*Whew!*

Well, I got through my perfect storm. Preaching went fine on Sunday, and the first week of classes seems to have gone fine too, and I got Grand Rounds posted and have gotten some good feedback on it. Nick Genes did a nice pre-rounds interview with me on MedScape, but right now, it's subscription-only. I'll post another link when everyone can access it.

As anticipated, Grand Rounds has done wonders for my SiteMeter stats. My average number of daily hits zoomed from 127 to 160 overnight, and today I've gotten over 400 hits, which I believe is a record.

If I ever host Grand Rounds again -- and I'd like to! -- I'll a) do it during the summer and b) be much more organized about setting it up ahead of time. I might even get creative with pictures and stuff, as so many other hosts do. This time, it was all I could do to get the links where I wanted them!

Oh, and: I finally have my TTLB ecosystem status displayed! They fixed a bunch of stuff, so at long last I managed to get to the code and post it. The entire world can now know that I'm proud to be a Slimy Mollusc. One day I hope to make it to Flippery Fish, although I may slip back to the level of Lowly Insect. I just hope I don't devolve back into an Insignificant Microbe!

In much grimmer news, a UNR professor who's been missing since August 10 is now believed to have been murdered (they found a body that matches her description, hundreds of miles from here). I didn't know her, but after what happened to Doug -- although of course, we really don't know what happened to Doug -- this strikes awfully close to home.

Gary's made me promise to be extra-careful on campus, although I always am anyway. I'm sure she was, too. Most of the women I know are: we learn hypervigilance with our mother's milk.

It doesn't always help.

Seven Weeks

Today is seven weeks since Doug Henry vanished.

Yesterday I called Beth. The car's been processed, and the crime lab found nothing, so the car's back at her house. The police finally told her where they found the car: Boundary Peak, the highest mountain in Nevada. She drove out there. "It's pretty remote," she told me.

She's gone back to work. She says the police still have her computer, but that when they return it, "they'll be done with me." The police have no leads and are moving on to other cases. Beth's trying to figure out how to move on with her life.

Last Sunday was her and Doug's first wedding anniversary.

I don't know if we'll ever learn anything else. If we do, I'll post it.

Another Doug Henry Update

I saw Beth at church this morning. There's been no movement on or information about the case; the crime lab hasn't even started working on the car yet, and DNA breaks down in the kind of heat we've been having. And they still haven't told her where the car was found.

Beth's hired an attorney who used to work for the police department, who's promised that she'll get at least some answers tomorrow. Beth's going to call me when she knows something, and she's given me permission to post about it.

She told me that in her gut, she believes that Doug isn't alive anymore. They used to take baths together five to seven nights a week -- that was their together time -- and twice in the last five weeks, she's felt Doug's presence in the tub, and has received unspoken messages from him. He's communicated that he's fine, and that everything's as it's supposed to be, even though what happened to him isn't something he'd have chosen (Beth believes there was violence involved). He wants Beth to be fine too. He's told her that he didn't leave her, that he hasn't left her, that he's always with her, even if she can't always perceive him. A relative of Beth's has also felt Doug as a guarding presence. He's told her that the dead are always all right, beyond fear or pain, but that they worry about and watch over the living.

She prefaced these stories by saying, "This is going to sound really weird," but it didn't sound weird to me at all. I hear stories like that all the time at the hospital.

Beth said that the two bathtub incidents were the only times she's felt comfort. Other times, she'll have sudden milliseconds of clarity and peace, but then they'll be gone and she'll be back in her grief and anger and confusion.

It seems to me that she's handling all of this with tremendous grace, even calm. I don't think I'd do nearly as well in any similiar situation. I hope I never have to find out.

Please keep Beth and everyone else who loves Doug in your prayers.

Doug Henry Update

Yesterday, the police told Beth that they've found Doug's car; it's a half-day's drive from Reno, sixteen miles down a rough dirt road in a remote wilderness recreation area. They won't tell her exactly where, because a) they don't want everybody going out there and b) she's now a suspect. The police are now treating this as a crime.

The car had its VIN plate and tags removed. Inside, it was spotless: no paper, no mess, nothing. According to Beth, this is completely unlike Doug, who's always kept a very messy car. But there was nothing in the glove box, nothing in the trunk.

The robbery-and-homicide detective assigned to the case told Beth that the three possibilities are: 1) it was a robbery and Doug walked away, 2) homicide or 3) suicide. But the detective also said that this doesn't fit any profile and that nothing makes sense. It's the strangest case he's seen in fifteen years. If Doug killed himself, why remove the car's tags? If he just walked away, why didn't he walk back? If it's a murder, why leave the car out in the open where it will be found?

