What Stands in a Storm (29 page)

The women wiped blood from faces, combed leaves out of hair, and closed unseeing eyes. In acts of unflinching compassion, they did their best to wash away the horror, to make these people recognizable to their families. The young photographer took care to approach each body from the angle of least offense. With some, she focused on jewelry and clothes, avoiding the faces.

It was a ghastly task and an unexpected gift. They did it to preserve dignity. And to spare the families from seeing something that could never be unseen.

Loryn's mother and stepfather arrived at the VA at 8:05 a.m. They were among the first to begin the unthinkable process of identifying their daughter's body. Ashley and DeWayne Mims were ushered into a private room, where a social worker spoke with them. Ashley described, in great detail, what Loryn was wearing yesterday morning on Skype. She had not straightened her curly hair and was wearing a Big Daddy's Fireworks T-shirt from last summer.

The social worker handed them a photograph taken at the scene. The body was in rough shape. Sharp-edged objects hurtling through the air at two hundred miles per hour had penetrated tender skin and bone. It was hard to see past the injury, to imagine the face that once was.

Ashley wanted to see Loryn, to touch her skin and feel her hair, but was told they weren't letting people see the bodies. They would have to ID her by photograph. Ashley found this unacceptable.

“I am not leaving Tuscaloosa,” she said, “until I touch my child's body.”

A nurse walked her to the morgue, a cool, open room with white walls and floors, and one wall of forty small, metal doors. They had
placed the black body bag on a gurney and stepped back to give the mother a moment alone with her child.

Ashley stepped up to the poor battered body, searched its broken features for the face she knew, but could not see her daughter. The truth hit her like lightning.

That's not Loryn.

Beneath the brown, curly hair was a broken neck and a face scrambled beyond recognition. But the hue of the skin was untrue. Could it be the pallor of death? No. No. This figure was too petite. No. And a tattoo snaked down one shoulder and arm. Definitely, no.

“That's not my child.”

Her heart surged with hope. Maybe Loryn was still out there somewhere, unconscious but alive. Maybe she was at another hospital. Maybe there was some mistake. Of one thing she was certain: this was not her daughter.

The nurses tried to comfort her. They gently acknowledged her reaction. Denial: the first phase of grief. It takes time to set in, to accept the unacceptable, to face the crushing truth. They had faced grieving parents in other disasters. They had seen this all before.

“She doesn't have a tattoo,” Ashley said.

A lot of students got tattoos their parents didn't know about, they said, nodding kindly and knowingly.

Ashley shook her head, gently adamant. She had seen that shoulder four days ago, bare and tanned and glowing under the white strap of a Sunday dress.

Tattoo or no, she knew what a mother knows without question.

“That's not my child.”

It had to be, they said. This was the only Caucasian female in the morgue that had not been claimed by a family. The others were ready for transport.

Then there must be some mistake. She needed to see the other bodies.

That wasn't possible, they said. The bodies had been claimed.

But the love of a mother is a powerful and implacable force.

At last, they agreed to show them another photograph. This body had been claimed, they said, by a family who had identified her in an e-mailed photograph. Arrangements had already been made to have her shipped home to another state.

Ashley told them again what Loryn had been wearing, and exactly how her hair looked. But she could not bear to look at another body if it did not belong to her child. So her husband, DeWayne, went into the little room with the nurses and looked at all the photos. He picked one up.

“Yeah,” DeWayne said, “that's her.”

The nurses gasped when Ashley walked into the morgue.

“She must be yours,” they said. “You look just like her.”

This time, when the zipper parted it revealed a girl intact. Without makeup covering up her freckles, she did look like her mother. Her hair was just as Ashley described—tight brown ringlets pulled from her widow's peak and scrunched into a bun. There were little shards of Xbox tangled in the curls. Ashley snipped a few locks and tucked them in her purse.

