by Tim Downs
“I’m here to see Dr. Benedetti,” she announced to a work-study student serving as receptionist du jour. She handed the student her business card, an impressive-looking piece of vellum with raised lettering; the student rubbed his thumb over the letters as if they were braille.
A minute later a door opened, and an attractive young woman stepped out; she was holding the business card.
“Nice card,” she said. “Mine has a Coleoptera on it.”
Beth paused. “Dr. Benedetti?”
“That’s right. Nick told me you’d be stopping by.”
The woman looked to be about the same age as Beth, but she wore no makeup—which meant that she was probably five years younger. She was dressed plainly, in an LSU T-shirt and jeans, and she wore an open denim button-up with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Beth suddenly felt a bit self-conscious; the woman looked as good as she did, but with half the effort—which was always annoying.
“Nick was right about you,” the woman said.
“Right about what?”
“He said you were pretty.”
Beth blinked. “Did he say anything else?”
“He said you would ask, ‘Did he say anything else?’”
She frowned. “I guess the joke’s on me.”
“If Nick’s around, the joke is always on you. That’s Nick for you.”
“Yes. That’s Nick.”
“Your card says ‘MD’—you’re a doctor?”
“I’m a psychiatrist.”
She let out a snort. “Then you should have a field day with Nick.”
Beth paused. “It sounds like you know him pretty well.”
“You don’t have to know Nick very well to know he needs a shrink. Oops, sorry—hope you don’t mind the term.”
“I’ve heard it before.”
“Did you meet Nick through DMORT?”
“That’s right. How about you?”
“A couple of years ago the museum did a project at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. We were documenting beetle diversity in the park. Nick came over from NC State and helped out.”
“Sounds like a party.”
“A big camping trip is what it was. Ask him about the night my tent collapsed.”
“I’ll be sure to do that. So you’re an entomologist too?”
“I’m a systematist—I identify and classify different species of insects. That’s what the museum does: We’re the principal repository for insects and related arthropods in Louisiana. We’ve got five hundred thousand specimens pinned and mounted here, mostly from around the Gulf Coast. If you can catch it, we can tell you what it is. Speaking of which: Nick said you’ve got something to show me.”
She reached into her purse and took out the glass vial.
Dr. Benedetti held it up to the light.
“Nick thinks they might be caddis flies,” Beth explained.
“He doesn’t need me to tell him that—he’s looking for something else.”
“What?”
“Let’s find out.”
Beth followed Benedetti into a laboratory, where she opened the vial and removed several specimens. She carefully mounted each on a glass slide, then placed the first slide under a microscope and adjusted the focus.
“So how long have you known him?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Who do you think?”
“Oh, Nick—about ten years. We’ve been on several DMORT deployments together.”
“Funny, he never mentioned you. How much do you know about caddis flies?”
“I’m a psychiatrist,” she grumbled. “Four years of medical school plus three more for a psychiatric residency—at Stanford.”
“Well, Doctor, take a look.”
Beth stepped up to the microscope and peered through the eyepiece. She saw what looked like a piece of spaghetti rolled in bread crumbs—only they weren’t bread crumbs. They were tiny bits of wood and sand and other debris.
“What you’re looking at is a kind of protective case,” she said. “The larva itself is inside. The female caddis fly lays her eggs on top of the water in a gelatinous blob; when the eggs hatch they sink to the bottom, and the larvae build these little cases to protect themselves. They also serve as ballast to help weight them down.”
“I don’t understand. Why are these important?”
“That’s what Nick wants to know.” She stepped in front of the microscope again and replaced the slide with a second specimen. “It’s the same thing,” she said. “This case is constructed of the same materials as the first one. That means they must have come from the same area; the question is, which area?”
“Can you determine that?”
“If we’re lucky. The caddis-fly larva spins silk to make itself sticky; then it picks up anything it finds around it to construct its case—so the case is a sort of sampling of whatever occurs naturally in that area.”
She used a probe to begin to pick apart the tiny particles comprising the case. “He’s kind of attractive, isn’t he?”
“Who?”
She glanced up from the microscope.
“Oh. I suppose he is—in a weird sort of way.”
“You could say that about all men. I think it’s his eyes—you have to see them without those glasses.”
Beth thought for a moment; she had known Nick for ten years and had never seen him without his glasses. He was practically blind without them—his medical reports confirmed that. Beth wanted to ask, “How did you manage to see him without his glasses?” but she didn’t—she didn’t particularly care to hear the answer.
“This is cypress wood,” Benedetti said. “There are slivers of it on each of the larvae.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nick said he collected these cases in the city—in the Lower Ninth Ward. That’s a densely populated area; I doubt you’d find a lot of cypress trees there.”
“Where would you find them?”
“New Orleans is surrounded by cypress swamps. I’d say these cases probably came from there.”
