Chapter Five
Petra
Petra roused when Cooper pressed his paw into her thigh in a series of “it’s time to get up now” taps.
With her arm trapped between her torso and the wall, she had been leaning on it long enough that she’d lost circulation. Rubbing her fingers over her eyes to rouse herself before dragging her mask to the top of her head, she shoved it in her pocket and out of the way then shifted her shoulder to get her blood flowing. The fingers on her right hand were hesitant to move. But even just lifting herself to a seated position, her arm began to wake up with the buzzing pins and needles pain of a limb that had gone to sleep.
Petra tried to lift her hand to shake her arm and speed things along, but it was heavy and needed more time, so she let it drop back into her lap.
She must have been really out of it.
Reaching across her body, Petra slowly raised the shade just as the flight attendant announced that she would be preparing the cabin for landing.
Her eyes felt dry and scratchy from the stale air.
When had she ever slept seven hours straight? Petra chalked it up to having Cooper in her lap and the Iniquus operator sitting sentinel in the aisle seat.
Petra ran a tongue over her teeth behind closed lips. She wished she had a breath mint in her pocket. Avery had been right with her assessment of Hawkeye on the phone. She had enjoyed their brief chat before exhaustion overwhelmed her.
Changes in plans often drained her, making her zone out and need a nap, no matter how handsome or intriguing she found the person sitting next to her. And today had been a day of switcheroos and mayhem.
But they were landing, and she had no obligations of any kind for the next few days. Petra wondered if, perhaps, Hawkeye might like to join her for dinner during that time.
Deciding that there was no harm in asking, she was stopped when Cooper jumped to the ground and sat facing her with a paw on her knee. He turned his head to find Hawkeye.
Did Cooper need something from her?
She shifted around to see how Hawkeye would respond to this, perhaps giving her an explanation.
Hawkeye’s gaze traveled from his dog to her. “You’re awake.” He stalled as she caught his gaze, and she watched as the man, without actually moving, shifted in front of her.
His demeanor had changed from bored and relaxed to something else.
“Will you do me a favor?” he asked. “Would you smile for me?”
By habit, Petra let her lips slide down her face into a frown, melting her features. She’d practiced this look in the mirror. It wasn’t necessarily a frown. It was just letting her facial features go lax. It was her response when men told her to smile. Though clichéd, it happened with alarming regularity. Probably because her resting face was once described to her as “schoolmarm.” Not that she knew exactly what was meant by that, but it seemed to make people—men—uncomfortable. Men preferred to be smiled at and fawned over. She couldn’t believe an Iniquus guy—on the clock and in uniform—would be so gross.
“Shit.” Hawkeye’s response was formed on the exhale, but Petra had always had exceptional hearing, too good at times, and she’d heard it clearly.
So good, she thought, Hawkeye got her message; she wasn’t the smile-on-demand kind of woman.
He reached up and pressed the attendant’s light overhead.
There was a ping, and the flight attendant rounded the corner.
“I believe we have a medical issue,” he told her quietly, then turned back to look at Petra.
Petra stilled. What?
The attendant leaned in for a moment, then squatted in the bulkhead’s extra space.
“Could you smile for me, please?” She, too, changed her tone.
Petra, without any context to rest a thought on, was lost. “What?”
“Are you wearing a medical alert bracelet or necklace?” The attendant asked and, from her crouch, held her hand in the air, making some kind of signal.
Just waking up from a deep, medicated sleep, Petra was confused at that moment. As was sometimes the case under stress, there was a lag as Petra processed the words. She knew each word as an individual word. Her brain was slow in lining them up to form a meaning.
Maybe they thought that her grogginess from the meds was in some way concerning.
Petra scanned down her body. She wasn’t leaking anything from anywhere—no drool or snot. No blood. Why would they think she was having a medical emergency?
