The Moon is Missing: a novel

by Jenni Ogden

  Stork ordered everyone to change their shorts for long pants, a cunning plan designed to protect legs from some of the filth and oil and sharp objects we were about to wallow through, and we returned to the exit stairs, the bodies in the corridor barely moving as we passed them. We found the window again and this time padded the glass that was left with towels we found in the bathroom. I went first, then the three kids, with Marcie and Stork last. The water had risen up to my chest, and Jamie was dog paddling to keep his head above water. Stork hoisted him onto his back and we wrapped the rope around them and tied it before roping the rest of us together in a long chain; Isabelle, Marcie, Lara and I. I almost wished I’d remembered my camera.

  Stork began to push through the water. He was the only one who had a hope of finding the way back to Memorial. Every step had to be negotiated; the road or whatever we were walking over was an obstacle course. We all tripped again and again, and if we didn’t find our feet quickly, struggled to keep our heads above water before we swallowed any of the disgusting sludge. We stopped and shuffled about so that Marcie and Isabelle could wade side by side, holding hands, with Lara and I doing the same behind them. Luckily we’d left enough slack in the rope. Our balance was considerably improved as a consequence and it wasn’t so lonely.

  Lara screamed as a body knocked into her, floating face down, the shirt billowing like a sail. A small dog swam past me, its feet paddling furiously, its black beads of eyes terrified under a straggly wet fringe of hair. I pushed my own hair out of my eyes and my hand was covered with a slick of oil. I realized it was everywhere, the upturned cars spewing and leaking into the mix. Toilet paper and shredded clothing and god knows what else were caught on buildings and festooned entire trees that were smashing and swirling through the water along with everything else. If we made it to Memorial without head injuries or drowning, we’d probably die of some gross disease. Boats sloshed past, uncaring about the wash they were sending over us and the other people floundering around in this sewer. I felt something touch my hand where it gripped Lara’s just above the water. I screamed as I jerked our hands in the air and a black snake writhed its way between us. Lara’s eyes were like saucers as we watched it glide out of sight.

  “Was that a snake?” she said.

  I nodded, my heart still pounding.

  “That’s the first snake I’ve ever seen outside a zoo,” she said. “Finbar will be so jealous.”

  It seemed we’d been gone for days, but it was only two-thirty when we finally dragged ourselves up and onto the loading bay of Memorial, willing hands pulling us to a dry surface and untying our ropes. Stork collapsed in a long heap on the floor, and for a few minutes none of us seemed able to speak. Perhaps we were catching our breaths, perhaps we knew that if we tried to say anything, we’d start wailing and never stop.

  Stork finally sat up, breaking the spell. “Christ, Jamie, you need to go on a diet. You weigh a ton.”

  I looked around. There were spotlights pointed at the loading bay where the water was washing up and back, up and back as boats motored past without even slowing down. I looked down at myself, wrinkling my nose in disgust. We needed to get cleaned up somehow, and feed the kids. And I needed to get back to help with the evacuation of my patients. Time for reflection later.

  Stork shepherded us through the stifling hospital to the McFarland Building next door and by some magic found an empty bedroom with four beds on the fifth floor. We decided that he and Marcie and their two kids should sleep there and Lara and I would stay in his office. He raided one of the hospital linen rooms and found small-sized hospital issue pajamas for Jamie, and green scrubs, complete with theater booties, for the rest of us. Lara and I took ours, and armed with a large bottle of disinfectant, a box of plasters, some soap and a handful of flannels, slogged wearily back through the dark corridors to Stork’s office. We proceeded to cover the floor and benches of the bathroom I’d used before with oil and filth as we stripped off our disgusting jeans, T-shirts and sneakers. At least they’d protected us from the worst of the oil and other unmentionables. There was still water in the buckets, not the best color but bloody good to wash in. “New women,” Lara said, making use of the mirror to admire her fashionable outfit, and we returned to the McFarland Building where our lanky hero offered us dry bread rolls, hard cheese and a blissfully large bottle of orange juice, all scrounged from the fourth floor kitchen.

