Turbulence-2-4
2002 Words
Grandma Lucy’s eye twinkled, but Kennedy couldn’t tell if she were making a joke or not. She didn’t have time to wonder long before the bearded man in the turban jumped out of his chair with a startling shout.
“What’s he think he’s doing?” muttered the Seahawks fan with the BO. Several other passengers turned their heads as well.
The traveler pounded his fist into his seatback and yelled something frantic in Arabic.
The man in Carhartts stepped out of the bathroom and stood frozen in the aisle. BO Dude lowered his head onto his tray table and covered it with his hands as if he were a first-grader in an earthquake drill.
The man in the turban yelled aggressively, waving his hands in the air as if to emphasize a point.
“Get down,” BO Dude hissed to Kennedy. “That maniac is about to take over the plane.”
CHAPTER 5Kennedy swallowed as the flight attendant behind her grabbed the phone from the wall. “Captain, this is Tracy,” she whispered, and then her voice fell so Kennedy couldn’t hear anymore. She glanced over at Willow, whose face had fallen ghastly white.
All sorts of horrific scenarios ran through Kennedy’s mind. The man pulling a machine gun out from his billowing garments and raining lead on the entire cabin. Or revealing an armory of bombs and explosive taped across his chest and demanding entrance to the cockpit. That couldn’t be it, though, could it? There were security measures. Metal detectors. TSA agents. He couldn’t have boarded their plane if he was that dangerous, could he?
BO Dude turned in his seat, still covering his head and laying low. “We’ve got to take him down now,” he hissed back to Willow’s friend. “It’s the only way. We take him down, or we don’t get off this plane alive.”
“Wait a minute,” Ray protested.
The Seahawks fan had already unbuckled himself. “I’m telling you, it’s either do something now, or we all end up blown to bits.”
Kennedy thought back to the mother who had warned her family to get off the plane before takeoff. None of this could be happening, could it? Even her dad, as paranoid as he was, had never given her any hint of what to do in the event of a skyjacking.
“Stay in your seat, young man.”
Kennedy was surprised at Grandma Lucy’s authoritative voice.
“Turn up your hearing aid,” BO Dude replied. “When a terrorist starts shouting in Arabic on a crowded plane, he’s not asking for a bag of peanuts.”
Grandma Lucy stood. She was short enough that she didn’t have to stoop to keep from hitting her head on the fixture above. “No, he’s not. And he’s not speaking Arabic, either. It’s Dari, which means he’s from Afghanistan, and he’s saying that there’s something wrong with his father. It sounds like he might be having a heart attack.”
She nodded at a male flight attendant who knelt down in front of the robed man and was checking his pulse with his fingers on the side of his throat. Kennedy let out her breath and felt sheepish for how quickly she had assumed the man must be a terrorist. So much for being against racial profiling.
Willow let out a forced laugh, and she and Ray went back to their movie.
The flight attendant Tracy who had been whispering on the phone now addressed the whole airplane over the PA system. “We have a medical situation on board and need everyone to remain seated. If you are a medical professional willing to offer assistance, please inform one of us on the flight crew.”
Grandma Lucy reached out to stop the woman as she passed down the aisle. “I’m willing to help.”
“Do you have medical training?” Tracy asked.
“No, but I speak a little Dari.”
“Ok, come with me. We’ll probably need to get him to the back of the cabin anyway. We have oxygen back here, and the AED if he needs it.”
Grandma Lucy followed Tracy to the Afghani family in the front of the cabin. Kennedy wondered what it would be like in seven years when she had her medical degree and could offer assistance in an emergency like this. She still wasn’t sure what field of medicine she wanted to go into. Pediatrics was out. She’d never felt comfortable around kids, and the thought of dealing with children with any disease more severe than the common cold was downright depressing. She figured surgery would be interesting, but she didn’t love the idea of bending over cut-open bodies ten hours a stretch. She’d probably start off in internal medicine and decide to specialize from there once something caught her attention. She’d had her eye on immunology for some time now, but expecting her to choose a specialty now was like asking a seventh-grader to pick their college major. It just didn’t work that way. How would she know what she enjoyed or what she was good at without a few more years of experience? Thankfully, nobody was in a rush except for Kennedy herself, who would be happy to have a more definitive ten-year plan than graduate from medical school.
At some point, of course, she wanted to marry. But when? If she was too busy to date anyone seriously as an undergrad, there was no way she’d find the time for a relationship in med school. Her residency would be even worse. Once she was ready to settle down with anyone, would there be any decent men still single?
Dominic was a good guy. She wished he enjoyed reading fiction so they had more to talk about. But even though she enjoyed her time with him and experienced a little girlish excitement when she’d get ready for one of their quasi-dates, she always felt like she had to prove something to him. Prove that she was spiritually fit enough to be in a relationship with a police chaplain. Prove that she was mature enough to go out with someone who had already been married and widowed before his thirtieth birthday. Prove to herself that she wasn’t at least a tiny bit uncomfortable when they were together, struggling to find things to talk about that weren’t God, the Bible, and Kennedy’s life as a missionary kid.
She couldn’t remember why she was thinking about Dominic by the time the Afghani son helped his ashen-faced father stumble to the snack station in the back of the cabin. Two flight attendants, Grandma Lucy, and a middle-aged man in a fancy suit hovered over him.
His son repeated the same word over and over.
“He says he can’t breathe,” Grandma Lucy translated.
“Sit him down here.”
