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  “There is one more thing I want to cover tonight. I’d save it for tomorrow, but I think it’s that important. If you’ve been with us before, you know this kind of work can take a lot out of you. The hours are long, nobody gets enough sleep, and then—well, there’s the nature of the work itself. That’s why DMORT always includes mental health professionals on every deployment, and this time is no exception.”

  “Uh-oh,” Jerry said. “I smell trouble.”

  “Some experts are predicting that Hurricane Katrina will be the worst natural disaster in our nation’s history. If they’re right, we’ll be working longer hours and we’ll be under more stress than ever before—and we need to make sure that we’re dealing with that stress in a healthy way. To make sure we do, we’re fortunate to have here with us Dr. Elizabeth Woodbridge.”

  “I knew it,” Jerry said.

  Nick let out a groan.

  “Dr. Woodbridge is a distinguished psychiatrist in private practice in the San Francisco area. She is a longtime member of DMORT Region IX, and she’s been with us on several prior DMORT deployments. Since Dr. Woodbridge will be serving such an important role here in St. Gabriel, I’ve asked her if she would close our briefing with a few introductory comments. Dr. Woodbridge?”

  The woman who stood up looked strangely out of place. She was unusually pretty—not that the other women present weren’t attractive, but the physical demands of DMORT required a what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach: Pull your hair back in a ponytail, scrub your face, and forget the makeup. But this woman looked as if she had just stepped out of a corporate office—which she probably had, just a few hours ago on the West Coast. Her hair was blonde and shoulder-length, cut in a trendy style, with a long straight wisp that crossed her forehead from left to right, causing her to forever brush it back. Her skin was fair and smooth and her eyes were unexpectedly dark and almond-shaped. Her face was beautiful but her eyes were piercing, like thorns on the stem of a rose. It was a quality that Nick found especially annoying—among others.

  “I still say she’s the hottest babe in DMORT,” Jerry said.

  “Good evening and welcome,” Dr. Woodbridge began. “Or should I say, ‘Welcome back.’ I see a lot of familiar faces out there.” As she said this, her eyes scanned the audience; when she came to Nick, she hesitated for a split second.

  Jerry leaned over to Nick. “I saw that.”

  “Shut up,” Nick said.

  “As Denny told you, this deployment could pose unique challenges for all of us—including challenges of a psychological nature. Traumatic stress, sleep deprivation, insomnia, nightmares—these are things we’re all susceptible to. My job, to put it simply, is to help you avoid these things—or to help you through them if necessary. If you’ll allow me to be a bit pedantic for a moment, I’d like to read to you from the DMORT Field Operations Guide.”

  Jerry leaned in again. “What does ‘pedantic’ mean?”

  “It means you went to a community college. Shut up.”

  “‘Description of Duties of the DMORT Mental Health Officer,’” she read. “‘(1) Monitors incident stress levels of all personnel and implements stress reduction measures as necessary. (2) Identifies appropriate assessments, interventions, prevention techniques, and counseling for early identification of personnel at risk of mental health and related problems.’ That pretty much says it all: My job is to help each of you assess your individual stress level and keep it at a manageable level.”

  “I came here for the stress,” Nick said. “Why can’t she mind her own business?”

  “Now, how will this happen? First of all, there are things you can do to help. I’m reading again from the Field Operations Guide: ‘Be responsible for your well-being and keep in touch with your family. It is important that you monitor and maintain yourself in areas such as: stress levels, medical fitness, physical fitness, proper hydration, proper foods, and regular bowel movements.’”

  “Freudians,” Nick said. “She’s been here for five minutes, and she’s already talking about bowel movements.”

  “Those are things that you can do,” she said. “What I can do is listen. As in all past DMORT deployments, each team member will be required to undergo an exit interview when his or her rotation is completed. But here in St. Gabriel, due to the extreme pressures we may all be forced to work under, I’ll also be conducting informal interviews along the way just to keep an eye out for unhealthy coping mechanisms. So if I ask you, ‘How are you doing?’ please don’t brush me off—because I really do care and I really want to know. Thank you.”

