Книга - Blink Of An Eye

Blink Of An Eye
Rexanne Becnel








Praise for Rexanne Becnel’s NEXT novels


“Humor, smart women, adventure, and danger all add up to a book you can’t put down…Constant surprises and characters that will win your heart.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on The Payback Club

“Becnel deftly captures the way actual women think…. Brisk and entertaining, with a welcome focus on middle-aged sexuality, this tidy tale proves that Becnel is just as much at home writing high-quality contemporary fiction as penning the historical fiction for which she’s known.”

—Publishers Weekly on Old Boyfriends

“Rexanne Becnel skillfully weaves multiple storylines with lively characters and unexpected plot twists in an emotionally satisfying book.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Old Boyfriends

And other praise for Rexanne Becnel

“Ms. Becnel creates the most intriguing characters.”

—Literary Times on The Bride of Rosecliffe

“Becnel skillfully blends romance and adventure with a deft hand.”

—Publishers Weekly on When Lightning Strikes

“Rexanne’s stories stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.”

—Literary Times on Heart of the Storm




Rexanne Becnel


Rexanne Becnel, the author of twenty-two novels and two novellas, is a charter member of the Southern Louisiana Chapter of Romance Writers of America, and founded the New Orleans Popular Fiction Conference.

Rexanne’s novels regularly appear on bestseller lists such as USA TODAY, Amazon.com, Waldenbooks, Ingram and Barnes & Noble. She has been nominated for and received awards from Romantic Times BOOKreviews, Waldenbooks, the Holt Committee, the Atlanta Journal/Atlanta Constitution and the National Readers’ Choice Awards.


Blink of an Eye






Rexanne Becnel






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




From the Author


Dear Reader,

As many of you know, I live in New Orleans, in an area that flooded after the levees broke. As we struggled both as a family and a community to put ourselves back together, I wasn’t sure I could write about the storm and everything that followed. I wasn’t sure I could write again at all.

But writing has proven to be my salvation. The routine of going to a coffeehouse (once I found one that was open!) and writing my daily pages turned out to be the only “normal” part of my life for a very long time. In addition, it was cathartic to write about Jane and her fight to survive in a world turned inside out. I am not just like Jane, but I put a lot of me in her. There was no way not to.

As for my beloved New Orleans…we were flooded, but not drowned; devastated, but not defeated.

To the people who refuse to abandon their hometown, I love having you as my neighbors. And to the people everywhere who supported us through our very worst days and continue to do so, I hope to see you here someday.

Remember, you can’t not have a good time in New Orleans!

Love to all,

Rexanne


For the Pizzolato family and for Joanna Wurtele who helped us in our hour of greatest need.

For David, Rosemary, Brian, Valerie, Chuck and Karen who weathered the storm with me.

And for Katya and Mike, and all the rest of my family, friends and neighbors who lost so much but refuse still to give up.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER 1 (#u14f92b43-c8eb-5cb3-a3f3-06b3e1a1a4fe)

CHAPTER 2 (#ua9328f2b-28cf-50fe-9e05-b11165e53cb8)

CHAPTER 3 (#ua2126d0d-73d4-52c3-a0f4-670c36ae9464)

CHAPTER 4 (#ub1e886b2-c0e3-5746-ac5d-7725cafe6378)

CHAPTER 5 (#udcda5a6a-a1fb-5d24-8b40-79edae7c085e)

CHAPTER 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 21 (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER 1


I didn’t evacuate New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina despite the desperate exhortations of our mayor, our governor and every other public official who paraded across the television set during the three days that led up to the storm. They could have done cartwheels naked across the screen and I still would have switched channels in search of The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family reruns.

The reason? I like stories about happy families. Oh, and I’d already decided to commit suicide.

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about cutting my losses and taking that leap. From the time I was sixteen and my mother made her first attempt (failed, fortunately), it has always been at the back of my mind as a way out if life got too tough.

I held it against Mom for a long time—all her life, actually—which lasted an additional fourteen years until she died suddenly in a freak car accident. After that, I felt guilty for never forgiving her, for always showing her by my exaggerated gestures of benevolence that I was so much better than her, that I could cope and even thrive, while all she could do was fold.

The fact is, she had a boatload of reasons to give up. Being abandoned by her husband to raise two kids alone had changed her from a sunny, happy person into a prematurely old, overworked and mainly sad woman.

Even though I was only nine, it had changed me into a cynic. Not that I’d known what the word meant. I didn’t learn that until the seventh grade when I should have won the spelling bee, but the principal’s daughter did. I had to spell atrophy. She had to spell peanut.

But I digress.

I’ve lived most of my forty-seven years moving from crisis to crisis. My great-uncle Dan used to call Mom Little Orphan Annie, and me Calamity Jane, and I guess he was right. I was Calamity Jane, never meant to be happy for long. My college boyfriend—the love of my life—turned out to be gay. Then after I married, I couldn’t get pregnant, even with the help of every fertility clinic in the Deep South. My husband went to jail for insurance fraud. My wonderful boss died suddenly of a heart attack, and his replacement tried to seduce me.

And of course there were my own spectacular screwups, which cost me my profession and my self-respect.

Anyway, by the time Hurricane Katrina was in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, expanding swiftly from a Category One to a Category Five monster, I’d long gotten over my disdain of Mom’s weakness. I was no better than she was. In fact, I was a lot worse. At least when she’d first attempted suicide, she’d known I would be around to take care of Clark. He’s my Down syndrome brother. But if I committed suicide, who would be there for him?

Sure, Clark is happy in his group home. But he’s a Medicaid patient and the way money is always being diverted from the system, who knows what could happen to him? That’s why last year when I won the Super Bowl lottery at a bar where I’d once worked—six thousand dollars!—I took a major chunk of the money and bought a big, fat life-insurance policy for myself, and set up a trust fund with a medical trustee to handle the money for Clark if I should die.

Clark might lose a sister, but he’d gain a personal aide to take him on outings and provide other opportunities that a state-run group home just couldn’t do.

Like most insurance policies, though, mine has a suicide clause, which didn’t bother me too much at the time because I was more or less in love, had a good-paying job by bartending standards, plus extra money in my pocket and no clouds on my horizon.

I guess I knew in my heart that it wouldn’t last. The good times never do. That’s why I hadn’t told my so-called boyfriend, Hank, about my winnings or the insurance policy. He would have wanted us to party with the proceeds until nothing was left. That’s how he went through his electrician’s pay every two weeks. Why not my money, too?

But that life insurance money is to protect Clark, whom I love dearly. It’s not like when we were kids though, and lived together. Sometimes when I’m really down, I worry that Clark doesn’t love me any more than he loves the aide who helps him get dressed each day, or the one who coaches him through his meals.

I know that’s not true. But sweet soul that he is, he loves anybody who’s nice to him. He’s a happy child in a man’s body, one who delights in sunbeams and dust bunnies, and thinks Cheerios are the greatest food in the world. I have to remind myself that his innocent happiness is something to be thankful for.

Sometimes I’m jealous of the affection he gives everyone else. It’s like sibling rivalry gone amok. In my stupid, emotionally screwed-up way, I’m competing in an insane contest for his love with his caregivers. Whom I adore! Go figure.

The truth is, he doesn’t really need me on a day-to-day basis. Nobody does.

Which brings me to my dilemma on that Friday afternoon in August. Hank was out of town. As a self-employed electrician, he bounces around from job to job. He’d been working a lot in Mississippi and only coming to New Orleans on the weekends. Since I work a lot on the weekends, our primary time together was him sitting at the bar with me feeding him free drinks. By the time we’d go home to my place, he’d be drunk and amorous, I’d be tired and pissed off, and that would be our weekend.

Suffice it to say, I wasn’t looking forward to him coming in that night, so when I checked my messages, I was relieved to hear that he planned to ride out the storm in Biloxi, helping to board up the casino expansion he’d been working on.

I erased the message, then plopped down in the shabby slip-covered chair in the corner of my kitchen/dining/living room. I’d dragged that chair up the stairs myself, rescuing it from a garbage pile around the corner. A nineteen-dollar slipcover from Anna’s Linens had spiffed it up. But now the slipcover was threadbare and I couldn’t afford another one.

Just like I couldn’t afford the bill from the Great Southern Life Insurance Company that still lay on the table beside the chair. Four days it had been there unopened. Why open it when I had no way to pay it?

You might say that bill was the final blow. The clichéd “straw that broke the camel’s back.” For me, it symbolized more than just not being able to pay another bill. It symbolized my life being completely in the toilet.

Things had been bad all year, and not just in the money department. Hank was a pain, long past even pretending he loved me. I sure didn’t love him. So why did I take him in whenever he was in town?

And why did I stay in my stupid dead-end job, mixing drinks for tourists who came to Bourbon Street to do things they’d never dream of doing at home? Respectable people from buttoned-up midwestern towns and neat New England villages getting drunk in strip clubs, puking in the streets. Wanting me to “show my tits” for the Mardi Gras beads they’d just purchased down the street. I was sick of all of them, and sick of catering to them.

Maybe that’s why my tips had been so lousy lately: my bad attitude. Just this week I’d been demoted from the primo weekend evening shifts to the day shifts.

