or my stupidity. Friends, bosses, lovers. One husband. Patients.
The only clear concept I remember from the time I’d been in rehab was that you had to take responsibility for your own actions. That you could never get sober if you didn’t acknowledge your own shortcomings.
Not that I’m an alcoholic, mind you. I’ve had my moments of overindulgence—like now—but I’d never lost a job because of alcohol.
No, my spectacular fall from grace seven years ago hadn’t been due to drinking, but to drugs. I’d had a brief but intense and incredibly self-indulgent go-round with prescription drugs. Unfortunately what I lost then was more than merely the nursing job that I loved. It was my profession. My calling. Nurses who are incompetent or dishonest due to substance abuse have a hard time getting a second chance in the field.
So there was that regret, too. I’d lost a great career, and though I usually blame my ex’s conviction for insurance fraud, the truth was that I had decided to drink during his trial, and I had decided to drink even more when we lost the house. Then when he went off to prison, I had decided to try out some of the pain-killing, brain-deadening drugs I so often administered to my patients on the job.
I’m not a junkie, though, and I’m not an alcoholic, either. If I was, I’d still be using drugs and I sure wouldn’t be the oh-so-desirable employee that Robbie was desperate to have back on the job. No, I’d be in the gutter somewhere, or back in rehab. Or dead.
But my choices of the past were neither here nor there. Alcoholic or not, I would be dead by Monday, so it was a moot point.
One last regret was that I couldn’t leave a note. Not that there was anyone to leave it to. Clark wouldn’t notice that I was even gone. My boss had fired me, and I really didn’t have anything to say to Hank.
Sad, wasn’t it? And it only deepened my depression—and my resolve. No one would miss me. No one would care that I was gone—except maybe my landlord. I had no one at all to leave a goodbye note to.
By late Saturday afternoon I was bored stiff. I sat outside on the front stoop of my four-plex and watched as my neighbors came and went.
“You not staying?” my downstairs neighbor Carlotta exclaimed.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Girl, are you crazy? They saying this one could come over the levees.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing I have a second-floor apartment.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m going to my auntie’s in Baton Rouge. After the storm, though, I’m gonna call you, okay? Just to see how the old place held up. You need any supplies? I’m going to Robert’s on St. Claude.”
“Thanks, but I have everything I need.”
She shook her head. “Okay then. You know where I hide my key, so take anything you need from the kitchen. And one more thing. At least move your car to higher ground, up by the river.”
“Good idea,” I said. Exactly what I didn’t want: higher ground. But later that evening as she drove off, along with several other neighbors trying to avoid the crush of traffic leaving town by driving at night, I thought about the whole water issue. The river levees aren’t the weakest spot for New Orleans during a hurricane. It’s the Lake Pontchartrain levees. That’s where the wind and tides drive the waves to top the levees. So that’s where I should go to drown.
Or maybe somewhere in St. Bernard or Plaquemines Parish. The levees aren’t as high there, and the tidal surges are a lot stronger.
That’s why I spent Sunday driving around town, picking my spot. There was the Lakefront Airport, outside the levees. But it might be guarded by the Levee Police. Or I could try the mouth of Bayou St. John. Or Little Woods where the camps along the lake were sure to be wiped out, just like in 1998 during Hurricane Georges.
I sat in an empty parking lot on the University of New Orleans campus and studied a map of the city. What about the turning basin in the Industrial Canal? That’s where the lake, the river and the Intercoastal Canal all met. There was sure to be a lot of water action there.
My stomach growled. I was hungry, and there was nothing decent at home to eat. Some crackers, maybe. Some peanut butter and tuna and canned soup. I started up the car and headed out, looking for a convenience store or burger place. Anything that sold food.
But nothing was open. I mean, nothing.
I had to drive past my house all the way into the French Quarter and even then all I found open was a couple of bars. Naturally. So I ordered a drink and ate peanuts until almost midnight. By then the wind was really picking up. But until the power goes out, it’s not really a storm. The weathermen were all predicting a landfall around dawn, with Katrina’s eye hitting New Orleans East around noon. The threat of flooding wouldn’t reach its peak until after the eye passed and the winds started coming out of the north. That meant I had at least twelve hours to wait.
It’s funny, but on the one night I should have just stayed in the bar, drinking until it was time to act, I didn’t feel like drinking. The bartender was being really free with the liquor, and a pair of guys from Ontario kept offering me drinks, too. But I was too keyed up. This was it. My time to go. I was hyper, and yet strangely calm. In countdown mode, I guess.
I didn’t want to go home, though. So I found my car and just cruised around, past the Superdome where knots of people were standing around despite the mayor’s announcement that it would not be a shelter of last resort this time. Uptown was a ghost town. Mid City was the same. I couldn’t get across the Industrial Canal into St. Bernard or New Orleans East. The cops had all four bridges closed, probably because of the high winds. And at the St. Claude Bridge, the Industrial Canal was already high, splashing and sending spray onto the roadway.
I stared at the dark, heaving waters, and the first tremor of fear hit me. Could I do it? I’d rejected shooting myself years ago, mainly because I was petrified of guns. That’s why I’d also ruled out suicide by cop. Sure, I could have pulled out my ex’s old handgun, confronted a cop and let him shoot me. But I didn’t want the poor guy to feel bad about killing someone who’d waved an unloaded weapon at him. Besides, what if he was a lousy shot and I didn’t die?
No, drowning in waters too powerful for me to resist was the surest way to do it. Once I jumped in, there’d be no turning back. And anyway, I’d heard that drowning was a relatively peaceful way to go. One big gulp of water would fill my lungs, and that would be it. My lonely loser of a life would be finished, but Clark would be protected. No matter how you looked at it, it was a win-win situation.
I guess I could have jumped in right then, but if someone saw my body too soon, the insurance company might suspect suicide. I had to wait. I decided the lake was my best shot, so around three in the morning I headed back toward the lake-front. By then the wind was really whipping. The trees were swaying and some of the branches had begun to go, littering the streets. The electricity was going, too, neighborhood by neighborhood. I picked my way down Elysian Fields Avenue, weaving through the fallen live-oak branches.
One fell on my car, hitting with a thunk that nearly made me wreck.
“Hell’s bells,” I muttered, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles hurt. I should have headed to the lakefront hours ago. What if I couldn’t make it? The rain was coming down in erratic sheets, blowing mostly out of the east. But it swirled around, too, like miniature tornadoes. No way I could walk in this.
