Rexanne Becnel - Blink Of An Eye

“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.