CHICAGO ON THE SEINE CAMILLE BORDAS

I used to tell myself stories on the job, to make it feel exciting—spy stories, exfiltration stories, war stories. I used to come up with poignant little details that turned the repatriation cases I worked on into “Saving Private Ryan,” into “Johnny Got His Gun.”

I used to tell myself stories on the job, to make it feel exciting—spy stories, exfiltration stories, war stories. I used to come up with poignant little details that turned the repatriation cases I worked on into “Saving Private Ryan,” into “Johnny Got His Gun.” Repatriation—there’s such a ring to it, such drama. I imagined maimed bodies in dirty tents, nurses changing brown, bloodied gauze, bending over beds to tell the wounded, “The call came in—you’re going home.” Yet I worked in Special Consular Services at our Embassy in Paris. The Americans I helped repatriate mostly broke legs in Pigalle or crashed rental cars in Normandy. Miracles didn’t happen for them in Lourdes—people don’t talk about it, but those for whom miracles don’t happen in Lourdes tend to leave France in worse shape than they arrived in.

Occasionally, I had to send a body home. What I’d noticed was that death abroad was more common on package tours. It appeared that, contrary to popular belief, the group didn’t lift you up but in fact granted you permission to go soft and fall ill. A group needed a weakest link, demanded it, and there was always a chance that you would be that link.

Eva Glasper exemplified this. She’d died the night before, collapsing after a three-course dinner on the Right Bank. She’d been in Paris for an engineering conference, not on vacation, but the idea was the same: for three days, she’d been part of a group, followed the group’s every move, and she’d died in a foreign land, alone among strangers.