Full Body Burden (44 page)

After years of marriage, her heart is still in her throat every single time she sees him.

One evening, in the midst of pretrial preparation, Peter picks up the book
A Civil Action
by Jonathan Harr, the story of a dramatic lawsuit by a group of citizens in a Boston suburb against two corporate giants
that had secretly polluted the local water, causing leukemia in children. He reads page after page in horror. In many ways the story mirrors the Rocky Flats saga, and it’s a strong parallel to his own situation. He thinks about the plant and its history and all the people, all the stories, everything that’s happened, the broad range of characters and the scope of human tragedy.
It’s Dickensian
, he thinks.

I
THINK
about the orange-tagged deer grazing in the buffer zone and the beef cattle on the other side of the fence. The rabbits with their radioactive feet and the tiny Preble’s meadow jumping mouse—are his little feet radioactive, too? The birds who chirp in the trees where I sit outside to eat my lunch and the prairie dogs who pop their heads up from their burrows when I walk around the site with Debra. Animals don’t heed boundary signs. What do those birds carry with them when they fly off into the sky? How far down do prairie dogs go when they burrow underground? What about the rabbits in my old backyard? Were they hot?

Three weeks after my lunch with Diane, I quit. I’m offered a part-time job at the Colorado School of Mines, an engineering college in Golden, teaching literature to freshmen. It will carry me through until I graduate in May. There’s no doubt in my mind. The money isn’t as good and I’m not sure how I’ll keep the bills paid, but my time at Rocky Flats is over.

“So you’re going to be teaching Shakespeare and Dickens to engineering students?” Mr. K laughs when he stops by to say good-bye. “Good luck with that!”

I’m going to miss the people I work with, including Mr. K; George, the turkey-sandwich guy; Patricia and her geeky tech-writer pal; even Debra and Diane. I’ll miss the early-morning drives out to the east gate with the sun above the dark blue mountains.

On the afternoon of my last day, I stop by the guard shack to turn in my badge. I’ve heard stories about the mountains of paperwork employees have to sign when they quit. But there’s nothing for me to sign.

“Nothing?” I ask.

“Nope,” the guard snaps. He’s in a rush. I’m not the only person in
line. “You’re an employee of the Sunnyside Temp Agency, not EG&G or the Department of Energy. Your agreement is with them.”

My agreement with them is over.

But my real relationship with Rocky Flats has only just begun. I have boxes of notes, employee newsletters, newspaper articles, my journals, and a burning desire to research the full story of the plant. Now that I’ve been on the inside of Rocky Flats and I’m beginning to understand it from both sides of the fence—the workers and the activists, the government and the local residents—I want to write.

I call Karma. “I’m going to write a book about Rocky Flats,” I say.

There’s a long pause. “Big subject,” she says. “Are you scared? No one says anything about Rocky Flats.”

“I want to write about the two things that have frightened me most in life,” I say. “Rocky Flats, and Dad’s alcoholism.” I can’t tell the story of the plant without telling the story of my family. It all seems connected. The ironic thing about all of this, I think, is that I spent years in Europe, traveling around and looking for things to write about. Nothing had ever happened to me in Arvada, Colorado, I thought, that would be interesting to anyone. It’s turned out that the most important story to tell is quite literally in my own backyard.

I
N
J
ANUARY
1996 I start my new teaching job and spend evenings finishing my Ph.D. dissertation. I’m supposed to graduate in May, but my health worsens.

One weekend I go hiking with a friend. The snow has melted and spring flowers are just beginning to appear in the high country. We head up to Crested Butte and plan to hike up Refrigerator Pass, an area famous for its wildflowers. We’ve only been on the trail for an hour when I have to stop. The peak still lies ahead; we’re in a long, low valley filled with red and blue buds peeking through the winter grass, and the path is easy and flat. “I need to lie down,” I say. I feel very faint. “You’re running a fever,” my friend says, his hand on my forehead. My heart is racing. My whole body feels swollen. We turn back.

I go back to the doctor, a new one, and am diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. “It’s mostly in your head,” he says. How can this be in my head? The fever is constant. I have no energy. I’m scared I won’t graduate.

