Читать книгу No Ordinary Heroes: - Demaree Inglese - Страница 16

About 8 p.m., Gary, Mike, and I went back upstairs to Medical Administration. Paul was already there, standing in the hallway and staring over the dog barricade at the TV in Mike’s office. He was intent on the latest, ever more serious weather bulletin.

“Do you guys want to play cards?” Mike reached over the piled boxes to scratch his bearded collie behind the ears.

“I’m ready.” I grabbed a chair from my office and pulled it into the hall.

“Just so you know,” Paul said, “I brought some packages of turkey and cheese up from downstairs. They’re in the fridge in the file room.”

“Good thinking.” The kitchen had left trays of sandwich supplies in the hall downstairs for late diners.

Gary carried an unopened carton of copy paper out of the secretary’s office and dropped it to use as a table. We pulled our chairs around the box, and I shuffled the cards.

“Has anyone gotten a call out on their cell phone?” Mike asked. “I’ve been trying for an hour, but either the circuits are busy or”—he mimicked the computerized message voice—“‘Your call cannot be completed at this time.’”

Everyone from New Orleans—in the city, on the highway, and beyond—was probably trying to contact loved ones.

“We might not have any cell phone service before long,” Gary said. “Transmission towers were knocked out all over Florida in the hurricanes last year.”

I had called my parents on my office phone before going down to dinner. They were relieved to hear from me, but not reassured. After watching cable news coverage for days, they were sure New Orleans faced total destruction. I didn’t want to add to their stress and downplayed my own concerns—with the caveat that phone calls might not be possible after the hurricane—at least for a few days till essential services were restored.

“Use the jail phone,” Gary said. “I couldn’t reach any Louisiana numbers, but out-of-state area codes go through.”

“Anyone hungry?” Brady walked in holding the handles of a steaming pot. He had a hot plate in medical supply a few floors above us. “This is the best jambalaya in town.”

“I just ate,” I said quickly. His shrimp, sausage, and rice casserole was a staple in Louisiana, but it didn’t appeal to my palate. I was a firm believer that vegetables, meat, and rice should be separated in distinct piles and not mixed together. Besides, Brady’s Cajun cooking always had a kick.

“Hurry up and eat, Brady,” I said. “Paul doesn’t want to play, so you’re our fourth for canasta.”

“I can eat and play cards at the same time.” Brady set the pot down on a counter in the hall. “Help yourselves whenever you’re ready.”

Playing canasta relaxed me. My grandmother had taught my whole family to play, and the connection to her took the edge off my anxiety. The game also distracted us from Katrina—which was coming ten miles closer every hour—and worries about how it would affect the jail and its inmates.

Forty minutes later, Paul burst from his office. “The radios don’t work.”

Brady put his cards down. “The yellow ones I just took to the clinics?”

Paul nodded. “I called Templeman 3, and I couldn’t raise them. Then I tried Detention and couldn’t get them, either. I couldn’t reach anyone outside of this building.”

“So they work here?” I asked.

“Yeah. Talking to nurses here won’t be a problem, but staying in contact with the other clinics probably will be.” Without another word Paul turned and went back into his office. A minute later, he came out carrying two metal trashcans and strode down the hall to the sink.

“The wardens have police radios,” Mike said. “We can get an urgent message in or out if we have to.”

I dealt another hand, trying to block out Paul’s increasingly loud commotion.

He furiously scrubbed the trashcans. We ignored the thuds, scraping sounds, and metallic clanks until he lined the containers with trash bags and started filling one with water from the sink.

“What the hell is he doing?” Brady asked.

If Paul heard, he didn’t let on. He filled one can, then started on the second.

“What’re you doing?” Brady repeated.

“Storing water in case we need it,” Paul answered.

Mike’s eyes widened. “I’m not drinking water from a garbage can.”

“You’d rather die of thirst?” Paul looked at Mike expectantly. “These cans are clean. Besides, the water isn’t even touching them. It’s in the bags.”

Mike folded his arms. “Don’t care.”

