Here is what I know about crisis management:
The first sixty seconds after you receive catastrophic information are the most important. Not because of what you do in those sixty seconds — you rarely do anything useful in the first sixty seconds because your brain is still loading the updated version of reality — but because of what you don't do. You don't panic loudly. You don't call five people simultaneously. You don't make decisions before you understand the full shape of the problem.
You breathe. You count. You let the sixty seconds pass.
I counted to sixty outside my mother's apartment building in the cold Thursday evening with Damien's text on my screen and the smell of pepper soup on my coat, and then I called Damien.
He picked up on the first ring.
"I know," he said.
"Tell me
