As night falls, the bell begins to toll. Slowly, gently even, once for each name. Forty-nine times. It takes several minutes. It feels as if it will never end.
A final ringing reverberates into the humid Florida air, settling over the thousands of people gathered in downtown Orlando.
For two days, they have been glued to their television screens or cellphones – "struggling with the darkness that has passed over our city," in the words of Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. Now, finally, they are no longer at home or in their cars, but together, acknowledging that things will never be the same.
Eduardo Sotomayor and his boyfriend, David Santos, are in the crowd. They first met last fall at Pulse, the gay nightclub where the shooting took place. They were regulars there. Mr. Sotomayor was friends with Juan Guerrero and Christopher "Drew" Leinonen, a couple killed in the attack. Another close friend, shot in the arm and leg, is still in the hospital.
The two men know, in a visceral way, that but for small decisions of timing, they could have been at Pulse that night, dancing and drinking and having fun. They are trying not to think about it, preferring to focus on supporting the families of the victims.
But the more people I speak to in Orlando, the more the theme recurs: It could have been me, it could have been you, it could have been anyone. Miriam Guttierrez, whose daughter sometimes went to Pulse, talks about having a panic attack while having breakfast at Denny's on Tuesday. What if a gunman came in and shot up the place? A bank teller describes how her adrenalin surged when a regular customer, always a little odd, suddenly grew more agitated than usual on Wednesday.
Stella Siracuza, a supermarket owner, says she was already nervous whenever her 19-year old daughter went out to see a movie, thinking of the two shootings in theatres in recent years, one in Louisiana and one in Colorado. "You always see the news," she says. "But when something hits so close to home, it becomes a different reality."
I feel as though I am witnessing a nation being traumatized, town by town, city by city. Now Orlando has joined a terrible fellowship it never wanted to enter. Now yet another city knows a particular brand of shock and crushing sadness, the same sadness experienced by Newtown, Roseburg, San Bernardino, Isla Vista, Oak Creek, Aurora, Washington …
A feeling of déjà vu
It's 11 o'clock at night on Sunday and I am sitting in an expanse of grass beneath a tree heavy with Spanish moss. Across a driveway is the Beardall Senior Center, blocks from Orlando's main hospital. It's the place where families are coming to learn whether their loved ones have died in the slaughter.
A dozen people emerge from the centre. One woman cannot walk for weeping and is supported by friends. One of the men stops. He leans over, his hands on his thighs, head hanging down. He uses his own body for support as he tries to breathe through the enormity of what has just happened. These are the parents of one of the victims and they have just arrived from Puerto Rico.
For me, one of the worst things about reporting on the violence in Orlando was the sense of déjà vu. Four years ago, I arrived in Newtown, Conn., hours after a gunman killed 26 people, most of them children, at an elementary school. A few months later, I went to Boston the day bombs exploded at the finish line of the city's marathon. Last fall, I travelled to Paris a few days after terrorist attacks killed 130 people there.
On the flight to Orlando, I make a plan. In my notebook, there is a list: I have scribbled "site; hospital; witnesses; gay clubs." I hate that prior experience has taught me, more or less, what to do. I hate that I have acquired this particular expertise.
Each of these events is its own particular horror, etched on your memory. But in Orlando, it is the echo of Newtown – the most difficult thing I've ever covered – that is with me throughout the long days.
Some of what unfolds in Orlando I have seen before. The ordinary people stunned by what they've witnessed, some of them – police officers, paramedics – doing their jobs in extraordinary circumstances. The morbid fascination with the killer and his motivations. The tales of survival and of heroism. The stories of life and death being a matter of chance, of timing. The strange coincidences significant only in retrospect: a child who didn't go to school that day, or a young man who got dressed up to go dancing that night but never went.
The fact that an event feels familiar doesn't lessen its tragedy. If anything, it makes it worse. Unlike previous shootings, the massacre in Orlando targeted the LGBT community, a community that already knows what it is to feel unsafe. Most of the victims were gay men who were either Hispanic or of Hispanic descent, doubly marginalized by the dominant culture. The killer had frequented Pulse; he also claimed to act on behalf of a murderous extremist ideology and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
About 10,000 'sounds reasonable'
At a press conference at Orlando Regional Medical Center, at least 100 journalists are crammed into a room listening to a survivor and a group of doctors describe their experiences of the shooting. There are questions about the extent of the injuries and the arrival of the wounded.
A British reporter asks Michael Cheatham, a senior trauma surgeon, how many gunshot injuries he has treated in his 20-year career. Dr. Cheatham says he's never thought about that before then begins to do some rough math out loud. About 10,000 "sounds reasonable," he estimates.
Most of the people I speak to in Orlando approach the issue of guns with trepidation. Some want to focus on the victims; for others, discussing gun laws is a third rail of political topics, something likely to start a heated argument. "Guns are a part of our lives whether we like it or not," says Daisy Cid, 43, as she visits a memorial for two of the victims. But, she adds, "there is no hobby out there that calls for an AR-15 [rifle]."
After Newtown, there was a sense that something had to change. However entrenched the nation's politics, surely they would shift when faced with an event of such magnitude. But not even a modest revision of the nation's gun laws could pass the U.S. Senate.
Perhaps this time will be different. While the motives of the gunman in Orlando differed from the one in Newtown, "the instruments of death were so similar," President Barack Obama said on Thursday. Democratic senators are pushing for a vote on two measures to keep guns out of dangerous hands.
On Wednesday night, I attend a vigil for two of the victims: Juan Rivera Velazquez and his partner, Luis Conde, who ran a hair salon together. Hundreds of people, in the sweltering heat, pack into the area next to the salon, holding candles . The couple's family members are wearing the salon's signature colours: black and lime green. Three doors down is a gun store that sells the same weapon that killed Mr. Rivera and Mr. Conde.
The next morning, I am at the hotel breakfast buffet. The room is full of people tucking into eggs and cereal. A television screen on a wall is tuned to News 13. One segment ends and another begins: a slow montage of the names of the victims, accompanied by music. The room grows quiet. People stop eating and look up. For a few moments, we are united in grief and shame. Then it is over, and we go back to our lives.