Celeste, a white woman living in New Orleans, wakes up from a drunken stupor to find that Hurricane Katrina has devastated her city. She puts on flip flops and goes out into the flooded streets to loot. In the flooded street, a piece of sharp debris slices her calf open. She's rescued by some strangers on a skiff. They slow the bleeding and take her toward help. On the way, a couple is forced to give up their spots. Celeste is going in and out of consciousness. They reach a tent where an emergency medic ties her artery. They put her on a truck with other patients. A pregnant teenage girl named Lucella says they're being taken to the Baton Rouge hospital. A man named Randy says he was stabbed for his Capri Sun drink pouch. Soon, the truck stops. A man helps her out and tells her her and her group have priority when the next drivers come to pick them up and take them the rest of the way to the hospital. They're instructed to sit with a couple already waiting—Mr. and Mrs. Verbois, who are diabetic. There are many other groups by the highway. Mrs. Verbois says, “Some been here more than a day. Us, since morning. We run out of everything." The truck that brought them comes and goes, dropping off other groups, and still they wait for the one that's meant to take them away. Celeste begins to doubt the ambulance will ever come. Mr. Verbois tries to convince his wife to let Celeste and Lucella ahead of them when an ambulance finally comes, due to Celeste's blood loss and Lucella's overdue pregnancy. Mrs. Verbois refuses, and Celeste calls her a bitch, to which Mrs. Verbois says, “Get on outta here. What dope you do? Why you look so raggedy?” Celeste begins to hate her "for judging her without knowing her, and being right."

On the other side of the highway, Celeste sees a group of "sleepers"—the dead. Mr. Verbois says they drop them off here, too. The tarp originally used to cover them was taken by a waiting family who needed it for shelter. Celeste stands and limps across the highway to them. Mr. Verbois and Randy try to urge her back. Lucella announces she feels like the baby is kicking her stomach.

On the other side of the highway, Celeste examines the dead people and sits down beside one. She thinks, "He found the gate. Must be around here." Meanwhile Mr. Verbois is trying to convince Mrs. Verbois to hold Lucella's hand, but she refuses. Celeste thinks about the dead man: "Somehow she knew what it had been in his last minutes. A few inches of loneliness, same as selfishness, surrounded him like a fence at first, keeping him crouched, and close—a little row of appetites, open mouths on sticks. She thought to tell him they were not what they were cracked up to be, the things of this world, even vodka, and Andre Champagne and all the other Misters in this universe. Did he know? How did she know?" Lucella calls out to Celeste to come back to her. Celeste is delirious and imagines the dead man next to her, a cowboy, stands and extends her hands and they fly above everything together and kiss. She also sees herself as an older woman, telling the story of the hurricane, alive. But she feels that will not happen; instead she will pass on.

Just then, Mr. Verbois calls out to her offering her water from his and his wife's scarce and precious jug of water if she comes back. There are sirens in the distance. Mrs. Verbois screams to him: “What has moved you to save these scraps out here? What they got to live for next to us? What kind of fool you are?” He is silent.