“How would they get into the city?”
She looked up. “I’m assuming Nick collected these from a body—I mean, that’s what he does, right?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not free to discuss that.”
“Whatever. All Nick told me is that he collected these cases from an ‘object’ floating in ten feet of water in the Lower Ninth Ward. You can tell Nick that he may have found this ‘object’ there, but it didn’t originate there.”
“How do you know?”
“I see some sand particles, but they’re the wrong kind; if these cases originated in the city, I should see construction-grade sand—the kind they use for roads and buildings. I see bits of seashell too. And frankly, I don’t think all these larvae would have collected on a single object in ten feet of water. It’s just too deep; the water would have to have been much shallower.”
She studied the specimen again. “Well, what do you know? This may be Nick’s lucky day after all.”
“What is it?”
“If I’m not mistaken, it’s a flake of copper. I can have it tested to make sure.”
“What does that tell us?”
“The land around the city of New Orleans is sinking—the city itself is sinking about a third of an inch every year. That may not sound like a lot, but think about it: In a hundred years, that’s over thirty inches. The reason it’s sinking is because of the levees; for thousands of years the Mississippi used to flood every spring, and when it did it covered the floodplain with silt—that kept the land built up. But when people built the levees to control the flooding, they also caused the land to start sinking. The bayous are constantly rising, and areas that used to be workable land are now underwater—they’ve been taken over by the bayous. As I recall, there used to be a copper mine somewhere south of the city—I’ll have to check with one of our geologists to make sure. If I’m right, we might be able to pin these caddis flies to a very
specific area of cypress swamp.”
“Then the body was moved,” Beth said.
“What body? You mean the ‘object.’”
“Oh. Right.”
“Tell Nick I’ll confirm all this by this afternoon—and tell him he got lucky this time.”
“Nick tends to be lucky.”
“Except in love—but hey,” she said, wiggling her empty ring finger, “who is?”
It was a fifteen-minute drive back to St. Gabriel, following the interstate along the Mississippi. Her mind meandered in and out with the river; she kept thinking about Nick and what he might be up to this time. This time—the phrase brought back to mind a dozen past deployments together and a long string of strange and convoluted involvements. Each time, Nick seemed to get himself into trouble—not because of a flagrant violation of any regulation or law, but because of his dogged determination to finish the job no matter what the cost, and the cost was always high—sometimes higher than anyone wanted to pay.
The cost was high for Nick too. Once he had a goal in sight he became relentless, like a machine with no off switch. He stopped sleeping; he stopped eating; he began to exhibit erratic behaviors that bordered on the truly psychotic. She first became concerned when she heard Nick refer to human beings as “your species.” She wondered if that expression was just a quirky affectation, or whether it was an indication of something deeper—perhaps a fragmentation of his personality due to stress.
He’s attractive, isn’t he? Dr. Benedetti’s words kept buzzing in her face like an annoying gnat. She kept trying to focus on her professional relationship with Nick, but she found it difficult to do. They had never been anything more than colleagues, except for once—their third deployment. She still remembered the day; she remembered preparing her office for his arrival, placing their chairs a little closer together than usual but not admitting to herself why. She remembered sitting across from him, looking into those soft brown eyes floating like chestnuts behind his glasses; and she remembered the exact moment when he began to lean toward her—and then he kissed her, and she was surprised to learn that she was not surprised at all. To this very day, whenever Nick sat across from her or stood a little too close, she found herself tensing slightly—anticipating the moment when he might lean toward her again. Every time she felt that way her face grew hot and she hoped he would never notice—but not much got past Nick.
Their relationship lasted only a few days, and then Nick suddenly changed; he never mentioned their relationship again—as though it never happened. It left her feeling confused and frustrated. Most of the time, she wished it had never happened; sometimes she wished it would happen again. Now it was the elephant in the room, the thing from the past that was never really over, the words left unspoken between them that at times they could almost hear.
“It’s his eyes,” Benedetti had said. “You have to see them without those glasses.” The words made her angry, and that made her angrier still. Just when she thought she was back in control again, something like this happened—and she felt like a stupid schoolgirl about to lose her seat on the bus. You can have him, she thought. I’m done with bugs.
Why had she ever let herself get involved with a patient? She told herself that they were only colleagues—that’s what made it all right. But as a psychiatrist she should have known better. She had interviewed him for hours; she knew about his drivenness, and his authority issues, and his sense of alienation from the whole human race—but she let her heart go anyway. She should have known better, but at least she knew better now—or did she? Then what was she doing in Baton Rouge? Knowing Nick’s past—knowing their past—why in the world would she even consider helping him now? She didn’t have an answer—at least not one she was willing to admit.