So bad attitude equals bad shifts equals less pay equals worse attitude. I was in a downhill cycle, personally and professionally—if you consider bartending a profession, which I hesitated to do.

Then came this bill. Eleven hundred plus change a year. Hell, I couldn’t even afford the two-eighty quarterly payments, not with rent due next week and utilities, and not much to eat in the kitchen.

Where was my money going these days?

A glance at the garbage can gave the answer. I’d been drinking a lot lately. A lot. A depressed woman shouldn’t indulge in depressants like alcohol. But let’s face it, alcohol and other drugs—which I’d refrained from, give me some credit—are the opiates of the depressed masses, no pun intended.

I’m down, so pour me a drink. Isn’t that how it works?

So of course, what did I do? I turned the bill facedown, then pulled out a bottle of Southern Comfort, poured myself a healthy dose and turned on the television.

Everything on the tube was about Katrina. Where would she hit? Would she still be a Category Five when she came ashore, or would the shallower waters decrease her power? How high would the storm surge be? When would the calls for mandatory evacuations begin?

I nursed my drink, sipping slowly, enjoying the warmth of it sliding down my throat. I closed my eyes and imagined that warmth slipping into my bloodstream, spreading throughout my body, relaxing me, dulling my senses, and turning the Channel Four weatherman’s voice into a drone of white noise that worked with the liquor. I drank; he droned on; and everything slowed down and faded.

It could be like this forever, the smooth voice that had tempted me before whispered in my head. Just give up on the world and let go. No more bills. No more Hank. No more drunk tourists propositioning me, laughing uproariously when I told them to go jerk off in the men’s room.

Just let go, sink into the darkness….

The phone rang, yanking me out of my dark reverie. It was an old-fashioned phone with a loud, mechanical ring.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Jane? This is Verna Jenkins from Community Homes.”

Clark’s group home. I straightened up in the chair. “Hi, Miss Jenkins. Is everything all right?”

“Yes. I’m just calling to tell you that the house is evacuating for the storm. Do you want us to take Clark, or would you rather he evacuate with you?”

“I’m not evacuating,” I decided on the instant. “So maybe he’d better go with you. Where are y’all heading?”

“We have a standing arrangement with a group home in Baton Rouge. We’re leaving on a bus tomorrow morning. I’m just letting all the families know where we’ll be and how to reach us.”

I took the information, then asked to speak to Clark. “Hello, my baby brother,” I said when he came on the phone. “How are you?”

“Fine,” he said, and giggled. As a kid I’d been embarrassed by that overgrown baby giggle. But I’d learned to love it, just like I loved him.

Emotions clogged my throat, but I forced them down. “So. You’re going on a bus ride, aren’t you?”

“Bus ride,” he answered, giggling with increased glee. “Bus ride.”

“Okay, then. Have fun. And remember that your Janie loves you. I love you, Clark.”

And that was it. He handed the phone to Verna and she wished me good luck. I guess that’s when I finally knew what I had to do. Clark was in good hands, and a three-hundred-thousand-dollar life-insurance policy would cement the cracks in his care a lot better than I did with my weekly visits.

I filled my glass with that courage-giving amber liquid, and stared at my life-insurance bill. The problem was, it couldn’t look like suicide because they wouldn’t pay off, and Clark wouldn’t have that extra layer of protection I wanted him to have.

Then suddenly, like a light at the end of a tunnel, it came to me. If I died during the hurricane they’d have to pay. I could feel the adrenaline surge through my body. If I committed suicide by storm, they’d never know. I’d just be an unfortunate casualty of the horrific wind and waters. Too bad; so sad.

But what if the storm turned away from New Orleans? What if it veered east as they so often did, sparing the city?

Then I would drive to where it was going. My car wasn’t in the greatest shape, and my car insurance was overdue. But so what? If I stalled out somewhere in the road, the storm would just get me there.

I aimed the remote control at the television and upped the volume. Walter Maestri, emergency management director for neighboring Jefferson Parish was on, urging everyone to leave. This could be the big one, he predicted. With the storm surge this hurricane was pushing, we could have twenty-five feet of water in the streets.

The easier to drown in, I decided, switching channels.

I watched television all night, fell asleep around six, woke up at noon, and called in sick.

“The hell you say,” the day manager barked at me. “You’re not sick. The whole damn city’s going crazy. Tourists leaving early, and half the staff is cutting out for Texas. Don’t bullshit me, Jane. You’re evacuating like everyone else. But look. Come in today. You can work a double. I know you need the money. Then you can leave on Sunday if you really have to.”

“I’m sick, Robbie. Really.”

“Come on, Janie,” he said in this wheedling tone.

I smiled to hear the asshole beg. “Sorry. No can do.”

“Come in or I’m firing your ass!” he shouted in an abrupt change of tone.

“Whatever,” I said and hung up on him.

It felt good to do that, and it felt even better to hear him pleading on my answering machine ten minutes later. I guess he’d called around and gotten no takers, so he was back to begging me.

I just poured myself another nice glass of Southern Comfort for breakfast and took it into the bathroom with me.

It’s strange. Unless you’ve been there, I don’t think anyone can adequately explain how it feels to have decided once and for all to end your life. It was perversely liberating. And relaxing. And sad. I had a lot of regrets piled up in my forty-seven years. At the top of the list was Clark, of course. Not that he would miss me all that much. But still. I was his big sister, his only living relative.

Correction. His only living relative who gave a damn, since we had no reason to believe our dad was dead, and I knew he didn’t give a damn.

Next regret? That I’d never had kids. I didn’t dwell on that disappointment too much, but it was always there.

And then there was Mom, who I guess had done the best she could with no husband, a difficult daughter and a special-needs son.

After that came the mass regrets, the people I’d let down either because of my stubbornness or my stupidity. Friends, bosses, lovers. One husband. Patients.

The only clear concept I remember from the time I’d been in rehab was that you had to take responsibility for your own actions. That you could never get sober if you didn’t acknowledge your own shortcomings.

Not that I’m an alcoholic, mind you. I’ve had my moments of overindulgence—like now—but I’d never lost a job because of alcohol.

No, my spectacular fall from grace seven years ago hadn’t been due to drinking, but to drugs. I’d had a brief but intense and incredibly self-indulgent go-round with prescription drugs. Unfortunately what I lost then was more than merely the nursing job that I loved. It was my profession. My calling. Nurses who are incompetent or dishonest due to substance abuse have a hard time getting a second chance in the field.

So there was that regret, too. I’d lost a great career, and though I usually blame my ex’s conviction for insurance fraud, the truth was that I had decided to drink during his trial, and I had decided to drink even more when we lost the house. Then when he went off to prison, I had decided to try out some of the pain-killing, brain-deadening drugs I so often administered to my patients on the job.

I’m not a junkie, though, and I’m not an alcoholic, either. If I was, I’d still be using drugs and I sure wouldn’t be the oh-so-desirable employee that Robbie was desperate to have back on the job. No, I’d be in the gutter somewhere, or back in rehab. Or dead.

But my choices of the past were neither here nor there. Alcoholic or not, I would be dead by Monday, so it was a moot point.

One last regret was that I couldn’t leave a note. Not that there was anyone to leave it to. Clark wouldn’t notice that I was even gone. My boss had fired me, and I really didn’t have anything to say to Hank.

Sad, wasn’t it? And it only deepened my depression—and my resolve. No one would miss me. No one would care that I was gone—except maybe my landlord. I had no one at all to leave a goodbye note to.

By late Saturday afternoon I was bored stiff. I sat outside on the front stoop of my four-plex and watched as my neighbors came and went.

“You not staying?” my downstairs neighbor Carlotta exclaimed.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Girl, are you crazy? They saying this one could come over the levees.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I have a second-floor apartment.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m going to my auntie’s in Baton Rouge. After the storm, though, I’m gonna call you, okay? Just to see how the old place held up. You need any supplies? I’m going to Robert’s on St. Claude.”

“Thanks, but I have everything I need.”

She shook her head. “Okay then. You know where I hide my key, so take anything you need from the kitchen. And one more thing. At least move your car to higher ground, up by the river.”

“Good idea,” I said. Exactly what I didn’t want: higher ground. But later that evening as she drove off, along with several other neighbors trying to avoid the crush of traffic leaving town by driving at night, I thought about the whole water issue. The river levees aren’t the weakest spot for New Orleans during a hurricane. It’s the Lake Pontchartrain levees. That’s where the wind and tides drive the waves to top the levees. So that’s where I should go to drown.

Or maybe somewhere in St. Bernard or Plaquemines Parish. The levees aren’t as high there, and the tidal surges are a lot stronger.

That’s why I spent Sunday driving around town, picking my spot. There was the Lakefront Airport, outside the levees. But it might be guarded by the Levee Police. Or I could try the mouth of Bayou St. John. Or Little Woods where the camps along the lake were sure to be wiped out, just like in 1998 during Hurricane Georges.

I sat in an empty parking lot on the University of New Orleans campus and studied a map of the city. What about the turning basin in the Industrial Canal? That’s where the lake, the river and the Intercoastal Canal all met. There was sure to be a lot of water action there.

My stomach growled. I was hungry, and there was nothing decent at home to eat. Some crackers, maybe. Some peanut butter and tuna and canned soup. I started up the car and headed out, looking for a convenience store or burger place. Anything that sold food.

