Chapter 1 #2
If not for Covid, my career might not have advanced so quickly.
There wouldn’t have been such burnout turnover, and by 2023, I would likely not have been made the acting deputy of the department, frantically getting a crash course in management.
Maybe my boss would not have retired to the Keys last year.
But three months ago, I officially became the permanent chief of the department, who—-with a staff of thirteen—-oversees the public health of all Rhode Islanders.
When I say I work in public health, most people nod, though they rarely know what that encompasses: All the things happening behind the scenes to keep you safe.
Making sure you don’t have lead paint in your house.
That your food and water are not going to make you sick.
That it’s safe to swim at the beach. That if you’re in a car accident, the best technology keeps you from getting injured.
And vaccines, of course, are another polarizing example.
It’s all of these things and more: communications, lab and epidemiology preparedness, chronic disease prevention, acute disease management—-all wrapped into one.
Preparedness is the crystal ball of public health.
We’ve done enough training for that muscle memory to kick in on the day you need it.
My business is held to an incredibly unfair standard—-survival—-because acceptable loss is an impossible concept.
But public health isn’t what’s best for every person; it’s the greatest good for the greatest number.
If you run out of ventilators during Covid, who gets one?
The child with Down syndrome, or the sixty--five--year--old epidemiologist who might find a cure for the virus?
It’s like the famous moral dilemma of the trolley problem over and over.
Luckily, we don’t do it alone, though it wasn’t always like this.
Prior to Hurricane Katrina, there was less coordination and communication between agencies.
Back then, New Orleans had a more traditional emergency plan for if the levees were breached by a big storm: to commandeer the Superdome, use generators, bring in MREs from the military to feed people, set up cots.
This would have worked if every resident of New Orleans was a healthy eighteen--year--old.
Unfortunately, some were elderly, obese, and diabetic.
The rations were full of sugar and salt—-great for soldiers sweating in a desert, but less great for people susceptible to heart attacks and strokes and diabetic comas.
They had a plan . . . for the wrong people.
That’s where public health comes in. During an emergency, you need stuff, but you also need staff .
. . people trained in exactly these issues.
That’s who’ll participate in our hot wash today. It’s a debrief on how the exercise went. Miguel, my exercise coordinator, will run the session with an airport administrator. The mood is jovial but tired, the mental and physical ache of a job well done.
When we’re all assembled, I’m surrounded by EMTs, fire department chiefs, state police, Rhode Island Airport Corporation reps, Southwest Airlines officials, and colleagues from the Emergency Management Agency.
Only one of my staff, Katani, is absent, and that’s because she is making sure the crisis actors get all their makeup off.
Those fake shards of glass we use for moulage are expensive—-props that we will reuse in a future exercise.
You also don’t want someone with a shard of glass sticking out of their back stopping at Cumby’s to fill up their gas tank and freaking everyone out.
Miguel starts off by thanking everyone. “All right,” he says, looking down at his clipboard.
“Alerts and notifications. How did that go?” Communications is always the first thing to fail in an emergency.
Sometimes it’s the devices themselves, and sometimes people don’t relay the right information.
Did the Southwest crew tell the fake passengers what was happening, and how to safely exit the plane?
Adrenaline causes tunnel vision, so first responders may have forgotten to communicate with hospitals.
Then hospitals turn to social media for their info.
I find myself scribbling down notes in the hope we can learn and improve. “Molly,” Miguel says. “What happened with that kid?”
When I’m participating in the exercise, and not just planning it, Miguel likes to throw in a wrench to keep me on my toes. He knows that a person unaccounted for would activate all kinds of panic responses in me.
You see, I am one of more than three thousand kids who lost a parent in the attacks on 9/11.
I was less than three months old at the time, so I don’t have any real memories of my mom.
I know what I’ve been told about her: she was going to a doctor’s appointment in the South Tower when the plane struck.
She was an artist whose favorite medium was mosaics.
I have her blue eyes. Here’s what I don’t know: If she sang in the shower.
If she had a guilty pleasure, like pork rinds or smutty novels or ABBA.
