday, a team of anesthesiologists raced to increase that number to six in under an hour. In one of the operating rooms, Dr. Levy began working to stop his patient's internal bleeding. The third bullet had passed through the chest, diaphragm and liver, grazing the kidney and ripping through the colon and part of the small intestine.

The operation took about an hour and a half. By the time he had finished up, the situation in the emergency room had stabilized somewhat and more personnel were on hand. So Dr. Levy went over to the children's hospital to take care of his existing pediatric patients.

Dr. Levy has visited the man he operated on that night. "From a physical standpoint, he's great," Dr. Levy said. An Orlando native, Dr. Levy was deeply moved by what he witnessed that night – a team of medical personnel working together to do everything in their power to help.

After the shooting, Dr. Levy, 52, said he spoke with his four teenaged daughters. "I said to them …" He stopped for a moment, unable to continue, his eyes filling with tears. "I said to them, 'I hope that I've taught you to be accepting of people of every race, colour, creed, religion and lifestyle.'"