But nothing was open. I mean, nothing.

I had to drive past my house all the way into the French Quarter and even then all I found open was a couple of bars. Naturally. So I ordered a drink and ate peanuts until almost midnight. By then the wind was really picking up. But until the power goes out, it’s not really a storm. The weathermen were all predicting a landfall around dawn, with Katrina’s eye hitting New Orleans East around noon. The threat of flooding wouldn’t reach its peak until after the eye passed and the winds started coming out of the north. That meant I had at least twelve hours to wait.

It’s funny, but on the one night I should have just stayed in the bar, drinking until it was time to act, I didn’t feel like drinking. The bartender was being really free with the liquor, and a pair of guys from Ontario kept offering me drinks, too. But I was too keyed up. This was it. My time to go. I was hyper, and yet strangely calm. In countdown mode, I guess.

I didn’t want to go home, though. So I found my car and just cruised around, past the Superdome where knots of people were standing around despite the mayor’s announcement that it would not be a shelter of last resort this time. Uptown was a ghost town. Mid City was the same. I couldn’t get across the Industrial Canal into St. Bernard or New Orleans East. The cops had all four bridges closed, probably because of the high winds. And at the St. Claude Bridge, the Industrial Canal was already high, splashing and sending spray onto the roadway.

I stared at the dark, heaving waters, and the first tremor of fear hit me. Could I do it? I’d rejected shooting myself years ago, mainly because I was petrified of guns. That’s why I’d also ruled out suicide by cop. Sure, I could have pulled out my ex’s old handgun, confronted a cop and let him shoot me. But I didn’t want the poor guy to feel bad about killing someone who’d waved an unloaded weapon at him. Besides, what if he was a lousy shot and I didn’t die?

No, drowning in waters too powerful for me to resist was the surest way to do it. Once I jumped in, there’d be no turning back. And anyway, I’d heard that drowning was a relatively peaceful way to go. One big gulp of water would fill my lungs, and that would be it. My lonely loser of a life would be finished, but Clark would be protected. No matter how you looked at it, it was a win-win situation.

I guess I could have jumped in right then, but if someone saw my body too soon, the insurance company might suspect suicide. I had to wait. I decided the lake was my best shot, so around three in the morning I headed back toward the lake-front. By then the wind was really whipping. The trees were swaying and some of the branches had begun to go, littering the streets. The electricity was going, too, neighborhood by neighborhood. I picked my way down Elysian Fields Avenue, weaving through the fallen live-oak branches.

One fell on my car, hitting with a thunk that nearly made me wreck.

“Hell’s bells,” I muttered, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles hurt. I should have headed to the lakefront hours ago. What if I couldn’t make it? The rain was coming down in erratic sheets, blowing mostly out of the east. But it swirled around, too, like miniature tornadoes. No way I could walk in this.

I watched as a streetlight went down, and right after it, a utility pole in a shower of sparks. Even in the car I didn’t want to get hit by one of them. Electrocution did not sound like a pleasant way to die.

“Dead is dead,” I muttered. But I was getting really creeped out.

This is for the best. For Clark. That was my mantra as my little Corolla fought the howling winds. At the train overpass a powerful gust caught the car and it actually skidded into the left lane. My heart was in my throat, but I kept going. What else could I do?

It was way beyond weird. Gentilly Boulevard was a mess of tree branches, signs and pieces of roofing. There was water in the streets, but not much. So far this wasn’t a very wet storm. It was near Brother Martin High School that I ran into trouble. First a big oak branch hit the trunk of my car. It bounced off, but I veered left into another branch. After I backed out of that tangle, the car stalled. It sputtered a few times. Then it went dead. And all the time, the wind howled like a banshee.

After trying futilely to get the car started, I realized that I was out of gas. Why that made me start crying I don’t know. Maybe because after my miserable failure of a life, now I was also failing at death. In any event, I sat there in my car a long time, feeling sorry for myself and wishing a giant oak limb would crash down on my head and finish me off right then and there.

No such luck.

By the time dawn fought through the heavy clouds and sheeting rain, I decided I’d have to walk the last mile or so to the lake. I hadn’t seen another car on the road since about 3:00 a.m. No wonder. If the winds weren’t reason enough to stay inside, the now impassable streets were. I’d have to wait until the worst of the storm was past before I could make my way to the lake.

So exhausted by lack of sleep as well as tension, I crawled into the back seat and made myself as comfortable as I could.

You’d think all those hours curled up alone in a disabled car would have given me time to rethink my suicide plan. Instead, my failure—so far—only proved to me that I had to do this. My life was a hopeless shambles with nothing to look forward to but getting old. I’d failed at everything else, but I refused to fail at this.

I think I must have fallen asleep. I’m not sure. But the next thing I knew, the car was moving. I jerked awake and sat up, only to find water in the floor of the car.

Water?

I rubbed a clear spot on the fogged-up window, then gaped at the scene outside. Elysian Fields was flooded. Houses, street, yards, and cars were inundated in a roiling mass of water. And my car was floating! Sort of. Had it rained that hard?

I glanced at my watch—9:42 a.m.—then back at the surreal landscape. No way was this much water caused by rain. The levees must have been overtopped.

The car lurched, then lodged against a street lamp that was still standing.

Famous last words. In the next blast of wind the pole went over like a toothpick, bouncing off a van in someone’s driveway. But the wind was so loud, howling through the trees, screaming in the wires, that I barely heard the crash.

I gripped the driver’s side headrest. What should I do?

Go drown yourself. That’s the plan, isn’t it? So go do it.

In three feet of water?

Except that those three feet looked as if they would soon be four. Or more. “Just wait,” I muttered. “Just wait a little longer.”

Within fifteen minutes, the water was over the seat and rising, almost as deep inside the car as outside. I shivered as my capris soaked up the chilly water. Was I going to drown in a Toyota with the doors locked and the windows up? Or would I get out of the car and head toward the lake and deeper water? Assuming I didn’t drown before I got there.

That’s when out of nowhere a dog slammed into my front windshield. Somehow it righted itself, scrabbling around for footing on the wet hood. Then it stood there, spraddle-legged and terrified, staring me straight in the face.

I heard one yelp—or maybe I saw it. Either way, when the next wave sent the frantic animal sprawling, sliding off my car, I didn’t stop to think. I shoved open the door, lunged through the opening and into the water, and somehow caught the animal by the tail.

I don’t know how I caught hold of the dog’s collar, but it was just in time. The next thing I knew, we were both underwater.

The weird thing is that it wasn’t rainwater. Don’t ask me why I noticed that. It wasn’t rainwater, but salty, brackish water. And as I came up sputtering, with Fido still in my grasp, I knew that the worst had happened to New Orleans. One of the levees had broken.

And that meant I didn’t have to go to the lake.

The lake had come to me.




CHAPTER 2


Some parts of that day remain a blur: how I managed to keep Fido and myself from drowning; why I kept Fido and myself from drowning. Between the tearing winds, the punishing waves and the debris missiles they both aimed at me, I could easily have just let go. Given in. Given up.

But I couldn’t.

It was because of the dog.

He was a medium-sized mutt, black and white, totally non-descript, like a million others. Mainly, though, he was petrified with fear. He’d decided I was his salvation and kept trying to climb into my arms. That’s because the water was too deep for him to stand in.

Unfortunately, between the wind and the waves, it was too rough for me to stand in. Tree branches, lawn furniture, street signs, garbage. It was like being inside a giant washing machine set on spin.

One thing I knew: avoid the cars. Because if one of them pinned me to a tree, I was a goner.

I know, I know. Five minutes ago I’d wanted to be a goner. And I still did. But I needed to save this dog first.

I could barely keep my eyes open; that’s how harshly the winds whipped around me. Like a drowning blind woman, I flailed around, looking for something solid to cling to. Then I slammed into a fence. A hurricane fence, designed not to fall over no matter how hard the wind and water pushed. The fence also had a gate—wide open, thank God. And the gate led to a house. Somehow I dragged myself up the steps. The minute Fido’s feet hit something solid, he was out of my arms. Right behind him, I crawled up the long flight of steps, out of the water and onto a porch. There I curled into a ball in a corner against the house. Fido, wet and stinky, wormed his way into my arms, and that’s how the two of us spent the next few hours. He shivered and whimpered uncontrollably. I shivered and alternately cried and cursed.

You’d think someone who wanted to be dead wouldn’t be afraid of anything. That she should stand up to the storm, beating her chest and screaming, “Come and get me, Katrina! Come and get me!”

But it was terrifying. I’d never seen such power. Mother Nature at her most furious. Ripping up trees, tearing off roofs, and flinging everything around like pick-up sticks. And all the while wailing her rage until I thought I’d go deaf.

Parts of trees and other buildings thumped against the house. I felt the floor shudder beneath me, and I prayed it would hold. A shingle flew across the porch just above my head, then cartwheeled across the floor before burying itself in the wood half wall, just like an ax thrown in a magician’s trick.

Suffice it to say, I did not fall asleep this time.

I kept checking my watch, but it had stopped. The water, I guess. It seemed as if hours went by with no change. I was afraid to lift my head above the solid porch rail; I could get decapitated.

