Our plans were made in the wake of disaster. We endured two hours on a 27-mile-stretch of stop-and-go roadblocks and hazard-flashing work crew trucks before reaching what we assumed was downtown Miami. The television aerials of chaotic devastation since the storm had been dramatic. But on the ground, the smells, the rotting food in the tropical September heat, the stench of decomposing carcasses of pets, backyard animals, and vegetation was overwhelming, not something film footage could capture.

We had driven eight hours total. The massive hurricane ravaged Miami two weeks prior and four of us, a professor, a realtor, an engineer, and me, a physician decided to volunteer with the cleanup. We had been close friends for twenty years. But now we were just church guys trying to help: Life is for service. We all grew up on Mr. Rogers. That was a saying he carried in his wallet and the compass that guided him through life. It was our will to emulate.

The Camillus House homeless shelter had withstood the storm’s fury, as had interstate 95 and the overpasses in downtown Miami. The over one hundred and seventy-five thousand destroyed homes in the wake of the cyclone had by default transformed the “homeful” to the ranks of the bona fide “homeless”. We slept on the floor at Camillus. Utilities were out throughout most of the city, but at least we had a roof over our heads and surprisingly few indoor mosquitos to deal with.

That night none of us slept. The musty, still air of the place, the war zone-like setting, where streets and roadways were unrecognizable except for the bulldozed chunks of rubble which occasionally revealed part of the pavement painted a surreal scene. Where an intersection or cross-street was recognizable, there would be no street signs, just bent metal pieces or a splintered dresser or what was left of a child’s bicycle, or a rumpled little girl’s dress by the wayside.

I don’t know where the homeless in Miami went during or after the storm, but in the dark of night, Fred and I stepped out to pee, just underneath the I-95 overpass, down the street from Camillus. There they were, the very same urine and feces-stained concrete pillars that anchored the highway above, and that for years became the subject of to-and-fro volleys between Miami Herald editorials and letters to the editor, highlighting, on the one hand, the plight of the homeless, and on the other, arguments for the evil root causes for the “tramp problem”. I stood legs apart, and hissed a strong stream of steaming urine, watched it cascade off the columns in rivulets, and course around the soles of my work boots. There was something delightfully existential about urinating anywhere one can, especially when one does not have access to formal facilities and no one is looking. Fred, well he just nodded and unzipped, leaned into another column, and let the stream flow. We laughed.

The sun came up and we had just cut our last peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in quadrants of two by two inches each. Borborygmi I said to Ken the realtor. What? He turned to me. That’s the medical term for when your stomach growls from hunger. You are suffering from borborygmi. 

After we ate our breakfast of 2×2’s PB&J’s that morning, we set out for Cutlers’ Ridge, the epicenter of the storm’s rage. We would attempt to help repair/roof in any framed structures left standing which might be inhabitable. As a trained internist, out of habit, I brought along a stethoscope and a penlight. I packed them in my knapsack along with my construction tools, and at the last minute included a bottle of peroxide, antibiotic ointment, and band-aids.  

Each of us had four, twenty-ounce bottles of water for the rest of the day plus we had one box of Triscuit left to share. We had been told there would be tents for volunteer cleanup crews where they would feed us. There were armed soldiers and National guardsmen on major “intersections” directing traffic. But no one knew where anything was. There were few landmarks and not many people except for scattered work crews and emergency personnel. No telephones. I imagined being an extra in a trailer for a dystopian movie.

We worked in the hot sun without pause from eight in the morning until just before dark. All our water was gone by mid-afternoon. Everyone we asked about the volunteer food tent seemed to point in a different direction with the same degree of benevolent ignorance. We followed the sparse traffic to what we thought was north back towards Camillus. No volunteer tent. The storefronts that remained standing remained boarded up and there were no stores open. We reached a Red Cross unit. They pointed us to the nearest volunteer tent. But you might want to hurry…When we got there we cheered out the window of Ken’s Volvo. Two lanterns and a table had been set up under a tent. A man was clearing paper plates and cups. No lines!! What? The last of the hot dogs just went? Do you have any Gatorade? Water? The man looked up, Sorry, we are all out of everything. We are supposed to re-stock tomorrow morning. We’ll be here at daybreak.

We would spend another night at Camillus. There would be no urge to defecate because we had not eaten since the last “2×2”’s over 14 hours earlier, which was just as well because the toilets were nonfunctional. Borborygmi was epidemic. There were the lightheaded “I’m-about-to-get-a-headache” sweaty jitters associated with low blood sugar from not having eaten or drunk through a heavy day of manual labor. Paradoxically our hunger pangs were averted by nausea from the putrefaction around us.

We arrived at Camillus, parked, and opened the car doors to cool off. In the back seat, knees sideways and feet on the ground, Fred frowned and looked off to one side, and his arm began contorting and jerking as if he was a marionette possessed by an evil being. I thought he was joking until I heard him grunt and slump towards the pavement, his body rhythmically jerking and stiffening, deep grunting breaths through clenched jaw, eyes rolled up and looking upwards and towards the left. I lunged and caught his head before it hit the curb, and crouched beside him, trying to cushion him. He was in the throes of a full-blown epileptic fit.  No tongue trauma, clear airway, no bruises. His crotch wreaked of urine as Ken and I slung him onto the back seat and attempted in desperation to rush him for help somewhere. But the Volvo wouldn’t start. Out of gas.

No medical facilities in sight, no ambulances, no phones. The Red Cross Tent would be shut down by now and too far to reach on foot. A massive Huey helicopter rumbled above and past us, but despite frantic arm-waving and shouting, they could neither hear nor see us. I pulled my stethoscope out of my bag and listened to Fred’s lungs. Raspy bubbly sounds, barely breathing. He was limp, post-ictal as we call the state of quiet and sleep-like inactivity after someone has had a seizure.  We laid him on the back seat and took his shirt off. He wasn’t coming to, and about 15 minutes later he wasn’t responding to touch or to my voice as I might have expected. So I pinched his nipple hard between my thumb and index finger to get him to react. No response to pain. He’s comatose. Then I fumbled for my penlight in the darkness of the back seat. His neck, arms, and legs were limp. I propped open his eyes. His pupils were wide and not reacting to light. Fred was now ashen and not breathing. I could not feel a pulse. As I compressed his chest I felt his breastbone crack under the palm of my hand. We tried for 20 minutes, but could not revive him.  

The heat and humidity, the darkness, the stench of the rot of the place, the piss on his dead body, and his cold hand dangling limply over the back seat of the car were beyond macabre. My chin sunk to my chest, I flung my stethoscope over the piles of trash in the parking lot and dropped to my knees, sobbing.  

Days later, just after Fred’s burial, his wife, Barbara blindsided me as I headed for my truck at the cemetery. Thank you and all of you that were with him in Miami. She confided that a month prior to the storm, Fred had headaches and was diagnosed with a large brain tumor. He didn’t want anyone to know. You knew Fred, he was an engineer and weighed all his options very analytically. Surgery was not an option and neither was cure. He decided against any treatment. There was no talking him out of going to Miami. He said I shouldn’t fret, that he’d be among friends.

I hugged Barbara and stepped into my truck. I thought about Fred and Ken and about our pact with Mr. Rogers. The sky was crisp blue and cloudless, just as Fred might have wanted it.

– Ricardo José Gonzalez-Rothi