At the DPMU she pulled up to the gate and flashed her credentials at the guard, who waved her past. She headed directly for her office and checked her phone messages; she found one from the Department of Social Services in Baton Rouge.
She dialed the number.
21
“I don’t smell anything,” the nurse said. “Stop complaining—you’d think you’re the only patient in the hospital.”
“You can’t smell it from over there. Come over here, by the window.”
The nurse walked to the window and drew a deep breath through her nose. “I don’t smell anything,” she said again.
But she did.
“I’m telling you, something’s dead—and I want outta here.”
“Just where do you think you’ll go? You know all of Charity’s surrounded by water, right up to the second floor. They said they’ll come for us—now you just stay put.”
“When? When will they come for us?”
“As soon as they can, that’s when. You’ve been asking me that for three days.”
“They’re not coming, are they? That’s what I’m smelling—people are dying.”
She stepped closer to his bed. “You lower your voice now—the other patients will hear you. You know what’s going on here, Mr. LaFourche; the whole city is flooded, and Charity Hospital is just one little part of it. There are five hundred people here at Charity, and a thousand more at Tulane across the street. They said they’ll evacuate all of us, but it takes time.”
“I hear gunshots at night.”
“Did anybody shoot you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Then hold your voice down. We don’t have enough doctors, and we don’t have enough nurses—we’re having to make do. We’re doing all right here; you’ll be fine. I’ll be back to look in on you as soon as I can.”
“Somebody’s not ‘fine,’” he grumbled. “I can smell it.”
The nurse worked her way down the impossibly crowded hallway; the corridors were jammed with beds and supplies that had been evacuated from the second floor. In twenty years she had never seen the hospital in this condition. The hospital’s main power grid had shut down the night of the storm, automatically switching over to emergency generators—but the generators were only enough to maintain emergency lighting and life-support systems, not to power the enormous air-conditioning system. In the afternoons the temperature in the hospital was well over ninety degrees, adding an enormous burden to the weaker patients. Soon the water also overwhelmed the generators, throwing them into complete darkness—and worse, shutting down respirators and infusion pumps. Three patients had already died, and their bodies had to be deposited in a stairwell for later removal.
City officials had promised that they would be evacuated as soon as was humanly possible, but people were losing hope. It was true, what she told Mr. LaFourche—they were just one building in a whole sea of troubles, and there was no telling when rescuers would get around to them. It was still too dangerous for a full evacuation; just the other day, a nurse had tried to leave the hospital and was held up at gunpoint. No wonder no one was coming to help; in the city of New Orleans, it was just not a good time to get shot.
And even when the streets were safe again, where would Charity fall in the pecking order? Tulane would come first, she was sure of that. They had more people to evacuate—and besides, it was a private hospital. That’s the way it always was; in this world, people who can’t afford to pay just have to wait their turn.
But people were tired of waiting. They were running out of food, water, and medical supplies; infusion pumps were being operated by hand; patients were helping other patients; the scant handful of doctors and nurses were on their last legs; the oppressive heat was sapping them all.
And then there was the smell. With the windows open, when the wind blew the wrong way—
She passed a room and spotted a doctor making a notation on a patient’s chart; she waved him out into the hallway.
“Have you smelled it yet?” she asked.
“Of course I have.”
“I think it’s coming up from below.”
“So do I.”
“Patients are starting to panic—they think other patients
are dying.”
“Tell them it’s coming up from the morgue—the morgue’s in the basement, and the coolers shut down when the power went off.”
“Do you think that could be it?”
“I don’t know—I don’t think so. The smell’s too strong. I thought it might be the bodies in the stairwell at first, but that’s a sealed fire exit—that’s why we put them there. It seems like it’s coming from outside, but I can’t see anything from the windows.”
“I think it might be coming from the second floor,” she said.
“There’s nothing on the second floor—it’s underwater.”
“I’m telling you.”
He had no reply.
“It’s getting worse all the time,” the nurse said. “I can’t keep telling people to ignore it; we’ve got to take a look, and we’ve got to do it before it gets dark.”
“I’ve got better things to do than track down bad smells,” the doctor said. “Tell the patients it’s coming up from the morgue; tell them whatever you want, but I’ve got to get back to work.”
She shook her head as she watched him pick a zigzag path down the hall.
She turned and headed for the stairwell—the unoccupied one. She took the stairs down toward the second floor. At the first landing she stopped and looked; halfway down the stairway, the steps disappeared into brackish black liquid.
She shuddered, then waded down into the water.
She twisted the door handle and pulled; the door moved slowly and heavily, pushing a waist-deep wave of water ahead of it. She waded down the hallway, stopping at each doorway to look in and sniff. She found nothing—until she came to a large, empty laboratory with a shattered window.
She cupped her hand over her mouth and stared.
22
“Both bodies are in an advanced stage of decay,” the doctor said.