Fido finally stopped shivering, but he didn’t sleep either. He just kept his anxious brown eyes on me, as if I might disappear if he looked away. Who did he belong to? And why on earth had they left him behind?

He wore a collar with a tag that identified him as Lucky.

Lucky. Yeah, right! Lucky to be huddled on somebody’s porch with a crazy woman while the whole damn city returned to the sea.

It felt as if two days had gone by before I sensed the first easing of the wind. It’s not that the wind slowed down, it was more that the worst gusts weren’t coming as often. Since the weathermen had predicted the eye would reach New Orleans around eleven, I figured it must be early afternoon.

Extracting myself from Lucky, I wriggled toward the porch steps. How many steps had I climbed? A full flight, I think. But only seven steps remained above water. That meant the water had to be at least four feet deep.

Holy crap!

I looked for my car. No sign of it, though I did see the top of what must have been the van we’d drifted into.

Holy shit!

It must have been late afternoon heading toward dusk before it was safe enough for me to venture down the steps and peer around the neighborhood. The water was still choppy and rough, driven by the wind, but also with a distinct flow to it. I tried to picture the map of New Orleans and where I was on it. Water was flowing generally from the east, even though the winds were now coming out of the north. The eye was past us, but the water was still coming in. It had to be a levee break. And if this part of town had five feet of water, what was happening in other neighborhoods?

I heard Lucky bark and turned to him. “It’s okay, boy. We’re okay.” But he kept on barking. Then I heard a shout, a kid’s voice.

“Lucky? Lucky? Where are you?”

It came from a few doors down. “He’s okay!” I shouted. “He’s up on a porch with me.”

Then I saw a kid with his mother hanging on to him as they ventured onto their porch. She looked petrified, but he was grinning like any kid who’d just found his dog again.

“Lucky!” He waved his arms over his head. “Good boy! I knew you’d make it!”

Lucky, of course, went berserk when he heard his kid’s voice. He bounced down the steps, only to back up the minute his feet hit water.

We carried on a shouted conversation.

“You two okay?”

“Yes. We’re fine. And you?”

“Fine.” Sort of. I was bruised and had a cut on my forearm that I didn’t remember getting. I was wet and I was hungry. But otherwise I was fine.

“Can you bring Lucky to me?” the kid asked.

“When the wind dies down,” I shouted back. And if the water quit rising. There were only six steps visible now.

I ended up sleeping that night on the porch, with Lucky curled up next to me. Whoever lived in the house had obviously evacuated. They’d also locked the iron security door and boarded up the windows with plywood. Under the circumstances, they probably wouldn’t have begrudged me breaking into their home, eating their food and sleeping in their bed. But I couldn’t get in, and believe me I tried.

So I spent a horrible pitch-black night listening to waves lap against the house—how incongruous is that?—and to cars dying. At least that’s what it sounded like. Cars that weren’t entirely underwater would spazz out when the water hit their electronics center. Horns honking, alarm systems beeping, trunks popping open. Even headlights coming on.

It was creepy beyond words, the prolonged death throes of Detroit’s finest.

At least the darkness allowed me to attend to my private functions. But by dawn I was hungry, thirsty and sitting on the top step contemplating my future.

It wouldn’t take much to complete my original plan. Just head north on Elysian Fields until I either drowned in the street or reached Lake Pontchartrain and drowned there.

But not until I got Lucky home.

The water felt a lot colder today, but what the hell. I had to pick up Lucky—he wouldn’t go anywhere near the water—and carry him down the steps. I thought he would claw me to death trying to climb onto my shoulders and head. He was that scared. So was I. The water was up to my chest and the sidewalk beneath my feet was an underwater minefield. Branches, a newspaper machine, garbage cans. At least the plastic cans floated.

And then there was the question of the living creatures that might be in that water. Snakes. Big hungry fish. Even alligators, if the storm had blown them over the levee.

It felt like a mile to Lucky’s house, even though it was only four houses over. Once on his own porch, Lucky started barking and leaping at the door. When they opened it, both the boy and his mom burst into tears.

He was thrilled to have his beloved pet back. She was obviously relieved to have another grown-up with her.

“Do you have food and water?” I asked as she wiped her face with her hands.

“Sure. Come on in.”

I hesitated at the front door, dripping nasty water all over the porch. “Do you have any dry clothes?”

In short order I had a shower, washed my hair, and put on a House of Blues T-shirt, a pair of jogging shorts and red rubber flip-flops. Then as we sat in the kitchen and she cooked me breakfast on her gas stove, we shared our stories. She was Sherry and her son, Bradley, was nine.

“We tried to evacuate,” she said. “But my car started to overheat while we sat on the interstate. Traffic was awful and I sure didn’t want to break down somewhere on the twin spans. So I exited on Louisa, and after the engine cooled down, we came back home. How about you?”

“Me? Um …I didn’t plan to evacuate.” No duh!

“Right. But how’d you end up out in the storm?”

Sherry was already on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “Failed attempt to commit suicide” would probably upset her even more. So I smiled at her. “I was trying to get to a friend’s house, and then a big tree limb hit my car and it stalled. Then the water came and the car got swamped.”

“And then you saved Lucky,” Bradley said. He’d been sitting across the table from me, his chin on his hands, staring at me as if I were a superhero or something.

Perversely enough, it made me feel lower than low. I was such a phony. “Or maybe he saved me,” I suggested.

His mouth gaped open in amazement. “He did?”

I nodded because I realized it was true. “He floated onto my car and he was so scared that I forgot to be scared. I just grabbed him and then he and I found those steps and got up on the porch.”

Bradley’s young brow furrowed. “But how did he save you?”

I shrugged. “I think I might have drowned in my car if he hadn’t come along.”

“Really?” His eyes got huge. “Can’t you swim?”

“She was too scared to swim,” Sherry said, laying a hand on her son’s head. “Isn’t that right?”

I nodded. “But Lucky made me brave.”

That seemed to satisfy Bradley. We spent most of the day listening to their battery-powered radio. There wasn’t much information, though. Most of the stations were down, and what little we heard was awful. Flooding everywhere. St. Bernard, New Orleans East, downtown, Metairie. All we could do was wait for the pumps to be turned on. Meanwhile we settled in for a long ordeal.

Sherry had already filled every container she had with water, and she had a lot of canned foods and crackers and a gas stove, like I said. We decided to eat the refrigerated food first. Later in the day I braved the water again and retrieved four big garbage cans, which we rinsed out and filled with even more water, mainly for bathing and washing up, just in case. She made up a bed for me on the couch, and I took a long nap. And in all that time, we didn’t see another human being.

That night no dying cars serenaded us, but that made us feel even more alone, as if we were the last people on earth. In the universe.

But the next morning, Lucky started barking. We heard voices, and what do we see when we rush to the porch but a flat boat with two guys using fence boards for paddles.

“Y’all okay?” the older guy called. “Anybody hurt?”

“We’re fine,” I called back. “What in the hell is going on?”

The other fellow spat in the water. “Damned levees broke. More than one of ’em, we heard. The whole damned city is filling up with water.”

I guess we knew that already, but hearing it said out loud sucked the heart out of me.

Next to me, Sherry started to weep. “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

“We’ve been ferrying stranded folks up to the I-610 overpass. But there’s no water there, or shade.”

“What happens after that?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” the younger guy said. “But somebody’s gotta come eventually.”

“If you want my opinion,” the other guy said. “As long as you have food and water, you ought to just sit tight. There’s people a whole lot worse off than you. Sitting on their roofs, trapped in their attics.”

“I’m staying put,” I decided on the instant. I looked at Sherry.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Can we take Lucky?” Bradley piped in.

“The dog? Sorry, kid, that’s probably not a good idea. There’s not food and water for people, let alone pets.”

Bradley hugged Lucky’s neck. “I’m not going anywhere without Lucky.”

But Sherry wasn’t so sure. “What if we bring our own food and water?”

“There’s over a hundred folks there already, lady. By tonight there’ll be a lot more. You gonna bring enough to share?” He shook his head. “Sit tight here for another day or two. We’ll check on you again, okay?”

So we stayed.

It was a surreal existence. We played cards and Monopoly, and cooked all the meat in the refrigerator. We saw the two guys on the boat three more times that day ferrying people up to the overpass, and on the last trip we gave them extra fried chicken and apple juice.

We went to bed at dusk. That was Wednesday.

Thursday was more of the same, except that we saw more boats, more rescuers searching for people stranded in their flooded homes. And with every boat that passed the question was the same: what’s going on?

For the most part, nobody knew anything beyond the obvious. The levees had broken; the city was flooded; and there was no getting out. The elevated I-610 was full of people now, scared, hungry and baking in the relentless heat.

The radio added to the horror. The Superdome was crammed with too many people and not enough food or water. In the dry parts of the city, like the French Quarter, Bywater, and parts of Uptown, looters were taking advantage of the crisis. A fire started in a shopping center, and other places, too.

To make matters even more horrific, police from the small town of Gretna wouldn’t allow people to evacuate across the Mississippi River Bridge from the flooded Eastbank to the mostly dry Westbank. With weapons drawn, the cops sent the poor people back into hell!