The well-dressed passenger knelt, checking the patient’s pulse while Tracy strapped an oxygen mask across his face. Kennedy had a hard time focusing on their words as Grandma Lucy was standing over them holding a conversation of her own. With one hand lifted to the heavens and one aimed down toward the patient’s head, Grandma Lucy raised her voice.
“God, you know this man’s needs. You know his history. You know his body. You know exactly what’s wrong and exactly how to fix it. And I believe in Jesus’ name that you want to heal him. And so we pray for your healing. We pray for your ...”
“Here’s the medical kit, doctor.” A male flight attendant passed the case to the man in the suit, who flung it open and rummaged around. The patient’s son gripped the doctor’s hand and repeated the same phrase with an urgency in his voice that made Kennedy’s lungs seize up in anxiety.
“No pulse-ox?” the doctor asked, pressing against the patient’s fingertips and frowning at the results.
The patient signaled to his throat wildly.
“I know.” The doctor spoke softly but couldn’t keep a certain edge of tension out of his voice.
“This is all we have,” Tracy explained apologetically, while Grandma Lucy lifted her head once more and continued her prayer.
“Lord, this doctor needs equipment. And you’ve promised that when we ask for anything in your name, you’ll give it to us, and so we ask in the name of Jesus for whatever he needs to help his patient be healed. And we claim that healing, Lord. We claim it in the name of Jesus. We claim his ...”
“Ok, ma’am.” Tracy set aside the phone she’d been talking into and gently pushed on Grandma Lucy’s shoulder. “I think the professionals can take it from here.”
“Actually,” the doctor frowned, “I might need some kind of health history. Maybe she should stick around, only more quietly.”
If Grandma Lucy was upset by his request, she didn’t show it. She kept the same position but this time only moved her lips instead of giving free reign to her words. To judge by her facial expressions, however, the enforced silence only increased the fervency of her prayers.
The adult son continued to shoot rapid-fire questions at the doctor who tried assuring him in English that he was doing the best he could.
Tracy hung up the phone. “We’re only twenty minutes from an airport with a hospital nearby.”
“I don’t know if he’ll make it that long.” The doctor yanked a stethoscope out of the medical kit.
“We do have an AED on board,” Tracy told him.
Grandma Lucy opened her eyes and declared definitively, “He’s not having a heart attack.”
Tracy sighed. “Ma’am, I think maybe if you have a seat, we can ask for your help if we need it.”
“It’s not a heart attack,” she repeated.
The doctor lowered the stethoscope. “No, it’s not his heart. She’s right. Sounds like pneumonia. Can you ask the son if his father has a history of lung disease?”
“I don’t know the word.” Grandma Lucy frowned. “But I’ll try to come up with something.” She asked a question in Dari and listened to the son’s quick reply.
“I can’t understand all of it,” she admitted, “but he said something about medicine for a cough he’s had.”
“Medicine?” the doctor repeated. “Ask him if he has the medicine with him. Ask him if it’s a new prescription.”
Grandma Lucy nodded. It took a round or two of charades before the son understood what the doctor wanted. He hurried back toward his seat to find his father’s carry-on.
“Should I tell the captain to land?” Tracy asked.
“Let’s plan on it,” the doctor answered. “But if we’re dealing with an allergic reaction of some kind, we might be able to handle it here.” He pulled a syringe out of the medical kit and checked the label.
The son hurried back up the aisle and thrust a pill bottle into the doctor’s empty hand.
“This is what he’s been taking?” he asked. Grandma Lucy didn’t have to translate. The son pointed to the pills, then to his father and pantomimed dumping out a tablet and swallowing.
The doctor squinted at the label. “Penicillin. Probably for the pneumonia. Can you ask him if his father’s ever had this drug before?”
Grandma Lucy didn’t have time to ask before the patient shot out his hand and grabbed the doctor by the wrist. He motioned to his throat.
“His trachea’s swollen shut.” The doctor swept his arms to the sides to make more room. He uncapped the syringe. “Let’s roll.” He plunged the needle into the man’s leg before anyone had time to look away.
Kennedy grimaced but still leaned toward them Waiting. Would the medicine work? How did the doctor know he’d given him the right amount?
The patient’s eyes were wide with fear. His son knelt beside him, muttering what sounded like a prayer under his breath.
The doctor pulled the syringe away. More waiting.
“Shouldn’t it be working by now?” Tracy asked.
The doctor frowned but didn’t reply.
“Help him, Jesus,” Grandma Lucy whispered.
The doctor listened to his heart once more. “Better get that AED ready.”
Kennedy wanted to pry her eyes away but couldn’t. She added a silent prayer on top of Grandma Lucy’s. Please, Jesus ...
The man gasped in a wheezy breath. His son grasped his hand and let out an exultant proclamation.
“You’re going to be ok,” the doctor told him, and Grandma Lucy began loudly declaring her thanks to God.
The doctor listened to the man’s lungs for a full minute before he put the stethoscope down again. “I think it’s safe to say the worst is over. An allergic reaction.” He looked at Grandma Lucy. “Tell the son his dad can’t have these pills anymore. He’ll have to take something else for his cough.”
“So he’s ok?” Tracy asked, reaching for the phone again.
“Let’s keep him on oxygen for a little while longer, just to be safe. Make sure someone stays back here with him. When his shot wears off, he might go through the same set of symptoms again. I imagine if he feels better in half an hour or so, he can go back to his seat as long as his son keeps watch over him the whole time.”
“So you don’t think we need to divert the flight?” Tracy asked.
- Writer