  She concluded to scattered applause. At this point the meeting broke up and people began to slowly rise and mingle. Nick just sat there, slumped down in his chair.

  “Terrific,” he grumbled. “A perfectly good disaster ruined.”

  5

  “Talk to you later,” Nick said to Jerry. “I need to grab Denny before he gets away.”

  “Go easy on him,” Jerry said. “He’s got a big job this time.”

  Denny spotted Nick charging toward him, and he held up one hand as if to repel the advance. “Now, take it easy, Nick. I know you’re upset about this, but the decision has already been made.”

  “What fool made that decision?”

  “You know how the system works: DMORT is part of the National Disaster Medical System; NDMS is part of FEMA; FEMA is part of Homeland Security; and DHS is part of the president’s cabinet. So who made the decision? I don’t know—somebody a lot higher up than me. Don’t shoot the messenger, okay?”

  “If I did, they’d never recover your body.”

  “C’mon, Nick. Living people are sort of the priority, you know?”

  “No, they’re just one of the priorities. Look, I know we need to rescue the living—I’m okay with that—but we owe something to the dead too.”

  “Nick, let me fill you in on something: In case you haven’t noticed, this whole setup is a logistical nightmare. Everybody knows it’s going to be bad tomorrow, and everybody’s ready to help—the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the Department of Transportation—and those are just a few of the government agencies. We’ve got a hundred parties in the private sector waiting to pitch in too. And every agency’s got some grand contingency plan they worked out years ago, but nobody counted on anything quite like this. The problem is, nobody knows exactly who’s in charge.”

  “It should be FEMA,” Nick said.

  “It should be, yeah. And FEMA used to be a cabinet-level position, remember? That was before 9/11. They had the president’s ear back then; they had clear lines of authority. But after 9/11 they lost their cabinet seat, remember? They got shelved under Homeland Security, and now it isn’t clear who’s making the decisions. It’s tough to know where the orders are coming from, and it’s even harder to know who to complain to when the orders don’t make sense.”

  “Then you don’t think it makes sense either.”

  Denny paused. “I think I’m not the boss,” he said, “and neither are you. But since you asked me, I agree with them—I think all available resources should be focused on rescuing the living first. Think about it: If we wait to recover the bodies, then what you said is true: We might lose a lot of forensic evidence—we might even lose the ability to identify some of them. But if we wait to rescue the living, we’ll just have more bodies to deal with later. C’mon, Nick, I know you like bugs more than people, but after all—we’re here to serve the living.”

  “I’m here to serve the living,” Nick said, “but there are different ways to do it. One of them is by taking care of the dead.”

  “And we will—as soon as the rescue operations are finished.”

  “I just don’t see why we can’t do both. Surely they could spare a few of us.”

  Denny paused again, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t think the decision was purely logistical. When all this is over, I think the people in charge want to be able to say that they used every possible resource to rescue everyone the
y could. I think there was an emotional element involved.”

  “That’s a political element, if you ask me.”

  “Call it what you want; that’s the way it is. This is a rescue-and-recovery effort, Nick. Got that? Rescue and recovery—but rescue comes first. As of tomorrow, all willing and able DMORT personnel are to assist in rescue efforts in New Orleans.”

  “I wasn’t trained for search and rescue,” Nick grumbled.

  “C’mon, I’ve seen you recover bodies from every imaginable location—trees, cliffs, power lines, caves. Search and rescue can’t be any harder than that. The only difference is that the body walks away later.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “You don’t have to take part, you know; it’s up to you. I’m sure we could find something for you to do around here instead.”

  Nick glared at him. “You jerk—you know I’ll be there.”

  Denny grinned. “Yeah, I know. You’d rather die than miss the action.” He started to turn away, then stopped. “One more thing,” he said. “We’re a team, okay? We’ve been together a few times now. I really need you to be a team player this time.”