  I looked over at Lara, sitting on the floor with her back to the wall. Her hand holding her bread roll twitched as her eyes closed and her head dropped on her chest. She was exhausted. I closed my own eyes for a second. Oh, for a nice clean bed and a very long night. I opened them again as Stork lowered his long body down beside me. “When you’ve eaten that, you’re needed in the ICU. Apparently the ancient helipad has been deemed ready to welcome any rescue helicopter brave enough to land. There’s going to be a very long queue for seats.”

  “Are there helicopters coming that can take ICU patients who can’t sit up?”

  “Search me. I bloody well hope so. But when they do come they won’t hang around, so you need to start getting your patients up there now.”

  I hauled myself upright and saluted as Stork stood up too. “Right sir, I’ll be my way.” I looked over at Marcie, sitting with an arm around each of her tired children. “Can Lara stay here for a while? I’ll collect her later or you can dump her on the bed in Stork’s office if she gets too stroppy.”

  “I’ll put her to bed as soon as you go. Don’t worry, she’ll be fine. We’re all fine now,” she said.

  I smiled my thanks and stretched up to kiss Stork on his bristly cheek. “Thank you,” I murmured.

  Chapter 19

  Patrick and Pauline were both working like slaves when I got to the ICU, cooling down patients and getting charts and drugs together for the impending evacuation.

  “Thank goodness you’re OK,” Pauline said, hugging me. “We’ve been so worried.”

  “We’re all fine, but it’s a nightmare out there. The water’s still rising. The sooner we get everyone evacuated to somewhere Katrina hasn’t destroyed, the better.”

  Patrick nodded. “Well, we have some good news. They’ve found an easier way to get stretchers up to the helipad than climbing the stairs to the top of the building. There’s one elevator working that can get patients down to the second floor where there’s a crawl-hole from the boiler room through to the second floor of the parking garage. From there a truck can drive patients up the ramp to the ninth floor, and then they only need to be carried up two flights of stairs to the roof.”

  “Two flights, is that all.” I tried to smile. “Better than carrying them up five flights from here I suppose.”

  “One of us should go and check out the route before we take our first patient. I’ve no idea if the crawl hole will be big enough for a stretcher; if it isn’t we’ll need to come up with another way to get our sickest patients to the helipad.”

  “I’ll go,” I said. “Can you give me rough directions? It should be a doddle after getting from Park Plaza to the hospital without being bitten by a snake.”

  I made my way down the stairs to the Clara Street lobby where there must have been over a hundred people staring out at the rising flood waters. On different levels in the parking building across the street, others leaned over waist-high concrete ramparts, gaping at the flooded city below.

  There was a sudden disturbance in the crowded lobby, and I saw a young woman with a baby in her arms force a path towards the steps. A nurse rushed over and grabbed her arm as she stepped into the filthy, swirling water that drowned the pavement.

  “Stop! You can’t go down there,” she yelled. “It’s far too dangerous.”

  The woman turned and shrugged her off. Her face was white under damp, lank hair and her baby squirmed and whimpered. “Leave me alone. I’m getting out of here. I have to find my husband and my other kids.” Tears flooded the mother’s face.

  “Where are they?” The nurse wa
s still trying to pull her back.

  “They went to the Superdome, but I came here because my baby was sick,” she sobbed. Before the nurse could stop her she stepped waist-deep into the black water and, holding the now screaming baby up high with both hands, walked across what had been the side walk. The crowd let out a gasp as the water rose high on her chest. Holding the child aloft, she pressed forward.

  A hush fell over the crowd as they realized what was happening. A young guy, barely a teenager, pushed his way to the steps and within seconds had reached the young woman’s side. I saw him talk earnestly to her and then she turned around and let him help her back to the hospital steps and up to the lobby floor, now relatively dry. The combined sigh of a hundred people rumbled around the lobby as the nurse and the boy hustled her off with her screaming baby.