She looked at Hawkeye blankly as her mind raced, searching for a reason that explained his shift to professional calm. Professional calm was a different beast than regular calm. It had an accent of hyperawareness, a priming of the body that—while held loose and comfortable so as not to expend precious energy until it was needed—was still ready to dive off the X. She’d seen it in theater with the soldiers all the time.
And it usually signaled something very bad on the horizon.
Another attendant arrived with a medical kit, setting it down by Hawkeye’s booted feet, then leaned in to see what was going on. “Oh!” She sipped the word into her body with surprise.
Not helpful. Not informative. But obviously, all three of the people crowding around her agreed that something was wrong with her.
Petra felt fine.
Normal.
And also scared.
“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” Petra whispered.
Hawkeye pulled his phone from a thigh pocket and opened the camera app. He held it up to her face. “I’m concerned about your pupil,” he explained.
Well, lo and behold, what in the actual hell was going on with her eye?
“You’re a doctor?” the attendant asked.
“I was trained as a medic in the military,” Hawkeye replied as he unzipped his thigh pocket and pulled out a first-aid kit.
“Flight attendants, take your seats for approach,” the pilot said over the intercom.
Petra kept staring into the camera. One eye looked perfectly normal. In the other eye, her iris was hidden behind her pupil. Her pupil had never been this large before, and the difference from right side to left had to be significant. Frightening.
Hawkeye pulled a penlight from his medical kit and held it up, asking for her permission.
“Sure,” she said on an exhale.
Flicking the light across her right eye and then her left, he announced, “Unilateral pupillary responsiveness.” He turned to catch the attendant’s gaze. “I think we need to treat this as a medical emergency. Could you let the pilot know?”
The standing attendant took off toward the front of the plane.
“Do you have a history of strokes?” Hawkeye asked.
“Strokes?” Was that what this was? Is this how it felt to have a stroke? Because Petra felt fine?
“Could you smile for me?” This time, with context, Petra understood that Hawkeye wasn’t a cad but someone moving through stroke protocol FAST – face, arms, speech, time.
This time, she did as was asked.
“Beautiful. Nice and even. Okay, scrunch up your face like the worst sour thing you ever ate. Okay, good. Grab my hands and squeeze. Pull me. Push me. You’re very strong.”
“Yes,” she whispered. Should she tell them that her arm had gone numb? It was mostly back to normal. Still a little tingly, but her fingers were warmer.
“Bilateral strength,” he said.
“Yes.” She turned her attention to the window. Below them, Petra saw a row of emergency vehicles racing forward. Those would be for her.
This felt ridiculous.
Did she feel like she was having a stroke?
What did it feel like to have a stroke?
Her arm was waking up and was painful with pins and needles. Was that what a stroke felt like?
It was the opposite arm to her weird eyeball. Was that important?
“Ladies and gentlemen, one of our passengers is experiencing a medical emergency. Before taxiing to our gate, we will be landing near emergency services so that the professionals can handle the situation. We ask that everyone remain seated with seat belts in place.
We ask that you respect this situation – a human having a challenging experience – and honor that by affording them privacy. Please refrain from taking pictures or videos. Flight attendants strap in for the landing.”
Pictures or videos…
When paramedics show up at the scene of an emergency, one of the first things they did was to cut the patient’s clothes off. They did it to check for unnoticed bleeds or injuries, but also to make the patient’s body accessible to whatever medical intervention might need to take place once they arrive in the emergency department.
Everyone was going to see her like that, lying on a gurney. Just a moment ago, she was going to ask Hawkeye on a date, and now he was going to see her stretched out like that.
Like an emergency.
Like a problem.
It was crazy. She felt fine.
This seemed like a movie scene to Petra, like she could get up, have a lunch break, then head back when the director called out, “Places, everybody!”
As the plane landed with a bump and rolled down to what was obviously the emergency area with rescue vehicles’ lights flashing and sirens blaring, Petra could not believe they were there for her.
For her.
She knew today was destined for the crapper.
And oddly, since this was about to go viral with people sending out videos despite the plea, Petra found herself wondering, “What the hell underwear did I pull on this morning?”