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covered a wide swath of coastline. Katrina’s strength wasrated Category Three on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, projected to grow to a fearsome Four or even a catastrophic Five. Meteorologists predicted landfall on Monday, with hurricane conditions possible by Sunday night.
    Isbell’s home, her family, and her hospital were in St. Bernard Parish. LifeCare, the specialized hospital where Isbell served as nursing director, occupied a single-story building there in Chalmette on Virtue Street. The question was whether to move the patients somewhere safer, just in case. The risks of transporting very sick patients for a false alarm had to be weighed against the risk that floodwaters could rise over the rooftop if the forecasts were accurate.
    St. Bernard had been slowly rebuilt after its surrender to spare NewOrleans from the 1927 floods, but a series of subsequent calamities kept residents uneasy whenever weather disasters threatened. Many remembered the levee breaks, devastating flooding, and pumping-system failure that followed the Category Three Hurricane Betsy in 1965. St. Bernard residents had little faith that their officials or their levees would protect them.
    It seemed wise to move the patients. Waiting for more certainty in the forecast would leave less time for action and make it harder to secure ambulances.
    LifeCare had two other campuses in the area, including a leased space on a high floor of Memorial Medical Center that offered heady views of the city. This “hospital within a hospital” provided long-term treatment to very sick, often elderly and debilitated patients. Many of them were dependent on mechanical ventilators and underwent rehabilitation at LifeCare with the goal of breathing on their own and returning home or to nursing facilities; LifeCare was not a hospice. It had its own administrators, nurses, pharmacists, and supply chain. The staff still called the location “LifeCare Baptist” even though Tenet Healthcare Corporation had bought Baptist Hospital and changed its name to Memorial ten years earlier. Most of the St. Bernard patients, LifeCare’s leaders decided, would be moved there, and the remaining few to another nearby hospital.
    Isbell called up the nurses she’d assigned to the “A” team at the start of hurricane season. They would join her at LifeCare Baptist during the storm and the “B” team would come to replace them after the storm had passed. The “A”s Isbell chose were strong nurses, team players, the ones she would want by her side at a stressful time. They had volunteered for the assignment. Working at an unfamiliar hospital would only add to the challenge.
    Isbell had a passion for taking care of those whose long lists of medical problems put off some other health professionals. It took until nightfall to transfer nineteen of them to the Baptist campus. A twentieth died en route.
    The patients traveled in clusters, up to four to an ambulance, because ambulances were already in short supply. They went with their own medicines, which the pharmacist prepared for them. Paraplegic patient Emmett Everett, who weighed 380 pounds, went from, and was resettled on, his own “Big Boy” bed.
    The elevator doors opened on the seventh floor to face a wall adorned with the LifeCare philosophy.
     LIFECARE
     HOSPITAL
restoring hope
    instilling desire
      rebuilding confidence
    LifeCare occupied three long hallways on the seventh floor of Memorial Medical Center—north, west, and south. The corridor to the east was devoted to Memorial’s marketing department. Isbell wove back and forth between patient rooms and nursing stations, ensuring her charges were registered and properly situated. When she exerted herself like this her round cheeks flushed a pretty pink. A phone call came in for her, but she was too busy to take it. Instead she passed a message to the caller, the daughter of one of her favorites, ninety-year-old Alice Hutzler.