Chapter 4. Stephanie
CHAPTER 4
Stephanie
The Day of the Flight
Coming out of Ambien sleep was never easy. Groaning, I shut my eyes again. The drug was trying hard to pull me back to slumber. Fighting it with all of my willpower, I fumbled for my phone.
The first duty I had every day was to see who might have texted me to say they were calling in sick. It was a rare day when no one had. Between lingering bouts of COVID, normal colds and flus, mental health days, and people who I suspected were lying just to get a free day, we had a lot of sick calls. The business we had all chosen was not an easy one. There was heightened stress making sure we didn’t get beat by the other TV stations in the city, and extra pressure to triple-check that everything we put on the air was fair and factual.
I took a look at Teams messages and turned my attention to emails. In a news station, you can get hundreds of emails each day, maybe even thousands, story pitches and press releases and statements from politicians and internal notes from reporters and producers and viewer feedback. It was a never-ending sea of things to look through. Scrolling my overnight and early-morning emails, I dismissed 90 percent of them as unimportant but flagged some to respond to later.
My bladder was urgently calling me out of bed, so I put the phone down and attended to business, washing up and putting on some work clothes that would also be OK for the plane: a stretchy pair of yoga-type pants that looked like work pants, low boots that were comfortable to walk in, and a baggy but professional sweater with a cowl neck.
My work makeup was next. I would take a full shower the next day. Today was my “day two” hair anyway, and I liked how it flattened just a bit after a night of sleep. I chose a pair of simple fake-pearl earrings that went with anything. Amazon always had a wide selection of fakes.
Making coffee and a quick breakfast, I turned on our morning newscast, standing by the kitchen counter assessing our show. The anchors really didn’t like each other much in real life. They did a good job of faking it most days on the air, but I felt like there were times when I could see one side-eyeing the other or even borderline rolling their eyes. It was on my to-do list for the next week to check in with each of them to see how things were going, and maybe to give them a little kick in the pants. They might need a stern reminder that viewers want to like the people they’re watching on TV, especially in the morning.
Throwing back the coffee, I rinsed the cup and put it in the dishwasher. Next came Fred’s breakfast, and I was ready to leave for the TV station by just after eight. The morning meeting for managers started at 8:30. Luckily, I lived ten minutes away. Stopping at the thermostat, I turned it down to 62 to save some money on heat. Just as I was grabbing my light blue Kate Spade purse off its hook, Fred came lumbering down the stairs.
“Freddie, my favorite beast.” I knelt down to scoop him up. “Will you miss me? I will miss you. I’ll see you soon.”
Kissing the extra soft spot on the top of his head, I plopped him next to his bowl and left through the attached garage door.
The day was cold but sunny, good for flying. Traffic in Madison was nearly nonexistent, and my view on the way to work was a mix of suburban houses, mature oak trees, and upscale strip malls, nearly all of them having a Starbucks and a Panera.
I always flipped between NPR and our local talk radio station in the morning to make sure I had a handle on the news of the day. This time there was coverage of an earthquake in Egypt and a strike at a local construction company. I made a note to assign a reporter to the strike story and pulled into the parking lot at the TV station.
The effects of the Ambien were still there as I turned off the car. Sleeping drugs were weird. Sometimes I woke up feeling sharp and completely rested; other days I would be moving in slow motion or swimming underwater. This was somewhere in between. I shook my head to clear it before going in, vowing to grab a second cup of coffee. I would try to catch some sleep on the plane. I would need plenty of energy later.
As I got out of the car, I looked at my longtime workplace. Something about those big satellite dishes and the call letters on the side of the building with the CBS eyeball still got me jazzed after all of these years. One of my former bosses used to say that television had the biggest megaphone of anyone, and I believed it to be true. We had a power and a responsibility, neither of which I took lightly. I had fallen in love with TV when my dad would watch the evening news. The names of that era—Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings—still had meaning to me.