On April 16, I turn in my dissertation in the morning and see yet another doctor in the afternoon. The left lymph node in my neck feels as big as a football. I’m supposed to begin preparing for my oral defense in May, but it’s hard to think straight. I’m referred to two more specialists. The next morning I write in my journal:
I dreamt I was a medical experiment
.

On April 29 I meet with an oncologist. He schedules a biopsy, and tells me that it could be lymphoma or Hodgkin’s disease. I want to wait for the surgery until after my dissertation defense, two weeks away, but he says the surgery can’t wait. At the end of our meeting he tells me to go home and think about who could raise my sons if something happened to me.

That night, Sean wakes from a bad dream and crawls into my bed. I’ve been careful not to tell the boys all that is happening, but they seem to sense something is wrong. Sean curls up into a warm ball by my side. It isn’t long before Nathan and Heathcliff join us.

We sleep.

P
ETER
N
ORDBERG
and his colleagues work steadily, despite the fact that many of the thousands of class members have died or moved elsewhere. This is a crucially important case, not only to the thousands of people whose lives and properties were affected or might be affected in the future, but to the history and legacy of Rocky Flats. The DOE, Rockwell, and Dow Chemical want the full story of Rocky Flats to be suppressed and quickly forgotten.

There has never been any health monitoring of people living around Rocky Flats. Peter believes that the lives and experiences of these people should not be in vain. If the DOE and Rockwell prevail, it will be easier to make people believe that some plutonium is acceptable, never mind any of the other toxic and radioactive elements released into the environment.
Rocky Flats could become a sort of poster child for other contaminated
areas around the country that the government wants to turn into wildlife refuges open to the public, potentially putting local communities at risk.

Peter does his research, carries things around in his head, and puts off writing a brief until the last possible second. Then crunch time begins. He and Mykaila are a team. She works with Peter and reads every opinion, every word of every brief. She keeps the coffeepot full twenty-four hours a day, and the glass of cranberry juice filled on his desk. Food is a no-forks affair; Peter, if he eats at all, eats with one hand and keeps writing with the other. The Nordbergs are sociable with their friends and neighbors, but during crunch time no one comes to the house. The kids are more or less on their own. They know that their parents, and especially their dad, are intensely focused, and they know what’s at stake. The whole household stays up with Peter in his near-trancelike state.

When the brief is finally finished, it’s like a holiday. Peter pushes back from his desk, plays Pinball Wizard for a while, finishes his last glass of cranberry juice, and sleeps.

The case drags on.

O
N
M
AY
4, 1996, I have surgery to remove the left lymph node in my neck. I’m just days away from my dissertation defense and graduation. I haven’t even considered the question the doctor asked me: Who will raise your children if you have lymphoma? It’s an unfair and impossible question.

I come home with bandages and a stiff white brace around my neck, and sleep for an entire day.

On May 6, the results come back.

No cancer.

I cry with relief. My mother brings the boys back home and we spend the afternoon planting spring flowers in our front yard.

The following day, May 7, I pass my dissertation defense with the brace and bandages still around my neck. The professors who make up my committee politely refrain from asking about my health, yet afterward they’re not only congratulatory but relieved when I tell them it isn’t
cancer. My mother is proud that I’ll have a Ph.D.; I’m one of the few people in my family to go to graduate school. Karma and Karin will follow soon after.

A few days later I meet with the oncologist again. He tells me that my body is definitely fighting something, and fighting hard, but that he doesn’t know what it is.

I ask what the next step is. I’m greatly relieved not to have cancer, but the symptoms haven’t gone away.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I treat cancer, and it’s not cancer. I don’t know what it is. I wish you the best.” He escorts me to the door.

When the neck brace comes off, I have a scar running down the side of my neck. I tell Sean and Nathan it’s a pirate scar. One of my friends at school tells me it’s a “downwinder scar.” I ask what she means. She tells me there’s a stretch near Hanford, Washington, that people call “death mile.” Hanford is, like Rocky Flats, a nuclear production complex, and residents who live downwind from the facility claim there have been unusually high levels of cancer deaths, and many have neck scars from thyroid operations they blame on radioactive releases from the plant.