  I took in great gulps of the humid air as the enormity of the situation hit home. Trying to orient myself so I could find the boiler room, after two failed attempts I found a security officer who pointed me in the right direction. Some medical staff were already there, grappling with neonatal intensive care units with their tiny incumbents. The cots, piled high with charts and equipment, had to fit through a four-by-four foot hole in the wall. I began to assist, and found myself on the other side of the hole, on the second floor of the Magnolia Parking Building.

  After helping to lift two of the baby units onto the back of a pickup truck, I grabbed the hand one of the men held out to me and levered myself up beside him. Steadying a unit with one hand, with the other I gripped tight the battery bank running the unit’s life-giving equipment, and concentrated on keeping my balance as the truck wound and lurched its way up the ramp to the top of the building. From there we had to carry the neonatal units up some steel stairs to the roof and then through a fifty-foot covered catwalk that sloped up to the helipad. We parked the babies behind a line of others, all waiting for an ambulance helicopter that was especially equipped to take the bulky units. Where to was anyone’s guess. Someone told me they would probably end up in the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Lafayette.

  I squeezed past the nurses and babies and the desperate family members standing with them, and onto the helipad. It was a decrepit looking platform, balanced on steel beams high in the air above a blacktopped, pebbled roof, with a death-defying drop around the sides. Catching my breath, I turned around slowly to take in the 360-degree view of the drowning city. My stomach was churning—whether from the dizzy height or from horror at the scale of the disaster laid out before me, I couldn’t tell. I could see the Superdome, darker patches showing where parts of the roof had been ripped off, the massive building surrounded by water.

  Rumors were rife around the hospital that the situation inside the Superdome was at crisis point, with thousands of frightened people stranded in stifling conditions. Poor, sick, injured, crazy, criminal, the very young and the very old were crowded together with New Orleans families and stranded tourists. With little food, water, or medical aid, and with the situation showing no signs of improving, the refugees’ fear and anger was turning to rage. It was hard to know if rumors of fights, shootings and rapes were true, but in such dehumanizing conditions anything was possible. I shuddered as far below I watched ant-sized human beings push boats, mattresses and anything that would float, through the chest-high toxic waters. One thing was horribly clear; this mess would get a whole lot worse before it got better.

  As I was herded back to the catwalk, a helicopter circled overhead. I saw the words ‘Arcadian Air Ambulance Service’ emblazoned on its flank as it finally made a skillful landing on the helipad. Screwing up my eyes as the blast of wind from the blades filled the humid air with dust, I heard the shout of relief coming from all sides. I grinned at a nurse cheering right next to me. She raised a fist in the air. “At last, praise the Lord. That’s the first chopper that’s landed. Now we can get these babies outta here.”

  Feeling in the way, I returned to the ICU corridor. Then came the long, drawn-out task of shifting each of our critically ill patients to a stretcher, keeping them attached to their battery-powered equipment, and getting them through the obstacle course to the catwalk. There we parked them behind the even sicker patients waiting for a helicopter. Each trip took at least forty-five minutes and sometimes twice that. The heat in the hospital must have been well over one hundred degrees, and it was a relief to reach the catwalk where some of the Plexiglas windows on the sides had been smashed to let in a breeze of relatively cooler, ninety-degree, outside air.

  I’d been checking Savannah regularly throughout the day. My treatment of the old lady’s pulmonary embolism had been successful and her signs were healthier now, but, given her age, she had been triaged for evacuation as soon as the most critical of our ICU patients had gone. She was holding up well and seemed unafraid for her own safety, in spite of being alone and unable to get hold of her son. I’d told Lara in a moment of closeness, when we where scrubbing the oil off our arms, that her great grandmother was in the ICU under my care. She’d looked almost disbelieving for a moment but then her belief in karma came to the fore. “Mum, I must see her. She doesn’t need to know who I am, but I have to meet her. What if she dies and I never get the chance? I can pretend I’m a volunteer nurse aide or something.” I’d been relieved that Lara was asleep when I left her with Marcie, but now I was worried. Savannah might not last until we returned to New Orleans. Surely Lara had a right to meet her?