Had the whole world gone mad? I wasn’t a churchgoer, but even I knew the story of the good Samaritan.

In our little moated castle we were okay, and yet not okay. We had plenty of food and water, but Sherry was a basket case. To begin with, her cell phone didn’t work too well. I guess a lot of the towers must have been damaged in the storm. Added to that, there was no way to charge the phone up. So it was bad when her phone died. Then she went to take a shower and discovered that the city water had been turned off. That’s when she lost it.

“We have to get out of here! I can’t take any more! We can go to my sister in Denver. Or my aunts in Memphis.”

She started packing—two backpacks of clothes and important papers, two tote bags of food and water.

“Don’t forget dog food for Lucky,” Bradley said, pulling out a giant bag of Purina.

“We can’t take Lucky with us, honey.” Sherry knelt in front of her son. “We’ll leave him on the porch with lots of food and water, and he’ll—”

“No!” Bradley wrenched free of her. “No. We have to bring Lucky with us!”

“We can’t.” She started to cry. “On the radio they said the National Guard won’t take pets in their boats or helicopters.”

“Then I won’t go!” he shouted, wiping his own tears.

That’s when I chimed in. “I’ll take care of Lucky.”

They both looked over at me.

“You will?” Bradley exclaimed.

“You’re not coming with us?” Sherry asked.

“No, I’m not going, so I can keep him with me. If you don’t mind me staying here until the water goes down.”

She gave me a house key and the phone numbers of all her relatives where they might end up. I gave her my apartment phone number, since I doubted it was flooded. Of course the roof might have blown off. But one way or another, we’d find each other again.

“Thank you so much, Jane.” Bradley gave me a hug so tight it hurt. “Lucky’s a very good dog. And he’ll protect you, too.”

“I know.” He already had. I had no doubt that I was alive because of Lucky. And now I had to stay alive if I was going to keep him safe for Bradley.

Oh well. If I still wanted to commit suicide, there would be plenty of time to do it later.

They didn’t actually leave until the next morning in a boat with the same two guys. We’d come to know Manny and Fred pretty well, and they told us that the National Guard was finally flying people out. We knew that because ever since last night the sky had been alive with helicopters.

I waved them goodbye. Lucky barked until they were out of sight. Then we just sat there, him and me, staring at the surreal landscape of our poor doomed city. I still had plenty of food, so Manny and Fred continued to drop by every day for lunch. In return they fed me news and tried to talk me into leaving. But I refused to leave town. At least the water level had begun slowly to drop. Very slowly. And Manny and Fred promised that when I was ready, they’d take me back to my house, or at least as close as they could get in their boat.

“There’s looting going on,” Fred warned me. “And the cops have orders to shoot to kill.”

“Fine with me,” I replied, “since I don’t have any intentions of looting.”

Only when the flooding was over and the most desperate people evacuated did I decide to leave. All Lucky and I took was water and food, as much as the boat could hold. Behind the boat we towed a rolling garbage can. Manny and Fred let me off at Elysian Fields and Urquhart Street. We exchanged phone numbers and addresses. Their addresses probably weren’t any good, though. They lived on Wickfield, a block from where we now knew the London Avenue Canal had failed. Both houses were up to their ceilings with water, and Manny’s had shifted off its foundations.

But they were great guys, helping their fellow New Orleanians any way they could. I hoped I’d see them again. After many hugs, goodbyes and admonitions, it was just me, Lucky and a damp garbage can full of food and water.

How can I possibly describe the devastation? Everyone has seen pictures of flooded neighborhoods or burned-down houses. Or even bombed-out neighborhoods, usually in the Middle East. But no one has ever seen anything like this. The vastness of the destruction. Blocks and blocks and blocks of emptiness and debris. It was bad enough in the flooded areas. But I saw now that the water hid the worst of it. I was viewing the complete shambles of a great American city. And this was only the Gentilly area.

Elysian Fields Avenue is about five miles long from the lake, south to the river. A good four miles of it was flooded. I walked the final mile to my house, partly in knee-deep water, the rest on dry ground.

On the entire boat ride we’d only seen three people on their porches. On my walk I saw a few more, but they weren’t the normal New Orleans folks you expect to see. They were fearful and shell-shocked. Wild-eyed. But they all shared whatever information they had.

“The police are making everybody leave.”

“The National Guard’s taking over.”

“Don’t give anybody any back talk. They’ll arrest your ass so fast and throw you in the jail.”

The new jail, that is. The old one was flooded, so the train terminal had been taken over as a temporary prison.

I thanked them and kept moving. My dinky apartment on Dauphine Street had never seemed so appealing. But as I approached my block, I started to cry. The crepe myrtles at the corner house were both down. The awnings on the second floor of another house dangled from one remaining support, threatening to decapitate someone in the next strong wind. Slates and shingles littered the street, as did cable, electric and telephone lines. A three-block section of utility poles leaned like drunken men, and a sycamore tree on the opposite corner had toppled onto two cars, completely blocking the street.

It was like looking at a dead place, and I felt this sickening hole expand in my chest. What were we going to do? How could anybody recover from such devastation? And this neighborhood hadn’t even flooded.

I guess I must have been working on autopilot, pushing my garbage can like some old bag lady and holding tight to Lucky’s leash. Once we’d gotten out of the water, he’d become much happier, treating our trek like some long overdue walk in a new park full of new sights and new smells and new places to explore.

But as we negotiated the trash-strewn block and stopped in front of my house, he seemed to sense how overwhelmed I was. And panicked. I was home, but it wasn’t home. It was a scary place that looked more or less the same. Only nothing seemed familiar anymore. If a Hollywood director could capture the chilling unreality of this surreal gray place, he’d have an Oscar-worthy horror flick. If he could do it. Somehow I didn’t think anyone could.

I shoved aside a plastic lawn chair and a piece of shiplap siding to open the gate, then muscled the garbage can in. As I slammed the gate, though, and looked out at my ordinary New Orleans block of shotgun houses, both singles and doubles, I burst into tears. That’s when Lucky bumped his bony shoulder against my thigh and started to whine.

“It’s okay,” I said, dropping to my knees and hugging his neck. “It’s okay. We’ll be fine.”

But I was lying to him and to myself. At least it felt like a lie. Because it didn’t seem as if anything could ever be fine again.




CHAPTER 3


My apartment was relatively unscathed, just one broken window in the kitchen. I found the culprit: a roofing slate shattered in the sink. A young pecan tree in the next yard leaned against the house, blocking my bathroom window. But other than that, I was very fortunate.

Yet my house still felt dead. Lifeless. There was no whir from the air conditioner, no hum from the refrigerator. No chronic drip from the kitchen faucet. And boy, was it hot.

I opened all the windows. Then poured a bowl of water for Lucky from the stash I’d brought. I was home, such as it was. Now what? It had only been one week since Katrina hit, but from what I’d seen, the city would be years recovering.

Depressed anew, I decided to go to bed. It was only one-thirty, but two Tylenol PM took care of that. When I woke up it was weirdly dark and weirdly quiet, as if I was in some Twilight Zone city. I should have been used to it by now, but I wasn’t.

I took Lucky outside to relieve himself, but I carried a flashlight and a gun that had belonged to my ex. So much for my fear of guns. It wasn’t loaded, though. I didn’t even own any ammunition for it. But it was big, shiny and very scary looking. When I got back inside, I fed the dog, took three Tylenol PM and crawled back into my sweaty bed.

I wished I had something stronger: Valium, Xanax, Dilaudid. But after my spectacular crash and burn seven years ago, due to the overuse of said pharmaceuticals, I’d confined my substance abusing to alcohol in all its various incarnations. And unfortunately I’d finished off pretty much everything I had prior to the storm.

So I slept another eight hours and woke up the next morning, wet with sweat and excruciatingly conscious that if not for Lucky, I’d have been dead for well over a week by now.

I’d been a nurse for a long time, so I knew a little bit about death and dying. How the body deteriorates and falls apart. But I’d always heard that floaters were different. By now I would have been a bloated carcass, discolored and distended. Maybe nibbled on by enough fish to be indistinguishable as either a man or a woman.

“Ugh.” I didn’t like the thought of being mistaken for a guy, even in death. I sat up. Lucky was still beside my bed. He’d become amazingly loyal to me.

Since the water wasn’t working, which meant no flushing, I went into the yard with the dog. That’s when I noticed that the fence had collapsed between my yard and the one behind me. The one with the swimming pool. So I got a bucket, a towel and a bar of soap, and in short order I was bathed, my hair was clean, and I had two big buckets of water sitting next to my toilet, ready for action.

Now what?

I knew there were some people still around. I’d heard voices this morning, and the sound of a truck engine. But I’d lain low. That’s because I’d also heard gunshots last night, and whether it was the good guys or the bad guys, I didn’t want to be a part of it. So I sat in my front window and peeped through the blinds, not sure what to do with myself until I saw old Mr. French open his shutters and lean out his door to peer up and down the street.

I yanked up my mini-blinds and waved to him. He shrank back at first, then waved when he recognized me. “You okay?” I yelled.

“Yeah. But there’s no water to flush the toilet.”

“I’ll be right over.”

