After we’d left Ocean General and Dr. Kriss had brought me to her favorite bar on the roof of a pale-peach west-side building, I asked her about the source of that confidence. Our table had a view of the Gulf, the sun on the water like a platinum sheen. When the waiter approached, he asked Dr. Kriss, “The usual?” She nodded, and because this was my last piece of business for the day, I ordered gin and soda. But when he returned with our orders, Dr. Kriss’s usual turned out to be a 7UP, so I was the only one drinking.

I set the tape running, but the recording wouldn’t turn out well, clogged with nearby chatter and the breeze swooping into the mic.

“From early on, I had to be confident,” she told me. “I didn’t have a choice. I’m an only child, and all the neighbors had older boys, so there wasn’t much room for girlishness, whatever that means. I aped the boys while avoiding their real stupidity. At the University of Washington, we were told again and again what a great time it was to be a woman. Just look how many there were, they said. But in reality, women made up, by a generous estimate, 20 percent of the class, and fully half burned out. No one wanted them to succeed, so they didn’t. As for my time in the navy, I constantly had men with rank and authority coming on to me. I had to maintain situational awareness.”

“What do you think,” I said, “are we going back to Iraq?”

“I hope so.”

I felt a strange disappointment in her.

“The things I saw,” she said, “the things Saddam did—nothing we could do in Iraq will ever touch that.”

Another gust blew over the recorder, but later, listening to the tape, I thought she said, “War is good for medicine.”

6.

My first ride-along with Common Dreams began early the next morning. I plunked ice cubes into my coffee and waited on the stoop of Candy’s bungalow, jays rousing in the trees, and read the Retreat Examiner until the purple truck rolled up.

It was a repurposed ambulance, taller and rounder than the standard ones at Ocean General. COMMON DREAMS COMMUNITY OUTREACH swooped across the side like a comet, beneath which was tucked: A RUBICON TECH INITIATIVE.

Vince and Gwen sat up front in matching purple polos. He was almost bald, with the exception of a ponytail, brown with some wiry gray, and she had a painful-looking piercing on her lip. Both were out-of-work paramedics from Tampa who’d found a Rubicon job listing and been assigned to Common Dreams.

“Is there not a demand for paramedics in Tampa?” I asked.

Neither wanted to answer at first, but finally Vince said, “Let’s just say they filter out guys like me.”

“You too, Gwen?”