A Captain's Duty

right.” They were taken aback, of course. They’d say, “You’re not supposed to be comforting me—I’m supposed to be comforting you !”
    By Friday afternoon, our little farmhouse was full. My sisters came up and added their own special flavor to the mix. The Phillips are a wild bunch with our own brand of humor, which not everyone gets, including Andrea sometimes. One example: that night, my sisters were joking with Andrea about Hollywood making a film about the hostage-taking and began casting all the parts: “Hmm, maybe George Clooney for the lead role.” Then my sister Dawn, God love her, for a reason known only to herself, brought out a framed prom picture from high school and placed it next to Andrea’s pillow on our bed. Andrea came into the bedroomand saw it sitting there, and she said, “Dawn, what in the world…”
    “Isn’t that hilarious?”
    “Isn’t what hilarious?”
    “My prom date, he looks just like Richard at that age.”
    It was true. The guy had the beard and everything. But what was his picture doing next to Andrea’s pillow? “Everyone said I went to my prom with my own brother!” Dawn said, breaking into peals of laughter. “Oh, I just had to bring it.”
    Andrea’s friends Amber and Paige, who’d volunteered to fly in early from her Colorado snowboarding trip, were also at the house. They knew not to treat her like a piece of broken china. At one point, Andrea told me, she was sitting at the dining room table next to the kitchen, and her friends were in there moving things around: her dishes and her tea kettle, just moving them a few feet from where she usually kept them. Paige and Amber had taken over Andrea’s role of managing the house and knew she hated to lose control of her kitchen. Paige looked at Andrea and said, “It’s just killing you, isn’t it?” she said.
    “What?”
    “That we’re in your kitchen.”
    They were rearranging things around just to get at her. Which is what Andrea needed. If you treat someone like her husband is going to die any minute, you’re not doing her any favors. Humor helped.
    Friday Andrea finally got some professional help. Maersk sent a couple of representatives, Jonathan and Alison, to deal with the media. It just about saved her life. But she was a little sarcastic when Jonathan walked through the door. Andrealooked at him and said in a half-joking way, “You got your ship back. What do you care what happens to my husband?” He must have thought, Okaaaaay, here we go. But Andrea was hurting.
    Neither Jonathan nor Alison had any idea of what they were walking into before they arrived, whether it would be a house full of angry Vermont hicks or hysterical types. They were suprised by the warm, sympathetic atmosphere they found. Jonathan was a stable, no-nonsense guy, while Alison became my wife’s new best friend. Alison instantly became part of the clan and she could empathize with what Andrea was going through. But what also helped was that Jonathan and Alison could see things as they were. They told the family, “Okay, this is what we’re going to do: We’re going to shut the TV off. We’re going to put up a tripod and a big pad of paper and we’re going to write on it any information that we can confirm. And we’re going to have someone handle the phones and let Andrea take a call only if she really needs to.” Alison always had a poster board and for every issue that came up, she would write down how the team was going to deal with it.
    The constant pull of watching the news was hard to deal with emotionally. It was constantly the same news, over and over, without the breakthrough Andrea was hoping for. She kept seeing my picture on the screen and it would go right through her. So Alison turned off the TV and from then on, the family got their information from the State Department, from the Department of Defense, and from Maersk only, which got Andrea off the roller-coaster of waiting for the next bulletin to flash across the TV screen. Now she had people screening phone calls. She’d hear someone’s name and say, “Oh, I’ll take that” or “I just can’t right now.”
    There was one thing that was kind of eerie that day back at my home. That afternoon, my optometrist called Andrea and said, “I heard Rich jumped off the boat. I’m sure he lost his glasses in the process. I’ve made up a new pair and I’m sending them over.” Then, with all the people coming in and out of the house, the toilet