I brought him my pail, then took two buckets he gave me and filled them from the pool. It turned out that he and I, plus the hippie couple on the corner, were the only ones still in our block. I knocked on their door and told them about the swimming pool. In turn they told me that Washington Square Park in the Marigny had become a sort of Rescue Central. There wasn’t a lot of food and water, but what there was, people were sharing. Despite the panic and looting during the first few days after the storm, things were calmer now, and the vibe in the park was good.

“What about the evacuation order?” I asked.

Enoch, skinny and dreadlocked but with a baby face, grinned. “As long as you have ID with a valid address and a dog, they don’t hassle you. They don’t know what to do with the dogs, so most of the time, unless you’re homeless, they just look the other way. The National Guard dudes are cooler than NOPD, though. The cops are, like, totally wigged out.”

“That could be because they’ve been on duty a lot longer,” I said. “Plus a lot of them probably lost their homes, too. With the phones down, they might not even know where their families are. The National Guard soldiers don’t have to worry about any of that.”

“True,” his girlfriend, Sarah, said. “But the cops are still out there, and every one of them is ready to snap. So avoid them whenever you can. Stick to the streets that cars can’t drive down.”

“We’re heading down to the park in a little while,” Enoch said. “Want to come with us?”

So I got Lucky and we went.

There’s something strangely disconcerting about seeing mega-armed soldiers patrolling your neighborhood, especially with helicopters buzzing overhead like ominous mosquitoes. We zigzagged through lower Marigny, trading our storm stories.

“It was supremely hairy,” Enoch said. “People streaming through our neighborhood, coming up from St. Bernard and the Lower Ninth Ward. They were, like, totally freaked. Terrified.”

“It was awful,” Sarah added. “Some of them had seen their own relatives and neighbors drown. That’s how fast the water came up down there.”

“We gave them stuff to drink, but most of them kept going.”

“To the Superdome,” Sarah said with a shudder. “And then to the Convention Center.”

“Man, that was one bad scene.”

“Have you had any trouble with looters?” I asked. “Stuff like that?”

“It was pretty scary at first,” Enoch said. “Gangs with guns just roaming around.”

“My friend, Katya, lives in the Quarter,” Sarah said. “She told me that when some radio station announced that there was no more 911, that the cops couldn’t come to help you, right away people passed the word, shouting down the streets like telegraphs or something.”

“Yeah,” Enoch said, gesturing with his hands. “The scumbags passed the word. ‘There’s no 911. The cops won’t come.’ That’s when the serious looting started. Not food and water, but stereos and TVs, cell phones and computers.”

“And liquor and drugs and guns,” Sarah added, her brow creased.

Enoch nodded. “For a while there it was like the Wild West. We heard some serious gun battles.”

“Between gangs?” I asked.

“Yeah. And between cops and thugs, too. But in the last couple of days the shooting has eased up,” he added.

“That’s good,” I murmured. “I guess I was lucky to be in a flooded area. Everybody was worried more about not drowning than about looting their neighbors.” Except, of course, for me. I had wanted to drown. But not anymore. At least not at the moment.

Finally we reached the wide neutral ground on Elysian Fields and crossed to Washington Square. I’d been in the park many times, but not this Washington Square. The calm, shaded green space was littered with live-oak branches. At least the iron fence around it had survived without much damage. But the gates were padlocked shut around its green devastation. A lot of the branches had been cleared away. But no one was in the square. Instead, a series of impromptu tents, tarps, tables and chairs had sprung up on the sidewalks around it wherever there was shade. A big Red Cross flag marked a first-aid station, and a military truck filled with water jugs had a line in front of it.

The main thing, though, was the smell of coffee. Coffee!

We agreed to meet in an hour or so and walk back home together. While they headed for a circle where a trio of guys were playing drums, Lucky and I followed our noses to the food tent. There a tattooed guy and a nun were serving up coffee and sympathy. The guy poured a saucer of water for Lucky. “He’s a happy fella.”

“Yes. Considering that he almost drowned, he’s doing pretty well.”

“And how about you?” the nun asked.

“I’ll be better once this coffee gets inside me. Thanks.”

“What about food?” she asked. “Are you eating enough? We still have grits and oatmeal left, and there’ll be red beans and rice in another hour or so.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t been too hungry lately.” In fact, my pants were getting pretty loose on me. “But I have a small stash of food at home, so save your stuff for someone who really needs it.”

I stood there a while, sipping my coffee—strong but with no milk—and getting the lay of the land. It reminded me of Jackson Square, where artists gather alongside the fence. This was an odd mix of people, locals and military. But after my several days alone in Sherry and Bradley’s house, it felt good to be around other folks.

“Say,” the tattooed guy said. “If you’re not doing anything, you want to help out?”

“Sure. What do you need?”

He thrust a tray full of coffee cups at me. “Take this over to the medical tent. We try to keep them supplied. Then if they need water, go stand in line at the water truck.”

It felt good to have something to do. Lucky was an angel, sticking close to me in the shifting crowds, and I didn’t spill a drop. The medical personnel, distinguished by red sashes tied on their arms, descended on the coffee like vultures. “Do y’all need water?” I asked.

“We always need water,” a tall, lanky guy said.

Fifteen minutes later, Lucky and I were back with a case of bottled water. A cheerful-looking woman with a head of wiry gray hair shoved a clipboard in my hand and said, “Can you keep track of who comes in for what? Just names and symptoms.”

“Sure.”

“I’m Tess,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Jane.”

“Great. I’ve been here since midnight and I need to sleep. When you get tired, just draft somebody else.” And with that, she was gone.

For a minute I was at a loss. Then a young guy came up with a cut on his thigh, and a woman hurried up with a crying baby, and I was off to the races.

It didn’t take long to figure out the system, sort of a triage. A couple of doctors and nurses worked on the patients—I couldn’t tell who was who. But it didn’t matter until a woman about my age rushed up screaming. “Help! Please! I think my husband’s had a heart attack. I gave him aspirin, but—”

In less than an instant the lanky guy took charge.

I’d been a nurse for seventeen years and I’d worked with a lot of doctors in a lot of different situations. Even though I’d been out of the profession for seven years, the pleasure of seeing a good doctor in action hadn’t dimmed. He was calm and authoritative, and though it didn’t seem as if he were rushing, he worked fast.

“Transfer him to that table. Get him started on oxygen. Okay, let’s take a listen.” He bent over him with a stethoscope.

While he and three others worked over the man, I made the wife sit down. “Does he have a history of heart trouble?” Yes. “Anything else? Diabetes?” No.

“High blood pressure?” Yes. She gave me a rundown on his medications. “What about family history of heart disease?”

I relayed the information to the team working on him in the tent, then went back to my post. This was bad. Very bad. I hadn’t thought about the destruction of the city’s medical resources, though of course I’d heard on the radio that Charity Hospital, the VA Hospital and Tulane Hospital were all flooded and out of commission. And if the whole city had flooded, then Mercy, Baptist and Methodist couldn’t be operational either. As for the hospitals in Jefferson Parish and St. Bernard…

A shiver ran down my spine. I didn’t want to think about it, but it was a real problem. How were you supposed to treat a heart-attack victim under these circumstances?

The answer was helicopters. Within thirty minutes, the guy was medevaced from a make-do landing pad on the neutral ground. And that fast, our temporary emergency-room team went back to treating cuts, sprains, rashes and overdoses.

Eventually someone showed up with plates of red beans, and we all ate. Only later did the good doctor come out front for a break and to stretch out his back.

“Thanks for the history you gathered on the heart-attack victim,” he said, giving me a grateful smile. “I gather you’ve worked in the field before.”

“Yes, but…it’s been a while.”

He chuckled. “Some things you never forget. I’m Ben Comeaux.” He extended his hand.

“Jane Falgoust. You’re a good Cajun, judging by your name.” And that typical Cajun coloring, dark hair, midnight eyes and a winning smile.

“You got it. A bayou boy transplanted to the big city. So what did you do?”

“Do? Oh, you mean in nursing. Neonatal, surgical, emergency room.”

“Damn. So why are you out here checking patients in? We need you in the exam room.”

I shook my head. “I don’t do that anymore. Besides, I haven’t kept my license current.”

“You think anyone here cares? Come on.” And just like that I was back doing what I never thought I’d be able to do again: working in an emergency room, swabbing wounds, giving shots and handling drugs the licensing board had decided I had no business handling.

But the temptation I feared never raised its ugly head. For one thing, we were all working under one crowded canvas roof, talking back and forth, lending a helping hand to one another. Even Lucky pitched in, entertaining two little girls who were deathly afraid of needles, while I gave them tetanus shots. For another thing, they didn’t have a very big selection of drugs on hand. Mainly tetanus vaccines, blood thinners and coagulants, antibiotics—both oral and intravenous—and some moderate-level pain pills.

Regardless though, I wasn’t into prescription medicines anymore. I hadn’t been for seven years. As easy as my access to them had been on the job in hospitals, in some ways they’d been even easier to get in a bar. People—especially drunk and wasted people—offer bartenders all kinds of stuff. I could have made a bundle buying and selling drugs on the side. But I hadn’t. Why would I want to help anyone ruin their life with drugs? I was a perfect example of how easily drug abuse could ruin your life. I hadn’t died from it, but my career had been killed and it had been downhill ever since.