Ashley bent over her sweet child, touching her face, stroking her hair, caressing her cold, stiff arm. To Ashley Loryn looked like she was sleeping, except for a single drop of blood that had dried upon her cheek. Ashley took her finger and wiped it away. Loryn's hand was clenched, as if she had something in it. Ashley uncurled her fingers to find it empty. But she noticed Loryn's fingernails were broken off at the quick. She must have been holding on to something, tight, the moment she died. Whatever that was, it was gone.

After fighting through traffic, detours, and roadblocks for an hour, Danielle's parents had advanced about two miles, to University Mall in midtown. Terri Downs called Danielle's landlady, Dianne Rumanek, for directions to the hospital.

“Dianne, we're in town. The police say we need to go to DCH.”

“You need to go to the VA. That's where Loryn's mother identified her body.”

Terri felt a fluttery, screamy thing beating in her chest.

“A body?”

Dianne froze with the phone to her ear. She thought they already knew.

“Ed—” Terri cried, choking on the scream.

Michelle and Clay arrived at DCH to find the parking lot full and parked on the ramp. Ed and Terri were standing outside the ER. As soon as she saw them, Michelle began running. But as she neared, she saw her father's face. Ed shook his head slowly. The eyes that smiled when his mustache didn't looked sadder than she'd ever seen.

“Dad, no!” she cried. “No, Dad! No!”

As she came to pieces, she heard Danielle's voice in her head.

Michelle, stop. Can't you see him?

She looked up and saw her father crying.

Her dad, who could fix anything.

Look at him. He can't.

At the VA morgue, the Downs family showed the staff the flyers Michelle had made. Terri pulled out a file of identification papers, including a handprint. But there were questions to answer, and waiting, and more waiting. The Internet was down, and the computers were slow. The waiting was absolute torture.

A counselor pulled them into a little side room and asked them what they remembered about the afternoon of the storm. Michelle shared their text messages and the feeling in her stomach when the silence began.

“I heard gospel music,” Terri said.

“Danielle listens to gospel!” Michelle said.

“Since when?”

“She does! She likes listening to it—it calms her down.”

A staff member left the room and returned to hand a photograph to Ed. He looked at it, and something inside him broke like a plate of glass.

He laid it on the waiting room table. Michelle grabbed it, studied it, and came apart. Clay held her silently.

Terri felt as if she had been shot point-blank with a missile, opening a gaping hole in her chest that people could see right through.

“I want to see the body,” said Terri, her voice husky and low.

Like Ashley, Terri was told that a photo was all that she could see. The caustic reaction of grief and anger brought her to a boil.

“We're not leaving till we see Danielle.”

Then came a team of new officials with another round of questions. What did they remember about Danielle and her whereabouts yesterday? Did she have any identifying marks? Tattoos? Scars? Notable jewelry?

“Michelle, what was the necklace that Danielle always wore?” Ed asked.

“Joan of Arc.”

Like a key, her patron saint unlocked the door that led them to Danielle.

The family walked into the refrigerated room and gathered around the gurney. The black bag parted to reveal the angled chin, the smooth skin, the lips that they would never again see curve into a smile.

Danielle looked like herself, and didn't. Her hair spilled back from her face in a light brown halo. Her eyebrows, crisp and angular, had just been waxed for the wedding, and they pinched together above her closed eyes in a way that made her look grumpy. Her face was bruised and puffy. It looked to her mother as if someone had spilled grape juice concentrate on her right cheek, leaving a purple stain. A pink tuft
of insulation was caught in her hair. Terri reached over and tenderly pulled it out.

Ed beheld his daughter with a military stoicism and a deep, dark sadness in his eyes. Michelle's eyes became waterfalls, and Clay pressed her to his shirt to catch them. Terri felt the fluttery-screamy thing come fiercely alive inside her. The family clutched one another and wept.

Before they left, Terri ran her hands over Danielle's forehead. Her skin felt smooth and cool. She leaned in and smelled her hair. Underneath the smell of freshly shampooed hair was a scent so dear and singular that it exists one place in the universe. It is something every mother knows by heart: the scent of her baby's head.