  I told Patrick I was going to find some food, and check on Lara, and to leave Mrs. Leaumont in the Unit until I returned. We’d take her up to the helipad then. Patrick nodded; we all had our favorites and he knew she was one of mine.

  Thirty minutes later I was back with Lara, looking the part in her green scrubs and bouncing with anticipation. We handed Pauline the bag of dry bread rolls and cheese I’d got from the kitchen, and introduced Lara to the team, saying she wanted to volunteer. No one even raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t the only outlier; many of the patients had one or more family members with them and they were a godsend.

  We found Savannah’s bed, lit by a battery-powered lamp. Her eyelids were closed and I touched her on the shoulder. She smiled when she opened her eyes and saw me. “Hullo doctor,” she said, her voice stronger than it had been earlier.

  “Hi there,” I said. “Are you ready for a helicopter ride? It’s your turn to take the obstacle course to get you there.” I’d described the complicated route to her earlier.

  “I’m ready. I wish I could tell Luke though.”

  “We’ll leave a message at the nurses’ desk for him. Now I want you to meet Lara. She’s going to help me push your stretcher.” I turned to beckon Lara to my side, and she swiped her arm across her eyes and rubbed the tears from her face. My eyes instantly filled and I blinked furiously.

  “Hullo, Mrs. Leaumont,” Lara said, coming and standing close to me. I could feel her shaking. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

  Savannah held her hand out towards Lara and she took it in hers. I stepped back, trying to get myself under control. “Where did you spring from?” Savannah asked. “You’re far too pretty to be stuck in this gloomy place.”

  “I’m, I’m…” She glanced around at me and I stepped forward again.

  “She’s my daughter,” I said.

  “Are you a doctor too? You look far too young.”

  “No, I just wanted to help out.”

  “Well dear, thank you. Your mother has been wonderful to me. I’m not surprised she has such a kind daughter.”

  Patrick loomed out of the dark and into our circle of light. “Time to go, Georgia. It’s nine o’clock, and the word is that the helicopters will stop flying soon to give the pilots some rest.”

  We set off for the hole in the wall, Lara and I taking turns to push the stretcher and wheel the stand with its oxygen supply still connected to the old lady. Using our head torches to light the way, we negotiated our path to the elevator and through the pitch black and increasingly desperate
hospital, chatting to Savannah about Finbar and Adam and our home in London, careful not to let slip our connection with New Zealand. When we reached the catwalk forty minutes later, it was almost clear of waiting patients. Savannah would be one of the last to leave today.

  The ICU’s most critically ill patients had already gone. During the day we’d suffered two deaths that in normal circumstances could probably have been prevented. With the morgue completely submerged and no refrigeration for the bodies, corpses were being held in the chapel. I shuddered to think of the conditions in there if this continued for much longer, especially as the air conditioning had long ago ceased functioning.

  There was no point in bringing any more of our ICU patients up to the helipad at this late hour, so we had a good excuse to wait with Savannah. This was one small thing we could do for Danny. It was only an hour before midnight when we pushed her stretcher over to the tired porters standing ready to lift her into the waiting chopper. The old lady looked up at us when Lara gently touched her hand. She reached up and patted Lara’s hair. “Beautiful,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “My grandson had hair like yours.”

  Lara sniffed. “Did he? What was his name?”

  “Danny. My Danny boy. You have eyes like his as well. I think you’re my lucky charm.” She pulled on Lara’s hand and my daughter bent down and her great grandmother kissed her on her forehead.

  “Goodbye, Savannah,” Lara whispered, and kissed her on her worn cheek.

  A tired-looking porter grabbed the oxygen stand. “We have to get her loaded quickly. The chopper won’t wait around.”

  “Where are they taking her, do you know?” I asked him.

  “Probably to Lafayette. All the hospitals nearer are full, but she might still get in there. She’s a lucky lady. This is the last chopper tonight.”