Beth says she now has more questions than she did before. She said that she's mentally buried and resurrected Doug a hundred times in the past week. In the meantime, she's had police searching the house, seizing her and Doug's computers, going through bank and phone records. She's happy about all this, because it means they're doing a thorough job, but it seems to me that it would still be horrible to have strangers combing your life like that.

The car's been transported back to Reno, and CSI will start processing it this week. That could take up to three weeks.

Because Beth has no computer now, she doesn't have e-mail access. Various people at church offered her the use of their computers, and everyone's praying for her. She says that she cries more at church than at home; at home, she's mostly numb.

She's given me permission to post about this. Please keep her, and everyone who loves Doug, in your prayers.

Vigil

There were forty or fifty people at the vigil for Doug Henry last night; to my distress, only three of us from church were there, probably because the vigil had been organized at the last minute and announcements had gone out late (and one of our priests is out of town).

Beth knows about my hospital work, and when I got there, she asked me to say a prayer to open the vigil. "I need you to speak for me, because I can't." But after my brief prayer -- a modified version of the one I always use at the hospital, in ecumenical language because I figured not everyone there was Christian -- she spoke clearly and passionately, for a long time.

She told us that although the past eleven days have been the worst of her life, they've also shown her the best of humanity, because she's been so surrounded by love and prayer and support, both from people she knows and from people she doesn't. She said that she never could have imagined that something like this would also be a blessing, but that it has been.

One of the most moving stories was about the police. She called 911 when Doug had been missing for 24 hours, and received a visit from an uninterested, not-very-pleasant officer who said, "Husbands leave all the time. There's nothing for us to report here. There's no crime." At the suggestion of a friend, Beth then went to one of the area's larger police stations, where people listened to her and were very kind, but explained that they couldn't do anything. She wasn't in their jurisdiction. They made some phone calls and sent her to another station in Reno, where yet another officer, the most sympathetic yet, listened to Beth (and believed her when she said that Doug wouldn't just up and disappear), but then explained sadly that she couldn't do anything, either. To get on the Federal missing-persons list, the missing person has to meet certain criteria: has to be a child, an elderly person, on medication, or a danger to self and others. Doug doesn't fit any of those categories.

"If this were your father," Beth said, pleading, "what would you do? Tell me what to do!"

"I don't know," the officer said. "I'd be as angry and grieving as you are now. I just don't know."

She cried with Beth, and Beth left. But the next day, that officer called back, and said, "I took this to some of my supervisors, and we found a loophole. He's on the Federal missing-persons list now."

Someone else at the vigil knows that officer, and told us that he'd had a conversation with her after that. "Beth, she wanted me to tell you that she only did what she'd do for anyone in that situation, and what she hopes anyone would do for her in that situation. And she wants you to know that she's praying for you."

There were a lot of tears around the circle, of course. People talked about their memories of Doug, talked about seeing him and Beth light up when they were with each other, or when they talked about each other. Someone said, "I want to see that again," and Beth said, "So do I."

Many people were very carefully using present and future tense when they talked about Doug, but some used past tense. My stomach knotted whenever I heard that.

Today, Beth and some friends are going to search in the mountains around Truckee. Earlier this week, Beth spent seven hours in a rented plane, doing an aerial search; the next day, she hiked in the desert for seven hours, searching. She said that until she knows what's happened to Doug, whenever anyone suggests anywhere he might be, she's going to go look there. The needle-in-a-haystack aspect of this is terrifying, but it gives her something to do except sitting by the phone.

Her phone rang several times last night; whenever it did, I jumped, wondering if it was a call with news, but it never was.

Please keep praying for everyone involved.

Doug Henry

Yesterday at the hospital, I saw a missing-person flyer. I kept looking at the photo and looking at the name and thinking, wait, I know this person, don't I? How do I know this person?

Today, with the help of our church c-mail list and a phone call from a friend, I figured it out. Doug and his wife Beth go to my church, although to a different service than the one I usually attend. He left for work on May 21 and hasn't been seen since, and according to the friend who called me, there's been no activity on credit or bank cards -- and it would be completely out of character for him to run off. He and Beth have been married less than a year; they adore each other. He has children and grandchildren.

Here's the article that ran in the paper.

I suspect I didn't recognize the name and face on the flyer yesterday because they were out of context. Also, maybe my brain was protecting me from information that would have been too upsetting in the middle of a shift. It was a pretty quiet shift, but worrying about Doug wouldn't have helped me deal with patients.

Beth's having a prayer vigil at her house tonight. I'll be there. I can't even imagine what she must be going through right now. When I try to think about it, I feel as if all the oxygen has been sucked out of my lungs.

Please pray for Doug and Beth and their family.