with a generator at the park, and in exchange for gasoline, he was letting people charge up their phones. I figured that whoever had left the 1972 Chrysler that was half-hidden by a downed crepe myrtle tree wouldn’t begrudge me a gallon or so.
Enoch and I siphoned the gas, and by the time we returned home that night, we both had working phones. Make that charged-up phones. Unfortunately they didn’t work thanks to the network being laid to ruin by the storm. But I learned from Ben that text messages could get through. It turns out they’re a lot less of a drain on the system.
The problem was, the only number I wanted to call was the place Clark had been evacuated to. But that was a landline, so text messaging wouldn’t work.
I know, I know. A major American city with no working phone system is inconceivable. Throw in no running water, no electricity, no gas, no television and only one radio station, and you get a nightmare no one can imagine. You have to live it to believe it. And we were living it.
But I tried hard not to focus on anything more than whatever problem was immediately in front of me. The next patient. My next meal. A charged-up phone.
Anyway, I spent the whole evening trying to get a call through, to no avail. In between calls, I refilled Mr. French’s buckets from the pool. I’d brought him a meal and two bottles of water. In return he shared his bleach with me so I could decontaminate some pool water for washing up.
It was a surreal existence. By day, the streets around the park were a constant ebb and flow of humanity, and I was too busy at the medical tent to think about the future. I was mainly taking vitals, giving shots, swabbing and stitching every kind of wound imaginable. For the crazies—and there were too many of them—we couldn’t do too much. Some were crazy from drug use; others were crazy due to a loss of their regular meds. We tried to help, but psychiatric medicines don’t usually give instant results. Plus we didn’t have anybody’s medical records and had to go by what they told us—not always an accurate system. For the most part we had to revert to antianxiety medications like Xanax. But it was just a stopgap measure, and we knew it.
A few days later we finally received an influx of new medications. Of course we were also under orders to evacuate the city. Like that was going to happen. Although the city was crawling with army types, they still didn’t have the manpower to drag everyone away. And besides, where would they take them? To the edge of town? Every edge of New Orleans is water.
The irony was not lost on any of us. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Actually the city water had come back on. But we were cautioned not to drink it or bathe in it because of the strong chemicals put in it to disinfect the system. At least we could flush the toilets.
But I digress. Where could they possibly put people? It was one thing to pluck a terrified family from the roof of their flooded house in Oak Island or Chalmette or Pontchartrain Park, and put them on a plane to Dallas or Atlanta or Salt Lake City. It was another thing to take a bunch of uncooperative New Orleans hardliners who wanted to stay in their unflooded homes to protect them from lootings. It got so bad for a while that the locals didn’t trust anyone in military garb.
I escaped most of the military-hassle factor, thanks to Ben. He gave me a medical pass that identified me as a nurse and part of their team. Enoch and Sarah somehow managed to fly under the radar. As for Mr. French, he stayed inside with his front shutters closed. It must have been hot as hell during the day, but he was a stubborn old coot. He’d spent a lifetime collecting an impressive number of antiques, and he was determined not to lose a single item.
As busy and chaotic as the days were, the nights couldn’t have been more different. I would lie in my bed, hot and sweaty despite the open windows, alone in the vast darkness and eerie silence. You’d think after my lonely days at Sherry’s house I’d be used to it, but I wasn’t. Those hours between sundown and sunrise were the hardest hours of my day, with way too much time to think.
What did the future hold? Not tomorrow. I knew what I was doing tomorrow and for every day as long as the medical tent was functioning. But after that? I didn’t know.
Why are you worrying about this? You don’t care about the future. A few weeks ago you were going to kill yourself. You can still do it anytime you want to.
All true and all very logical. Yet these days I wasn’t really depressed enough to go through with the deed.
It was all so perverse. If my life had been in the toilet before, it was even more so now. But I wasn’t depressed in that heavy, lethargic way of the past. I wasn’t overwhelmed with sadness or even hopelessness.
Beside me, Lucky heaved a great sigh and I smiled into the dark. Maybe all I’d ever needed was a pet, something to take care of, to spoil and coddle. I used to do that with Clark when he was little. Some of the neighborhood kids used to make fun of him, until I pounded it out of them. Yeah, I’d taken as good a care of Clark as I could. But when he was eighteen, Mom had placed him in a group home where he’d lived ever since.
I’d tried to take care of lots of other people since then, and of course, I’d tried every which way to get pregnant, with no success. But Lucky was easy to care for, and he appreciated everything.
I rolled to my side and patted the bed. “Come on, Lucky. Come on.” In an instant he was up on the bed, stepping on me, turning in a circle as he picked his spot. I smiled into the dark and rolled over. Even with his hot body adding to the sweltering night, I slept better.
Until my cell phone trilled.
It was such an unlikely sound that at first I was totally confused. I nearly killed myself getting to it. “Hello? Hello?”
“Janie! Damn, girl!” It was Hank. “I been tryin’ to reach you for a week. Where the hell are you?”
I lay back on my pillow, vaguely disappointed. “I’m at home, Hank. Where else? And you?”
“Shit. I’m in a hotel in Macon, working eighteen hour shifts for the energy company.”
“Well that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Eighteen-hour shifts?” He snorted. “And there’s not a beer anywhere in this whole damned state. How ’bout you? I bet Robbie’s got the bar open already. Am I right?”
“I don’t know.” I pushed up from the bed and walked to the open window. Anything to catch a breeze. “I haven’t gone down to Bourbon Street.”
“Then what’re you doing down there if you’re not workin’?”
“I’m helping out at a makeshift first-aid station.”
He grunted. “And not gettin’ paid a dime, I bet. I hear the Red Cross is down there feeding folks.”
“Now they are. But other regular people are pitching in, too.”
“Yeah. Wow. So, you gonna stay? I heard they’re trying to evacuate the whole damn city. Even the dry parts. How screwed up is that?”
“They’re trying. But I’m staying as long as I can.”
“How come?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. Why was I staying? Because…there was no other place I wanted to be. Because I’d promised Bradley that I’d take care of his dog. Because after only a couple of days working at the medical tent, I felt better than I had in years.
“Because I want to,” I finally answered.
“Man, you ought to see how bad it is down on the coast.” He talked for a while, about his work and his demolished truck and his frustration with the no-liquor situation.
It’s funny, because I didn’t really miss drinking. I’d been so overwhelmed by all that had happened that any withdrawals I might have had must have blended in with all the other stresses of the past weeks. Or else it had been suppressed by my near-constant adrenaline high.
“Look, Hank,” I said, breaking into this monologue. “It’s hard to get a phone charged up around here, so I have to conserve