“When your dogs need water, you’ll be glad we have it.” Paul wasn’t put off by Mike’s stubborn stance. “And when we lose water, we can use it to flush the toilets.”

“I’m more worried about losing power,” Brady said. “No power means no elevators and no air-conditioning.”

The air-conditioning system on the second floor barely kept the humidity and temperature tolerable, but it helped. The thought of losing it in a Louisiana August wasn’t pleasant. Something else occurred to me. The doors to hundreds of inmates’ cells were also powered by electricity. What would happen if they couldn’t be opened…or shut? How would the prisoners react to being trapped? Or what if they got loose? A hint of anxiety made me hungry again.

“Think I’ll make another turkey sandwich.” I stood up.

Mike squinted at me with a critical eye. “Don’t you think you’re fat enough?”

“Not for a hurricane.” I was beginning to reach back to what I had learned in air force survival training. At a solid 180 pounds, I was fit and athletic, but I didn’t want my muscle mass to be lost to starvation rations. If things got as bad as they were predicting, we might end up without food for days. I was going to build up my body’s reserves, just in case.

“Let’s take the dogs out,” Brady said to Mike. “I’m startin’ to go a little stir-crazy.”

Apprehension, even with good reason, wasn’t programmed into Brady’s bayou mind-set. He was energetic, enthusiastic, and ready for anything—sometimes to the point of recklessness. Walking Moby and Georgie probably eased his tension. Gary and I decided to go with them.

When Mike opened the Medical Administration door, he paused before going through. “Oh, my God.”

I looked out and gasped, too. In the last hour the crowd had not only doubled but had also dug in, like misplaced people in a refugee camp. Civilians now sprawled on prison mattresses all over the foyer floor. Islands of pale green plastic demarcated the territory each family had staked out. Somehow, we managed to navigate the packed floor to the security door without stepping on anyone.

Down in the lobby, more people jammed in, watching Katrina’s opening salvo. The windows and doors had not been boarded up yet. Streetlights and lights from the DA’s office across the way illuminated the parking lot and road, and the pine trees along the street bent in heavy gusts of wind. Although the porch overhang afforded some protection from the storm, most of the onlookers stayed inside.

Mike and Brady took the dogs around to the back porch, where the building provided better protection from the driving wind and rain. I wasn’t ready to let the storm get the best of me just yet, and when Gary couldn’t dissuade me from getting a better view, he joined me out front.

The wind battered two tall trees near the front steps. A large branch broke and fell off as we watched. The rain blurred the outline of the Old Prison behind the police mechanic shop to the right, creating a ghostly aura around the structure. Small houses in the other direction looked gray and forlorn.

As we turned to go back inside, Captain Verret walked out. “Do you need anything for Medical?” he asked.

“An airlift to Chicago,” I joked. I told him again that Gary, Mike, and I would be in the Correctional Center to respond to any medical problems that might arise. So far the only glitch was the limited range of the yellow radios.

When another blast of wind rocked Gary back a step and pelted us with rain, we went in. Verret held the door open for some deputies who carried sheets of plywood out of the lobby.

Mike, Brady, and the dogs passed us on their way back upstairs. With the hurricane’s landfall still hours away, they wanted to get as much rest as possible. Gary and I should have taken the hint, but even on less than four hours’ sleep, I couldn’t resist one more look at Katrina’s first attack.

A large group of spectators had gathered on the back porch. The storm was growing steadily in strength, and gusts whipped streams of leaves around the corners of the building. The young oaks lining the street swayed, and the heavy rain began to flood the small courtyard between the onlookers and the kitchen.

Gary and I watched the storm unfold for nearly an hour. When a burst of wind tore a glass-and-metal light fixture off the porch overhang, showering glass on the spectators, we decided to turn in. Even if Katrina surprised us—as Ivan did, with less than an inch of rain—we’d still have a busy day tomorrow.

When we walked back through the lobby, the anxiety I had suppressed all night surfaced. A disturbing sense of claustrophobia set in as Verret and his deputies secured the last sheet of plywood over the front windows, shutting off the outside view. I felt as closed in as the 800 inmates locked upstairs. Now we’re all prisoners of the storm.