For Stunned Federal Workers, Sleeplessness, Anger and Tears

One was fired by email at 12:47 a.m. Another wept with colleagues as security escorted her from the office. A third frantically tried to fill a prescription after she got a 24-hour notice that her health care was ending.

Then there is Jacqueline Devine, a contractor in the office of H.I.V.-AIDS at the United States Agency for International Development. Ms. Devine, a behavioral scientist who worked largely in sub-Saharan Africa on H.I.V. treatment, was among those affected by an abrupt mass firing in her Washington office on Jan. 28. She received no severance pay.

“I’ve been going through the stages of grief, and it’s not a linear process, I’m finding out,” Ms. Devine said in an interview last week. “You kind of go back and move forward and go through anger and sadness.” Nights are difficult. “I either am not sleeping, or I’m sleeping to escape,” she said. “Or it’s waking up at 1 or 2 a.m. and not being able to fall asleep again.”