If she was afraid of heights or spiders.
If she liked the Mets or the Yankees. If she was a good cook or a reluctant one.
All the details that would transform her, in my mind, from a martyr into a mother.
When I was a kid, I used to say I wanted to meet her.
I knew it wasn’t possible, and I knew I’d technically already met her, but that was the wish that I protected like a flame in a hurricane.
It flickered every time I argued with my father or my stepmother, Evie; when I was sitting alone at a school lunch table; when I got accepted to Columbia.
I wondered, the first time I broke curfew, if my mother would have been angry at me.
If she would have liked the first boy I had a crush on.
Evie says that when I was in preschool I used to repeat the stories she had told me about her and my mother’s friendship back in college (Remember the time my mom and I fell into the pond?) and she would smile and say, “I remember that, but I don’t think you were with us yet. ”
Growing up, I was The Girl Who’d Lost Her Mom on 9/11. Every anniversary since I was old enough to understand, there has been media coverage of us, like we are a zoo exhibit. My entire life has been scrutinized and pitied, although I never asked for it.
In every photo of my mother, she wears her long hair in a French braid, and woven through that braid is a red ribbon.
My father said it was so that he could always spot her in a crowd.
It wasn’t until I got older and interested in emergency preparedness that I realized how prophetic my mother had been.
In the case of a catastrophe, any marker helps with identification.
Although I suppose it didn’t help on 9/11.
I clear my throat. “What happened with the child,” I tell Miguel, “is exactly what was supposed to. We were able to identify the hundred and sixty--eighth passenger, to get the fire department back on the plane for a final check, and ultimately to find the baby.”
“Well done,” Miguel says, and he moves on.
Eventually the hot wash wraps up. As people file out, Miguel comes to stand in front of me. “That went about as well as it could have, given the winds,” he says.
“For sure,” I agree. “When did that forecast change?”
He shrugs. “We plan, God laughs.”
I grin. “Great job today. Go home. Kiss your husband. Have a beer.”
I put my computer into its backpack and pull on my jacket, only to turn around and nearly crash into the tall man standing in front of me. His glittering police badge is clipped onto his belt. “Chief,” he says formally.
“Detective Sergeant,” I reply. “Did your department get what it needed today?”
“Not entirely,” he says.
“I see. Is there anything I can do to help with that?”
He frowns as he considers this, and then he kisses me. “Much better,” he says.
Jesse Fitzgerald is a detective with the Providence Police Department, the city’s polygraphy expert . . . and my husband. I wrap my arms around him and curl my fingers into his sunburst hair—-all the yellows and golds of late summer. “It’s so hot when you talk Emergency Prep,” he says.
I laugh. “Epidemiology,” I whisper, sultry. “Anthrax.” Then I draw back just enough to look Jesse in the eye. “Wait. Did the Warwick PD really not get what it needed today from the exercise?” He’d been called in as an impartial evaluator for them.
His arms lock around my waist. “The Warwick PD is satisfied,” Jesse promises.
“In that case,” I say, looking up at him through my lashes, “hazmat decon.”
Jesse smirks. “Keep it up and I won’t be held responsible for what I do.”
“I think this airport’s seen enough action today,” I say, slipping my hand into his. “Let’s go home.”
If there’s anyone who understands what it was like growing up with a personal tragedy in the public eye, it’s Jesse.
When he was a teenager, his thirteen--year--old sister, Anna, sued their parents for medical emancipation, after she was asked to donate a kidney to their other sister, Kate.
Kate had leukemia, and Anna had been born as a savior sibling, donating blood and platelets and everything else her sister needed to stay alive—-until she fought back with a lawsuit that nearly ripped their family apart.
Amazingly, Anna won. She wound up donating a kidney to Kate—-but not the way anyone had hoped.
After getting into a car accident just minutes after the judge’s verdict, Anna was declared brain dead, and her organs donated.
Rhode Island is a small community, and Brian Fitzgerald—-Jesse’s dad—-had been a career firefighter. Their story was famous, so I had learned about Jesse’s family long before I’d ever met him.