But I was back in nursing again, if only temporarily, and I was going to make the most of it. I used to be a damned good nurse. I would prove I could be a good one again, even if I was the only one who’d ever know.

After lunch we kept on. Enoch and Sarah came by and stayed, helping out any way they could. A fresh team of doctors came by a few hours later, and suddenly I realized that the whole day was gone. I’d been so busy I hadn’t noticed.

Lucky lay asleep underneath the cot, but the minute I stepped out of the tent, he was there with me.

“Great dog.” It was Dr. Comeaux. “You two went through the storm together?”

“We sure did.” I fondled the goofy mutt’s floppy ears.

“How long have you had him?”

“Would you believe only about a week? I promised to take care of him for his real owner.”

We stood outside the tent, neither of us going anywhere. Finally he said, “Can we count on your help tomorrow?”

“Sure.” I stared up at him. He was good-looking in this shaggy, unselfconscious way. Probably younger than me, but not too much. “How did this all get started?”

He looked back at the makeshift ER and shook his head. “Three of us work with Doctors International On Call. We got here this past Saturday and set up with help from the Red Cross. The military isn’t too happy we’re here, but they are reluctantly providing security. As for the others, they’re mostly like you, good folks who didn’t evacuate and now want to help their fellow man. So, why didn’t you evacuate?”

“I’m not sure anymore. So, where are you guys staying?” I asked, wanting to head off any questions about myself.

He pointed to a building across Frenchman Street from the park. “A guy opened his apartment to us. How about you?”

“I have an apartment on Dauphine not far from here.”

“You’re not walking back by yourself, are you? Because I can walk you home.”

“No, I’m fine. I came with two of my neighbors. And of course I have Lucky to protect me.”

He studied me a moment. “I don’t know why you left the medical field, Jane. But I think you ought to reconsider.” Then he grinned. “See you tomorrow?”

I nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

I smiled to myself as I walked home with Enoch and Sarah, filled with this warm glow of pleasure, all due to what he’d said. Ben Comeaux was a good doctor, so that made his compliment even sweeter. Too bad I couldn’t just snap my fingers, straighten out my life and resume my lost career.

For now, though, I vowed to enjoy my newfound work. Who knew how long it would be before I’d ever have another job again?




CHAPTER 4


The next day I brought my cell phone with me. There was a guy 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 its use.”

“Yeah. Okay. Look, I’ll try to get reassigned to a crew working New Orleans. I bet Molly’s is still open. And Johnny White’s. They never close. Anyway, I just wanted to be sure I had a place to stay.”

Now why did the thought of him showing up at my house repulse me? “There’s no electricity here,” I said.

“No duh.”

“And you can’t drink the water.”

He laughed. “Yeah, but you can drink the beer. At least the Saints won,” he added. “Ain’t that something? I’ll see you one of these days, babe. You can count on it.”

After we hung up, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I didn’t want Hank here. Not in my apartment, not in Washington Square Park, not in my life. It wasn’t his fault. He was the same man he’d always been. But I’d changed. Don’t ask me why or how, but I knew I had.

Since the phone lines seemed partially open, I decided to call the group home where Clark had been taken. It took five tries to get through, and the phone rang a long time before someone picked up. It was, after all, two in the morning.

“Bethany Group Home,” a drowsy voice answered. “This better be important.”

“It is. It is. I’m calling from New Orleans, and I’m sorry to wake you, but I haven’t been able to get through during the day.”

“That’s okay. That’s all right,” the woman said. “You have family with us?”

“Yes. My brother Clark evacuated with Community Homes. Clark Falgoust. Is he still there? Is he okay?”

“Clark, Clark. Oh, yes. Down syndrome, very sweet disposition?”

“That’s him. How’s he doing?”

“He’s doing fine. Very well. And you are?”

“Jane Falgoust, his sister.”

“Hi, Jane. I’m Alma Charles, assistant director at Bethany. So you’re calling from New Orleans. Did you stay through the storm?”

I gave her the short version. She filled me in on Clark’s adjustment. Like all the evacuated group-home residents, he’d had his difficult moments. He liked his routine and got upset when it was disrupted. But he wasn’t as difficult as the autistic residents. All Clark usually needed was a little extra attention and coddling. Then he’d attach himself to a couple of aides and be a happy camper once more.

“He’s a real sweetheart,” Alma said. “Everybody at Bethany just loves him.”

“Does that mean he’ll be staying there a while?”

“That I can’t say. But if he does get transferred, we’ll know where and when. I take it you can’t keep him with you.”

I laughed. “No drinking water, no electricity and the military powers that be are trying to kick all of us diehards out of town.” Diehard. Now that was an ironic choice of words. It described me perfectly, though not precisely as intended.

“I see. Any idea how the Community Homes facility fared?” she asked.

“It was in Gentilly, so probably not too well.”

“Lord almighty.” Then she sighed. “Well, don’t you worry, sugar. Your brother’s going to be just fine wherever he lands. Give me your phone number. I promise to keep track of him so you can always find him through me. Okay? And take my cell number, too.”

“Thanks, Alma. Thanks so much.”

After I hung up, I felt enormously relieved. Through the years I’d discovered that most of the people involved in long-term care for people like Clark were great. There was always the occasional bad apple. But for the most part they were good folks—massively underpaid, of course—but genuinely involved with their clients’ lives. Like Verna Jenkins, Alma Charles definitely belonged in that group, an angel who would make sure that Clark and the others from his group home were well served.

“Thank you,” I whispered into the sweltering night. Thank you to who? Alma? Verna? God?

I’m not a churchgoer. I quit after Dad left us. Mom was too depressed to force the issue, and other than a Christmas manger scene, God didn’t make much of an appearance in our household. But all the while I’d tried to talk my first boyfriend, Gary, out of being gay, I’d prayed a lot. And later when I’d tried to get pregnant, six years of heavy-duty praying.

God hadn’t listened—if there was a God. Or else he’d decided I was an opportunist who only prayed when she wanted something. That was the more likely scenario. I’d prayed briefly when Tom had gotten into trouble with the insurance fraud, but it was halfhearted, as if I knew it wasn’t going to help.

Since Tom’s conviction, I hadn’t prayed for anything. Why bother? And I hadn’t thought much about God either, not even in the height of the storm when I wasn’t sure Lucky and I would make it to that porch.

But I was thankful to God tonight, because He was taking good care of my brother. I was thankful, but I was lonesome.

How I missed Clark, his funny smile and silly giggle. My forty-two-year-old kindergarten kid. How long would it be before I saw him again?

I know it seems stupid, me getting all teary-eyed missing my brother. If I’d followed through with my suicide plan I would never have seen him again. But I wasn’t suicidal anymore. The moment had passed. That wasn’t to say it might not come again. But the impulse had subsided just as the opportunity had.

Beside me, Lucky woofed in his sleep and his feet twitched in hot pursuit of some dream squirrel or cat. I turned to face him, grateful to have him with me. If he hadn’t slammed into my windshield…

Closing my eyes, I vowed not to go there. Life was what it was. From now on I wouldn’t look back with regret. One day at a time, that was my new mantra—more stuff left over from rehab and my forced participation in AA. I’d hated every minute of it, resented being stuck in the same category as some of the really down-and-out folks who straggled into the meetings. At the same time, I’d resented the presence of the longtime sober ones who lived and breathed AA.

But as much as I hated to admit it, AA did have a few good points. Like that one-day-at-a-time thing.

A mosquito buzzed near my ear and I swatted blindly at it. One day at a time. I’d lost track of the days though. How many weeks since Hurricane Katrina had wiped out the whole damned Gulf Coast? Since I’d abandoned my suicide plan? Since I’d had a drink?

And how long since I’d met Ben—or should I say since I’d stepped back into nursing mode?

So which one was it that had me happier than I’d been in years: the teetotaling, the job or the man?

I actually smiled as I admitted to myself that I didn’t know. And I didn’t much care. I was bathing in a swimming pool and living without electricity, but I felt really good these days. Needed. And that was enough for me.

The next day we needed every helping hand we could get. Word had gotten around, as it always does, and the park was seeing a lot more people every day for food, water and medical help.

“Where’s Ben?” I asked Tess after I finished bandaging a nasty cut that needed stitches. Unfortunately the wild-eyed old guy wouldn’t let me anywhere near him with sutures.

“Ben went down to the Quarter, to that FEMA hospital set up in one of the hotels,” Tess answered. “It turns out they have lots of supplies but no patients. Everybody’s over here or going to that street clinic on St. Philip Street. He’s hoping they might share some of their supplies with us.” She rolled her eyes. “Like the feds are gonna cooperate with anybody.”

“Maybe they could move their operation down here, you know, to where the people actually are.”

She shook her head. “That’s way too logical for the organization that dithered while New Orleans drowned. They should have been here the minute the winds died down.”

She had a point. Tess hadn’t had any connection to New Orleans prior to Katrina, and had only come down to help as a favor to Ben. But already she’d attached herself to the city with a vengeance, connecting to the people and our strong sense of community. I have to add also that she was suspicious of anything that any branch of government said or did. She thought Mayor Nagin was hopeless, Governor Blanco was a waste of time and you did not want to get her started on President Bush.