  Nick shrugged. “I’m a team player.”

  “Yeah, but there are different kinds of teams. There are ball teams, where everybody has to work together like a well-oiled machine; then there are cross-country teams, where it’s every man for himself. I need you to play ball this time. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  “You want me to play on the Region IV softball team.”

  Denny smiled—but only a little. “Just think it over.”

  He turned and left.

  “Hello, Nick.”

  Nick turned to find Dr. Woodbridge standing behind him. Her arms hung down with her hands folded in front of her at the waist, with her two index fingers pressed together at the tips and pointing at the floor. She stood with one foot slightly in front of the other, like a spokesperson about to demonstrate a new product. She was smiling, and the moment Nick made eye contact her eyes locked onto his.

  “Beth,” Nick said.

  “How are you doing, Nick?”

  “Fine. If you’ll excuse me, I was just about to—”

  “You weren’t listening, were you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My introductory comments. You weren’t listening.”

  “Sure I was. Bowel movements—got it.”

  “I said if I ask you, ‘How are you doing?’ please don’t brush me off. So—how are you doing?”

  “Oh, right, I remember now. Well, let’s see: After careful consideration, I would say that I’m—fine.”

  She reached into her blazer pocket and removed a folded slip of paper. She opened it and held it up to Nick. On it was written a single word: FINE.

  “That’s amazing,” Nick said. “You’re like that Criss Angel guy. Can you do the levitation? I really like that one.”

  “I wrote it down before I came over here,” Dr. Woodbridge said. “It was my prediction of what you would say when I asked you how you are.”

  “You’ve really got me pegged,” Nick said, “along with about 90 percent of the other men on the planet. Maybe I should try that; maybe I should write down a word for you.”

  “And what would that word be, Nick?”

  A few colorful possibilities crossed Nick’s mind, but he thought it best to keep them to himself. He tried to maintain eye contact with her as he spoke—not because he wanted to, but because he thought she might use it as some kind of test for elusiveness or guilt. He found it almost impossible to do so; her gaze was so intense that every time he made solid contact it was like touching an electric fence. It was her most annoying habit—a skill she had probably honed through years of private therapy with evasive neurotics. She didn’t look at him, she looked through him; it was as if she were an ophthalmologist peering through his pupils at his retinas, searching for some capillary that was about to explode. Maybe it was supposed to communicate interest or compassion, but to Nick it just seemed—annoying. That was the word that kept coming to mind; that was the one he should carry around in his jacket pocket. Then she would ask, “How are you, Nick?” and he could just flash his little piece of paper: ANNOYING.

  He started to look away, but her eyes darted ahead of his like a cutting horse herding a straying heifer back into the herd. That was another annoying habit; she demanded eye contact in return. During past mental health debriefings, Nick had sometimes felt like his head was a volleyball being smacked back and forth into the center of the court. He found it exhausting and it gave him a headache. What kind of mental health is that? he wondered. I can get headaches on my own.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing the last part of your conversation with Denny,” she said.

  “‘Couldn’t help overhearing.’ That’s an interesting choice of words. How about, ‘Did my best to listen in.’”

  “If you wish. You do know what he was referring to, don’t you?”

  “Is that a question or a statement?”

  “Is that an answer or an evasion?”

  Annoying. “Look, are we having an interview already? I just got here an hour ago; how much stress can I be under?”

  Beth smiled. “No, this is not an interview. I just wanted a chance to say hello before things got busy. It’s been a long time. I’ve thought about you.”

  Nick looked at her—as if he had a choice. She was wrong; Nick had been listening closely when she had made her opening comments. He had heard every word she said; he had heard her when she said, “I really do care,” and he knew that she really did. It was the way she cared that bothered him. He couldn’t help but feel that he was some sort of case study to her: the Bug Man—the weirdest guy in DMORT—someone who might be the subject of an award-winning article in the Journal of Personality Disorders.

