My Sad Story Continued 2

The flights down to Scottsdale, Arizonia where nice and uneventful. I left Walla Walla on August 29th, 2005 at approximately 7.45am. The flight was on a small twin engined aircraft operated by Horizon Airlines. I remember flying over Mount Rainer just as the sun was coming up. It looked so wonderful and serene and bathed in this light pink haze. When I arrived at Seattle, I had to transfer to an Alaskian Airways flight to Pheonix, Arizonia. I remember the flight was delayed due to mechanical difficulties and so the lay over was longer than expected. As I sat in the terminal waiting for my connecting flight, I remember watching the overhead tv. The news was all about hurricane Katrina. By that time, Katrina had already reached New Orleans and the devastation of the city had already begun. And yet as I sat there watching the unfolding story, the images that I saw and the suffering that prevailed, simply did not register. I was on my way to Scottsdale for a surgery that I had been waiting for for two years. Little did I know or even comprehend that another story had just begun, a story that literally rocked my world and turned it upside down.
The flight from Seattle to Pheonix was a little bumpy but otherise just fine. It seemed like everyone on the flight was talking about Katrina except myself. I was happily alone in my little cacoon thinking about the surgery and how long the process of sex reassignment really took. It was a long process and was now coming to an end. I was so happy and so looking forward to the end of this journey and the beginning of my new life that it seemed at the time that nothing else mattered. I was about to become the person I had always wanted to be. And yet, not a world away, a city that I had never known nor even visited, lay literally in ruins. Survivors sat on rooftops waiting for resue as once prized cars floated silently down flooded streets.
And yet, it all comes back to me now, the pain, the worry, the despair, the words of comfort, the words of hope, the please dont cry I know your a good person, the proceedings of the Grand Jury, the conversations with Anna as well as Michael Morales and Julie Cullen. It all comes back and the words fail me. What do you say to the premeditated killing of nine patients on the seventh floor of Memorial Hospital? Do you say your sorry and then move on. And what about the family members left behind? What do you say to them? What do you say to them?