I’ve never been all that political, but it was hard to remain neutral when weeks after the biggest natural disaster in American history, so little progress had been made.

No, I take that back. Jackson Square had been cleaned up beautifully for the president’s visit. It was just everywhere else that remained a wreck.

An hour or so later when Ben showed up, his expression said everything. There would be no sharing of supplies or personnel. If people wanted help from the FEMA clinic, they had to go to the FEMA clinic.

“So here’s what we do,” Ben said as we gathered around him. “Anything that requires prescriptions or anything more invasive than stitches, we send to them. We need to assemble a fleet of cars so we can ferry people down there. Do you have a car?” he asked me.

“Sorry. It drowned.”

“I’ll ask around,” Tess said. “How about we make any patient who has a car promise to give us a couple of hours of cab service as payment?”

Ben grinned at her. “Good idea. Another thing. Another group of doctors and nurses should be arriving tomorrow, assuming they don’t get turned away at the military checkpoints. Since a lot of you have indicated you’re staying for a while longer, we need to locate more places to put them up. We probably only need five or six beds.”

“I have room,” I said. “A fold-out couch and a roof that doesn’t leak.”

“Great.” He smiled at me.

Great. I smiled back. Why don’t you come stay with me?

Immediately I ducked my head. I did not need to be sending out “I’m available” vibes to this man. For all I knew the good doctor had a sweet little wife tucked away at home. And anyway, the last thing I needed right now was to get involved with some guy. Lucky was all the male I could handle these days.

Still, it was nice to know that feelings I’d assumed long dead and buried—like sexual awareness—were still alive and ticking. It made me feel alive.

I busied myself with setting up the exam area—more bandages and sterilized instruments—but I must have been smiling to myself, because Tess shot me a curious look. “You’re in a good mood.”

“Yeah. I guess I am. I talked to my brother last night.” Now why had I told her that?

“Really? He evacuated?”

“Yes. But he’s doing fine in Baton Rouge.”

“I guess he wants you to leave here, right?”

“I decide where I go, not anyone else.”

She grinned. “You go, girl. Say, what are you doing tonight? I know you always head to your place before dark, but there’s usually some cool music stuff going on around here after dark. Why don’t you stay tonight and bunk with us?”

I started to say no, but I caught myself. Why shouldn’t I stay? It wasn’t as if I had much to go home to. Lucky was already here, so…why not? “Okay. Sounds fun, and I seriously need some fun.”

“Good. Hey, Ben,” she called. “Jane’s staying at our place tonight.”

Again our eyes met and held. “Great,” he said, and I could swear that this time it was him sending out the “I’m available” vibe.

I ducked my head when my cheeks colored, then turned back to the task at hand. Ben Comeaux was a nice guy. That’s all. It was nice that he gave so freely of his time to others, and nice that he appreciated my rusty nursing skills. Beyond that, well…

Suffice it to say, I smiled all day long—until a face from my past was carried into the medical tent, whining like a three-year-old and bleeding big time from a cut on his foot.




CHAPTER 5


“Jane? Is that you?” that unexpected, yet too familiar voice asked. “Jane! Thank God!”

When I didn’t respond, Tess nudged me. “You know this guy?”

Oh, yeah, I knew him. Or at least I once thought I knew him. But back then I hadn’t known that Tom Kinkaid was a liar and a cheat and a compulsive gambler. “My ex,” I muttered.

To him I said, “When did you get out of jail?”

“Hey.” He got this hurt look on his face. “Can’t we let bygones be bygones?”

“You want me to take care of him?” Tess asked.

“No. I’ll do it. Put him there,” I told the two guys who’d carried him in. It was weird. It was obviously Tom, my husband of six years, and yet in many ways it wasn’t him at all. He’d always been a sharp dresser and meticulous in his grooming. Now he was dirty and his face was lined with weariness and pain. Added to that, one of his shoes was covered with blood.

I picked up a scalpel. “This shoe has got to go.”

“Don’t cut it off!” Tom cried. “They’re Italian leather. Besides, they’re the only shoes I have left.”

I shook my head. Italian leather. It figured. Only the best for Tom. But where did an ex-con get the money to buy expensive Italian leather shoes? I checked the sole to see if any foreign objects protruded, then started unlacing the shoe. “If you insist,” I said. “But this may hurt.”

He squealed like a frightened pig, a good analogy, but his shoe came off fine. Except for the puncture in the sole and the puddle of blood inside, it was almost as good as new.

I couldn’t say the same for him. I hadn’t seen Tom in over nine years, but he looked as if he’d aged twenty. I guess prison was hard on a body, even the so-called country-club prisons where white-collar criminals ended up.

I propped his foot up higher than his heart, cut off his sock and began the process of cleaning the wound. “How did you do this?”

He grimaced as I probed the wound. “Stepped on a nail. A big nail. Ow! Take it easy.”

“What are you doing in New Orleans anyway?” I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Would you believe, looking for you?”

“No.” I stared him straight in the eye. “I wouldn’t.”

He shrugged, then laughed. “Okay, okay. I came here to work at the casino. But I was going to look you up. That’s not a lie. Just my luck I arrive a week before damned Katrina.”

“Why would you look me up, Tom? To talk about the good old days?” I tossed his bloody sock into a trash bin. “As far as I’m concerned, you and I didn’t have any good old days.”

“That’s not true. That’s not true! We were in love once. You gotta remember that.”

I remembered. He’d been charming and funny and attentive, the kind of man I’d never dreamed I could have. A guy who drove a BMW, dressed like a movie star and had a great job and a great future. “I’m afraid that love died when I finally saw the real you. Look, Tom. Let’s not rehash all that. You’re hurt, I’m a nurse. Let me do my job so you can get back to your life while I get on with mine.”

“What life?” he asked. “There’s no job for me in New Orleans anymore. Katrina flushed that down the toilet. And I bet you’re not getting paid to work here. Are you?”

“It’s called volunteerism. Helping people because you can, not because you’re getting paid to do it.”

He smiled. “The same old Janie. A do-gooder to the end.”

That’s when Ben walked in. “Everything okay in here?” He gave me a look that said Tess had told him who Tom was.

“It’s a puncture wound. Pretty deep. I’ve irrigated it, and still need to check for foreign objects.”

Ben shone a light into the wound. “Looks pretty clean. You had a tetanus shot in the last five years?”

Tom shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“Okay. Give him the shot and finish cleaning him up. It doesn’t look like you’ll need more than two or three sutures. Okay?” he said to me.

“Fine. No problem.”

To Tom he said, “Stay off that foot. Keep it clean and elevated. If you stay in New Orleans, come back in ten days and we’ll remove the sutures. Otherwise find a clinic or doctor who can do it for you.”

Tom watched Ben leave, then turned to me as I laid out instruments on a tray. “Who’s he? Your boyfriend?”

I shot him a sidelong look. “Don’t I wish. But no, he’s just a first-rate doctor working miracles under really primitive conditions.”

“Yeah. Well, you always were a damned good nurse. But I’d heard you quit nursing.”

How would he know that? “I branched out for a while,” I said, carefully picking my words. “But after the storm I got drafted to work here.”

“Good thing for me. So, where are you staying?”

“With the rest of the nurses,” I lied. I knew Tom Kinkaid. He’d try to wheedle his way into my apartment if he knew it was still intact.

“I was at the Convention Center. My short stay in hell. Man, that was insane. It made prison seem like a holiday. Now I’m crashing in the back room of a bar on Decatur Street where one of my buddies—”

“This is going to sting,” I interrupted him.

“Damn!” he yelped when I gave him a shot to deaden the area.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes to suture you,” I said. Then I left.

“Your ex,” Tess said when she saw me. “What are the chances of that happening?”

“I know. But I’m kind of glad,” I added. “I’ve hated him for such a long time. But now…” I shook my head. “Now he’s just this slick, fast-talking guy I used to know. Like he’s from another time, another life.”

She grinned and nudged me with her elbow. “I believe it’s called closure.”

Closure. One of those feel-good, Dr. Phil words that I usually rolled my eyes at. But not this time. This time Tess was right. Seeing Tom, seeing how he’d aged, how pathetic he was, somehow drained away all the resentments I’d held against him. I didn’t hate him anymore. All I felt was a sort of pity, and a weird kind of sadness—mainly for myself—that I’d wasted six long years on him. The best years of my life, as they say.

Admittedly, it had all been downhill since then.

But I wasn’t going to dwell on that. One day at a time…

I guess the closure thing worked because twenty minutes later when I sent him on his way, I actually felt better, as if I’d lost this heavy weight I hadn’t even known I was lugging around.

“I’ll see you around, Jane,” he said as he limped away with his injured foot wrapped in a plastic bag—we had to improvise any way we could—and carrying his fine leather shoe in one hand. “I’m going to split for Atlanta, I think. But I’ll be back some day. No hard feelings, I hope.”

I actually managed a smile. “No hard feelings.”

I felt really good after that. Around noon, Sarah came by with Red Cross lunches for everyone and we ate in shifts. When Ben sought me out and sat beside me in a patch of shade, I felt even better.

“I’m fine,” I said before he could ask. “We were divorced years ago. And you know what? I’m glad I saw him. I’m not even angry with him anymore.”





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