My brother and sisters, especially Karma and Kurt, have similar symptoms, particularly chronic fatigue, fever, and swollen lymph nodes. No one has any answers for us. But we’re Norwegian. It’s not acceptable to complain. If you wait long enough, my mother says, just about anything will get better or go away. And our health problems are minor compared to those of others we know.

I
F
T
AMARA
Smith Meza learned anything from growing up in a strong family, it was how to make decisions in her own way. She’s not afraid to buck convention.

After the surgery for her tumor, the doctor recommends radiation and chemotherapy. What, Tamara asks, will be the benefit or outcome? She’s told that the radiation will likely cause her to lose her eyesight, as the tumor is behind one eye. Further, the doctor says, people with her type of tumor have an 85–90 percent chance that the tumor will return, even after radiation and chemo.

“Then I don’t want it,” she says. “If we don’t know it’s really going to help or not, then I’m going to forgo it.”

The doctor informs her that her chance of surviving beyond five years is very slim. It could be less. The treatment might help. It’s worth taking a chance.

“Well,” she says, “what’s the point of doing radiation and chemotherapy if I’m still going to die? What are my other treatment options?”

There are no other treatment options.

With her family’s help, Tamara finds a doctor in New York who offers alternative treatment for her type of cancer, including radical diet changes. Slowly Tamara’s health improves. It’s not until her third visit with her New York doctor that she asks him if he’s ever heard of Rocky Flats. “Of course!” he says. She tells him that she moved out to Standley Lake when she was four and has lived near the plant all her life. For a moment he’s speechless. He tells her that there is extensive evidence that shows people who have brain cancer have often had some type of exposure to radioactivity. “In my opinion,” he says, “I’m sure that your brain cancer is related in some way to growing up by Rocky Flats.”

Tamara’s not surprised, but discovering the cause of her cancer isn’t what matters most to her. What matters are her faith and her family, and making the best of whatever time she’s got left. She continues to have regular MRIs. After three years, there’s no sign of another tumor.

F
OLLOWING THE
raid, the DOE began looking for a contractor that could handle cleanup at the plant without going overboard on cost, and in April 1995, Kaiser-Hill Inc. won the contract to begin to coordinate the Rocky Flats cleanup. EG&G continued to manage the plant. About a year later, in April 1996, Mark Silverman stepped down from his position as Rocky Flats manager for the DOE.
He was fifty-seven, and his time at Rocky Flats had been notable for a more honest dialogue with the media, a reversal of the DOE’s long-standing policy of rewarding contractors for work attempted (rather than work completed), and for the hosting of the first delegation of Russians to visit Rocky Flats. The job, he said, was taking too big a toll on his personal life. He’d spent three
years getting to his office by 6:00 a.m., working into the evening, and then working long into the night from his computer at home. Sometimes he couldn’t sleep anyway.

He was also discouraged by what he saw as growing apathy in local communities, and worried that citizen indifference might hurt the planned cleanup. “
We may have done too good a job of convincing the public that we’re doing things safely at the site,” he said. “As a result, people aren’t so concerned about the site. If the people don’t care, the elected officials don’t care. And if the elected officials don’t care, we can’t get the funding to do the job out here.”

Four years after he quits, Silverman is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, which he will fight for another four years.

The DOE said in 1995 that the technology did not exist to clean up the plant adequately, and estimated the project would take seventy years and cost $36 billion.
In 2000, the same year when Silverman’s cancer is diagnosed, Kaiser-Hill wins a second contract to complete the closure and cleanup of the entire 6,245-acre site when they agree to do it in less than six years on a budget of $3.96 billion. EG&G is out. Where will the corners be cut? The public won’t find out until after the ink is dry.

D
ESPITE ALL
his training, Randy’s never had to fight an actual plutonium fire. He’s fought a grass fire or two, along with fires caused by lightning, a fairly common occurrence. One time he’d been standing at the west gate with another firefighter, picking up a pizza for dinner, when they saw lightning strike the ground. They saw the flames and called it in; the fire ended up burning 110 acres in the buffer zone before it was contained.