A Captain's Duty

took the phone. “Matt, this is totally off the record,” Andrea told him, “but I’ve always liked your show, so I’ll say hi.” And he asked her what I would think about all the attention the story was getting. Andrea said I’d probably laugh and say, “Andrea’s got it harder. I’m only dealing with four pirates.She’s got the whole media.” (True.) And Matt laughed and said, “We’re that bad?” And she told him, “Yeah, you are!”
    Andrea paced from room to room, completely numb. She told me later that, for moments at a time, she would feel like she was having an out-of-body experience. You never expect to be the person on the cover of People magazine. You think, This can’t be happening. This only happens to other people. Not just the tragedy, but the media saturation, the disembodied voice from the TV talking about the most intimate details of your life. Andrea would see a picture on TV and say, “Oh my God, it’s Richard.” What was happening was intensely personal, but now everyone was watching it unfold like it was a made-for-TV movie.
    She began to notice odd things: that in times of crisis, people sent enormous amounts or food: lasagna, bars of chocolate, tins of cookies, brownies. Friends she hadn’t heard from in twenty years called, but people she spoke to just last week never did. Some people around her resented not being at the center of the story, even if that story was a tragedy. And Andrea realized that when you’re under so much pressure, you tend to lash out at people close to you. “When I got frustrated, I would snap at a family member,” she said. “You had to be stoic with everyone else, so my family took the brunt of my anger.”
    It was hard for her just to get out of the house. But Thursday afternoon she managed to sneak away and walk back across our fields to visit an elderly neighbor who lives alone. Andrea knew she’d be worried about me and the kids and she wanted to let her know that everyone was okay. That little walk was one of the few times she could clear her head and be alone—except when she was in the bathroom.
    The press frenzy was growing more intense. Andrea could see reporters from every window in our house as she paced from room to room. They were blocking the two-lane road in front—the only road into town—and barricading our neighbor’s driveway. So when the governor, Jim Douglas, called and asked, “What can we do for you, Mrs. Phillips?” she told him, “Send the state police and get these people off my front yard!” The town clerk offered to have everyone up in the parking lot of the town hall and finally the family asked the reporters to pack up and go there. That took an enormous weight off Andrea’s mind.
    Later in the week, a neighbor told Andrea she was talking with a female television reporter while this whole circus was under way. This journalist said, “You know, I saw Andrea sitting out on the back porch and I so wanted to run up there and get a scoop, but this woman just looked so serene. She had a moment of peace and I didn’t want to take that away from her.” Andrea was so thankful that the journalist let her have those few minutes alone. Some of the reporters showed real humanity.
    She kept getting updates throughout the night from the company and the two FBI women: the navy was on the scene and they’d had a visual of me, which, she later learned, in a hostage situation, they refer to as “proof of life.” “What’s he doing, getting a suntan?” Andrea joked to her friends. They understood that Andrea’s offbeat sense of humor was a coping mechanism. She was really thinking, What the hell was Rich thinking, getting on that lifeboat? But deep down she knew I was smart enough to do what was needed. There was also a report that the navy had had some communication with me andactually heard my voice. So she was getting some straight information and she was really grateful for that. And Thursday night, they gave her this cryptic message: “It’s either going to be a very good Friday, or it’s going to be a Happy Easter.”
    “I went to sleep dreaming of you,” she told me.

FOURTEEN
Day 3, 0200 Hours
    More Warships Head to Scene of Hostage American Ship Captain: Somali pirates and their hostage American sea captain were adrift Friday in a lifeboat off the Horn of Africa shadowed by a U.S. destroyer, with more warships on the way in a U.S. show of force.
    — FOX News, April 10
    A s we passed into the early