At the Clinic

This morning I had a blood test at the Tulane Uptown Clinic. My Doctor was there in a polo shirt. Another doctor walked in in his scrubs. There was a sense of urgency - a woman was panicked - her daughter was bleeding - the clinic had become an emergency room, as well.

The nurse who draw my blood has been doing so for years. She lives on the West Bank in Plaquemine Parish and stayed with her family through Katrina. Happily she didn't "get water" (a common euphamism for flooding.) After a few days, Parish borders were closed and she and her family stayed behind. The National Guard sold them gasoline for their generator, they cooked and shared all the food in their freezer with their neighbors who did the same. Eventually they received supplies from the Red Cross. Her greatest complaint was the heat and the moquitos.

We all have so much to tell each other. The people that I talk to are the ones who have returned. We survived, one way or another. There are the tales of the evacuation - the hardships and adventures on the road. But, there are also stories of those who rode out the storm and were forced to leave by the police and Guardsmen. Franklin Adams, a former colleague from Tulane, talks about the groups of looters roving the neighborhood with shopping carts full of "electrodomesticos." I guess some of them were mine. Fearing lawlessness, he finally left town, as well.