My brigade commander telephoned me on the Thursday morning, eighteen hours after the funeral home, and he had already spoken to the hospital and he had already spoken to my department, and what he said was: “You are on emergency leave as of now and I do not want to hear from you and I am not going to ask you a single question.”

Then he said: “What do you need from me today?”

And I said I did not know.

And he said, “Then I’m going to guess.

I’m sending Major Thibodeaux to sit in that corridor with you for the next four days, because somebody has to remember to eat and it isn’t going to be you.”

Delphine Thibodeaux was in that corridor for four days.

She did not say very much.