Another news helicopter was coming up the coast.
It had been sixteen hours since Flight 800 went down off the coast of Long Island. As the day wore on, the number of reporters standing awkwardly in the sand, sweating in their blazers and good shoes, increased exponentially.
It had been fourteen hours since a phone call woke Isabel out of a deep sleep.
“Isabel?” The voice was thick with urgency.
“Yes?” Isabel answered, trying to sound awake. It was one-thirty in the morning.
“Ah, Isabel, this is John Goodman from ANN. Sorry to call at this hour.”
Isabel had interviewed with him the week before, just days after moving from San Francisco to New York.
“That’s fine. What’s up?”
“Isabel, we have a situation here,” he began. She could hear a lot of noise in the background. “A 747 has gone down somewhere off the coast of Long Island.” He sounded exhausted. “It had just taken off from JFK.”
Isabel was wide awake by this time and was scrambling for the TV remote control so she could see what the networks were already reporting.
“Oh, my God” was all she could say when she finally switched on CNN and saw an animated graphic showing a plane nosediving into the water.
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” Goodman agreed. “Isabel, we’re gonna need you to do some TV for us. I’m not gonna lie. We’re up the creek staffwise right now. We’ve got someone out on Long Island, but we’re gonna need someone to relieve her in the morning. I’d love to have the luxury of trying you out before something as big as this but I don’t, so I’m calling you to ask you, can you do it? Can you go live for us?”
“Yes.” Isabel didn’t even pause to think about it.
Fourteen hours later, Isabel knocked on the door of the van the network had rented and shyly asked if she could make a phone call from inside, though the hum of the generator was almost as loud as the helicopters.
“John? It’s Isabel. Sorry about that. There’s such bad service out here on the beach.”
“It’s like this—” he wasted no time “—you’re live at the top of the next hour. I want you to know that we’ve been pumping a source at the NTSB and we’ve got a good lead right now. They won’t go on record, but you can get away with sourcing it as someone high up in the investigation. They’re saying—you there?”
“Yeah.” Isabel licked her dry lips and reminded herself to breathe. “I’m here.”
“They’re saying it might have been linked to the center fuel tank. Apparently they’ve had problems with center fuel tanks on 747s but they haven’t drawn much attention to it. Got it? You can go with the info, just don’t source NTSB.”
“Got it.”
One hour later Isabel’s producer told her she was clear and congratulated her just as Isabel’s cell phone rang.
“Mom?” she answered, knowing her parents were the only ones, besides work, who had the number to the cell phone the network had assigned her.
A man’s voice chuckled. “Nope. It’s not your mommy. But after that live shot I wanna be!”
It was John Goodman again. Isabel tried not to sound disappointed. “Why’s that?”
“You were on fire! White-hot! They were only supposed to stay on you for about forty-five seconds and instead they kept you for double that. Wrightman
Isabel felt the flush of the compliment for a moment, but then went back to the only thing that had been on her mind for the past hour.
“Thanks, John. I appreciate it. Hey, by the way,” she said, trying for nonchalance, “you wouldn’t happen to know if there’s a network affiliate in Trenton, Vermont, would you?”
“Let’s see. Hmm. I just got out my affiliate guide and it looks like the folks of Trenton, Vermont, will be getting their news from NBC and ABC. We don’t service that market. But who the hell cares about Trenton, Vermont? You got the biggest cities in the country scratching their heads asking ‘Who is this Isabel Murphy?’ and you want to know if they saw you in
“Not all of Trenton, really. Just one person.”
Isabel’s heart felt like it was collapsing.
Goodman was uncharacteristically curious. “Who’s in Trenton?”
Isabel watched her foot draw circles in the sand. “My father.”
Forty-One
“Good morning!” Dr. Seidler scrutinizes Isabel on her way into the office. “How are you today?”
Isabel knows this is not an empty question that can go without its inevitable reply just as Dr. Seidler is well aware of all that is riding on the electroshocks to which her patient is being subjected. Isabel ends the suspense with a single word.
“Good,” she says.
“Really?” Dr. Seidler is relieved. “Tell me more.”
“I don’t know how and I don’t know why, exactly, but I feel good. Right this second I feel pretty normal. I don’t want to jinx it, though, so maybe we shouldn’t talk about it.”
Her therapist nods.
“Of course, now, you know why I’m asking you this, but I wonder what you were dreaming of last night?” Dr. Seidler asks. “Do you remember?”
Not only does Isabel remember, her dreams were so vivid, so real, that she is sure that is part of the reason she feels better.
“Work stuff, mostly,” Isabel answers. “I dreamed about stories I’ve covered and a couple of different places I’ve been. It’s weird, though. I thought dreams were supposed to be kaleidoscopic, maybe based on things from real life but then distorted in sleep.”
“Sometimes. Were yours fairly reality-based?”
“Yes!” Isabel is glad her doctor isn’t surprised by this observation. “Is that normal? These dreams I had last night, after ECT, were exactly as they were in real life.”
“That’s to be expected. Electroshock therapy is meant to treat people who have retreated, for lack of a better word, too far into themselves. That can take on many different characteristics. In some it might be a retreat due to severe depression, in others it could be paranoia or paranoid schizophrenia, although that takes treatment to an entirely different level on the whole. Dreams immediately following the administration of ECT are attempts by the brain to begin functioning in reality again. Think of it as your brain reminding you who you are and where you’ve been. That’s why you’re having these dreams. Or, I should say, that’s probably why your dreams so mimic reality.”
“So here’s the big question. Do I have to keep getting ECT?”
Isabel braces herself for the reply.
Forty-Two
C
Isabel repeats the mantra in the shower.
Back in her room she towel-dries her hair and sifts through her clothes for something that does not smell, something that will cover her unshaven legs.