  “I’ve thought about you too,” Nick replied.

  “How ambiguous.”

  “Isn’t it? I hear women love a man of mystery.”

  She seemed to care about Nick the same way that Nick cared about his giant hissing cockroach from Madagascar—something that fascinates you, not something you form a genuine attachment to. At every DMORT deployment they had shared, Nick seemed to become an object of special interest to her. He didn’t mind her attention—what man would? He just didn’t like the X-ray burns that came with it. He could never decide whether she was a woman trying to change him or a therapist trying to take him apart. Maybe it was just his male vanity, or maybe he was just an unwilling specimen trying to wriggle off the microscope slide; either way, it was just one more thing about her that he found irritating.

  “I want you to know that I plan to check up on you on a regular basis,” she said.

  “What makes me so lucky?”

  “I think you’re going to be working under a lot of pressure.”

  “No more than anyone else.”

  She paused. “Within and without—remember?”

  Nick remembered. “Within and without” was a phrase she had coined—one of those cute clinical clichés that therapists love to drum up and tuck away for future book titles. “Within and without” was her way of saying that a man’s response to stress is determined by two things: the extent of the external pressure, and the nature of his own internal wiring. With Nick, her emphasis had always been on within.

  “Has the book come out yet?” he asked. “I sure hope I’m on the cover.”

  “Do you deflect everything with humor?”

  “No, sometimes I just walk away. Shall I demonstrate?”

  “Nick, you can’t get rid of me that easily.”

  “How many women have told me that? But I’m still single.”

  “I think that’s the way you want it.”

  “I’m just looking for the right woman—but the wrong women keep blocking my view.”

  “Nick, I’m just trying to do my job.”

  “And I’m just trying to do mine—so let me.”

&
nbsp; “I’ll be glad to—as long as you do your job in a healthy way.”

  “A healthy way? What’s healthy about any of this? Do you know what DMORT members do, Beth? We volunteer our spare time to collect human remains at mass-casualty sites—does that sound healthy to you? We do it so that some grieving widow can gain a sense of closure by burying a bone fragment from her husband’s ring finger—is that healthy? Nobody around here is healthy, Beth. We’re all a little crazy in our own way.”

  “I never said you were crazy.”

  “No, that would be bad clinical technique—but that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Would you like to know what I’m really thinking, Nick?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. Look, I’m not crazy, I’m special—my mother told me so. The whole world is crazy, and it takes a lot of special people to keep it running smoothly—that’s just the way it is. I like myself the way I am, okay? And if I work a little harder than most people or stay up a little longer, well, that’s just dedication to my work.”

  “You’re sure that’s all it is?”

  “Trust me, I’m a specimen of good mental health—and if I do decide to go postal, I promise not to do it on your watch.”

  She just eyed him for a moment, considering; then she turned and walked over to a briefcase lying open on a folding chair. She returned and handed Nick a document in a clear plastic cover.

  “Do you remember our last deployment?” she asked.

  How could he forget? This was their sixth deployment together, and each one seemed to end a little worse than the one before. Dr. Woodbridge first joined the ranks of DMORT in 1999, at the site of the Egypt Air disaster near Nantucket Island in Massachusetts. Nick didn’t trust her from the start; she seemed to show a little too much interest in the mental motivations and inner drives behind these strange people who willingly gave up their spare time to collect the dead. When she was finally introduced to Nick, the one his colleagues mysteriously referred to as the Bug Man, it was as if her entire focus shifted to him—as though she had found the Prince of Darkness himself, someone twisted enough to supply a lifetime of fascinating study and analysis. Nick resented the extra attention; there was nothing wrong with being fascinated by insects —or by their forensic application. More than 90 percent of all animal species on earth are insects, and Nick could never understand how some people seemed to find nine-tenths of the world disgusting or scary. They’re the ones who need a psychiatrist, he thought.