A Captain's Duty

during the day we were just going to have to sit there and bake.
    The navy had somehow found a Somali interpreter in record time and gotten him on the Bainbridge. He was speaking on the radio with the pirates. The Leader would key the radio and say, “Get Abdullah, get Abdullah, get Abdullah.” Once Abdullah got on, I couldn’t make out what they were saying, as they switched to Somali, but I’m sure they were demanding ransom and the navy was demanding to know my condition. Every so often I would yell something—“I’m Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama ”—when the Leader keyed the radio, just to let the navy know I was alive.
    I was down to my khakis and socks. I’d left my shoes in the MOB and it was too damn hot to have a shirt on. I was constantly wet from sweat. And I was starting to get frustrated, because I hadn’t had a chance to escape. I was getting mad and thinking to myself: Don’t be a wimp, if you see a chance to get out, you have to take it.
    I also prayed. “God, give me the strength and the patience to see my chance and to take it. I know I’m going to get only one shot. Give me the wisdom to know it.” I never prayed to get away, I just prayed for strength and patience and knowledge to know when to make my move. I believe God helps those who help themselves. Asking for Him to do all the work is just not my style.
    But nothing helped my chances of escape. There wasn’t a single instant when I wasn’t under the Somalis’ watchful eyes. I began to wonder if I’d ever get my chance.
     
    Back at home, Andrea wasn’t sleeping very well. She would lie down on my side of the bed just to have that closeness, with the Polarfleece jacket shared between her and Amber, each of them holding on to one arm. “I just wanted to connect to you so badly,” she told me later. “I would say to myself, ‘Rich, if you can hear me, if you can feel me, I’m okay and we’re going to get through this.’” That was what was so hard for her: every time I’d been sick or injured, she’d been right there beside me, always in full nurse mode. But now she couldn’t be. She couldn’t help me or comfort me or even know what I was going through. And that was the hardest thing of all. I really believe she had it tougher than I did.
    Before dawn was hardest. That’s when she was all alone with no one else to take care of. So she would pray to God. “‘Why am I asking you?’” she remembers saying. “‘You know I’m something of a heathen.’ I have my beliefs but I don’t go to church regularly and when you see all the pain and misery that any ER nurse witnesses, it wears on your faith.” ButAndrea was still a believer and now she needed God more than at any other time in her life. And she let Him know that.
    A couple of days later, Father Privé, the former pastor of St. Thomas Church near our house, now living in nearby Morrisville, was sitting at our dining room table holding Andrea’s hand. We both had a special relationship with him. Father Privé had brought us back to attending church regularly after we’d fallen away from going to mass. Andrea turned to him and said, “Father, you know we’re not the best Catholics. But I’m frightened, I really am. I just don’t want to lose Rich. You have a lot of pull….” He smiled. Andrea was serious, though. “Please pray that if there is anyone out there who can help my husband, for God to give them the strength to do it.” He promised to do that. “I just couldn’t imagine not having you by my side for the rest of my life,” she told me.
    At the same time Andrea was holding Father Privé’s hand back in Underhill, I was thinking about him in that dark lifeboat. I’d always liked the guy. He had this way of telling a story about getting up early in the morning to make doughnuts and watching the cardinals arguing with each other at the bird feeder in the parish yard. “And that reminded me of Saint Thomas,” he would say, and he’d be off into a Biblical parable. Plus, he had balls. When the Vatican announced that altar girls would no longer be allowed, he climbed up into his pulpit that Sunday and told our congregation that he would be ignoring the order and would be keeping the altar girls in the church’s masses. He was a rebel, in his own way. Thinking about him and his homilies helped me through some bad moments as the hours dragged by.
    Back in Vermont, my friends and family, even the agnostics, held a prayer circle