No Ordinary Heroes:. Demaree Inglese

      “That’s the last patient, Dr. Inglese,” Nurse Audrella Mazant said with her characteristic smile.

      I smiled back at the wiry black nurse whose dedication and efficiency far exceeded her size. “If you need me, I’ll be downstairs.”

      All morning Gary and I had been seeing patients in the Correctional Center’s second-floor medical clinic. Although we’d canceled routine inmate appointments because of the storm, the clinic’s two tiny exam rooms had been busy for the last few hours as we treated minor problems and complaints, mostly from civilians.

      On my way down I passed Captain Verret in the stairwell. He had pulled an all-nighter and looked it.

      “You still up?” I asked.

      “Not for much longer,” Verret replied, heading up toward an empty room on the second floor where the deputies were bunking.

      The stairwell steps were slick, and the air smelled of wet concrete. I grabbed the banister for support. Only the emergency lights were on. At least the generators are working, I thought.

      The lobby was crowded. People were up and moving after the stormy night, and the front doors were open again. Spirits had lifted, and the hum of conversation filled the room. A few people had ventured outside to see Katrina’s aftermath. I wondered how the inmates were faring on the tiers upstairs.

      I pushed through the crowd, anxious to survey the damage myself. I’d taken a look a few hours earlier, but the howling wind and torrential rain had hidden the extent of the destruction. Now, though it was still raining hard, the wind had slowed. As I stepped onto the front porch, I was stunned by the scope of the hurricane’s power.

      Flood water surrounded everything and rose to the fifth step of the Correctional Center. Parked cars stood in water that reached up to their door handles. Every tree in sight had lost limbs or been uprooted, and surviving branches had been stripped bare of leaves. Roofs had been sheared off nearby houses. Nothing had escaped unscathed.

      “Can you believe this?” I said, joining Mike and Brady by the railing.

      “Look at Cheryl’s van.” Brady gestured across the street at a flooded blue minivan that belonged to one of the medical assistants. “This is worse than I thought.”

      “Yeah, look at the houses over there,” Mike said, pointing to the side. “There isn’t a roof left. Those poor people have lost everything.”

      “Dr. Inglese.” Sheriff Gusman called from behind me.

      I turned as he lowered his walkie-talkie. A good-looking, polished black man in his forties, the sheriff was usually dressed impeccably in a suit and tie. It was strange to see him in a black T-shirt, red shorts, and rubber wading boots.

      “Yes, sir?” I asked, moving toward him.

      “Old Parish Prison just called. They have an inmate down, and he’s unconscious. Go see if you can help.”

      “Do we know what happened?” I asked. “His vitals?”

      “He hit his head. That’s all I know.”

      I glanced at the water outside. The entrance to the Old Prison, attached to the courthouse, was two blocks away. I was not thrilled with the prospect of walking through the flood, especially with the rain still coming down.

      Apparently, the sheriff guessed my thoughts. “I’ll call for a truck to take you over,” he quickly added.

      “Just give me a minute,” I said with obvious relief. “I’ll be right back.”

      I ran up to my office, where I had left my suitcase. Even with the hall window and emergency lights, I needed a flashlight to find my flip-flops. I didn’t want my only tennis shoes getting wet.

      Slipping the flashlight into my pocket, I unwrapped a breakfast bar and chewed as I raced back downstairs.

      A sheriff’s office flatbed truck rolled slowly down the street by the time I reached the front porch. Massive tires kept the cab and engine above the three-foot flood. Although the driver pulled as close to the front steps as possible, there was no way to avoid stepping in water before I climbed into the passenger’s seat. Changing into flip-flops had been a good call. We hadn’t even left the Correctional Center, and my feet were soaked.

      The deputy kept the truck in low gear as we crept along the street to the intersection. I stared out the windshield at the devastated houses to my left. People stood on porches and second-story balconies, yelling and waving their arms for help. I felt for them, but there was no time to stop. A patient with a serious head injury was waiting for me in the Old Prison clinic.

      I snapped out of my medical mind-set the moment we turned the corner. I was used to flooding around the Correctional Center. It happened every time we had a heavy rain. But I was completely unprepared for the scene before me.

      Water stretched endlessly in all directions. Homes, businesses, everything in view was swamped. As I digested the sight, another shock jolted me. The truck’s engine began grinding.

      “We have a problem, Doc,” the driver said.

      My stomach tightened when I looked forward. Smoke was pouring from under the hood.

      The deputy set his jaw, shifted, and kept on driving, steering the truck toward the courthouse, more than a block away. As the truck lumbered forward, I watched out the side window. Sewage, trash, and other debris floated on the water. Nothing would keep me from getting to my patient, but I did not want to wade through that foul flood.

      Chapter 13

      The truck finally broke down twenty feet from the courthouse steps. I climbed down and waded over to the stately building, then sped across the inlaid marble floor of the lobby, to the corridor that led to the Old Prison. The medical clinic was downstairs, on the building’s ground floor, and I ran down the steps as fast as I could in my flip-flops and soggy cargo shorts. The building had lost all power, but light from an overhead window lit the damp hallway, which was already beginning to flood. I paused for a moment when I realized I was going into a maximum-security prison with no electricity, but I pushed on. Sandbags protected the offices on either side of the hallway from the ankle-deep water. A damp, musty smell clung to the cinderblock and steel walls.

      A second later I burst through the clinic door into total darkness, turned on my flashlight, and shouted, “Jan!”

      “Dr. Inglese?” Jan Ricca, the nurse in charge, called back. The beam from her flashlight blinded me as she stepped around a corner. Five-foot-six with short red hair, glasses, and freckles, Jan looked like an Irish angel in green scrubs. “I’m glad you’re here. We’ve got a man down in the back.”

      “That’s why the sheriff sent me,” I said, following Jan past metal desks, storage cabinets, and the station where another nurse and a medical assistant were busy at work. In the windowless examination room a big husky black man dressed in orange prison scrubs was stretched out on the table. He was motionless with his eyes closed and looked to be in his twenties. “What happened?”

      “He was on the tier, and he fell and hit his head,” Jan explained. “At first, he seemed to be okay. He was able to walk to the clinic with a deputy, but after he got here, he passed out. His name is Williams.”

      “Any vitals?” I slipped my flashlight into a pocket to free up my hands.

      “His last blood pressure was low—fifty-nine over palp,” Jan said, “with a pulse of eighty-six.”

      This man’s in big trouble, I thought. Immediate loss of consciousness was common with a head injury, but losing consciousness a short time after the injury was potentially serious. My mind sifted through possible explanations. One stood out: the potentially fatal brain swelling that occurs in some cases of head trauma or brain hemorrhage.

      “This might be cerebral edema.” I felt the same rush of adrenaline I used