“Good morning, Steph!” our receptionist called as I walked into the main lobby. Bernie had been there for over twenty-five years and was as happy as ever every single day.
“Good morning, Bernie! How are you?” I started to key my way into the secondary door that led to the newsroom.
“Great. I hear you’re flying somewhere faaancy today. Have a safe trip!”
“Thank you, B!”
I suppose it did sound fancy to fly to San Diego. But I knew the truth: Not only was I fed up with this kind of travel, there wasn’t a drop of glamour to it. I was flying coach. The time difference would make it hard to adjust and sleep well, and I needed to give my boss, Dave, a full report when I got back. I had a plan for that.
The newsroom was only slightly buzzing at this hour. The two anchors I had seen on the morning show were talking and joking with different people on opposite sides of the room, as they usually were. Sometimes I felt as if they were in competition to see who could make a coworker laugh the loudest.
The overnight producers were either gone or packing up, and I waved to two of them. The assignment desk manager was just arriving and setting down his coffee mug for the day. My assistant news director had a dentist appointment that morning and would be coming in about an hour late, so it was on me to get the dayside reporters going.
My office was set off to the side of the newsroom. It wasn’t large and had no windows, but I had done my best to make it feel cozy with a throw rug, some accent lighting to offset the fluorescent overhead, a few framed pictures on the wall, and some knickknacks on the bookshelf.
Slipping off my coat, I settled into the computer. Already I had more than a dozen new emails just since I had left the house. It didn’t take long to go through those and hit the coffee room for one more blast of caffeine. I was slowly starting to wake up.
Walking to the conference room where my other news managers were assembling for our meeting at 8:30, I set my laptop on the table.
“Good morning, happy Wednesday! Let’s get going.” Our team included the dayside executive producer, the assignment desk manager, the head of digital, a special projects producer, and our chief photographer. “Just a reminder I have to fly out this afternoon, but Bruce will be here after his dentist appointment.”
Three hours later, the reporters were all on their stories, Bruce was back in the saddle, and it was time for me to head to the airport. I made it a point to stop and see all of my managers, checking in on various projects and setting up a few meetings for when I returned. As I closed my office door, people in the newsroom started calling out:
“Have a good time!”
“Lucky! So jealous!”
“You won’t decide to stay in sunny California, will you?”
“You never know!” I said. “No, I’m pretty sure you’ll be stuck with me next week!”
I was feeling annoyed again about always being the one to pick up the slack in these travel situations, but tried to cover my irritation with joking. They had no idea how much effort these trips took. Everyone seemed to think it was all fun and games. At least on this trip I would make it so.
At the airport parking lot, my phone pinged just as I was unloading my suitcase from the back of the car. Fumbling for it in my pocket, I saw that it was my sister, Renee. She lived in Indianapolis near our childhood home and worked as a schoolteacher. She must be on her lunch break.
Hey, Little, be safe flying today.
She always called me Little because I was five years younger, Mom and Dad’s “oopsie baby.” I was touched that Renee had taken a moment to reach out so I texted her back.
Thanks, Big. Flight is on time. I’ll text you when I land.
I threw in a heart emoji. Renee had been like a surrogate mother to me when Mom died of breast cancer while I was still in college. Dad had done his best in her absence, but now he was gone too, a heart attack taking him not long after Jason, Evan, and I moved to Madison. The absence of my parents left a crater of sadness in me. At least I had Renee.
The suitcase bumped along through the quiet of the parking lot. I checked my Apple Watch: perfect timing as long as security lines weren’t unusually long. They almost never were in Madison, so I was fairly confident it would be fine, and I was right. I was in and out quickly and at my gate with over forty-five minutes to spare.
Airport food was insanely expensive, of course, and tricky to find for a budding vegetarian. I had been trying to be one ever since Robert, a longtime vegan, made me watch a documentary on a slaughterhouse. I grabbed myself a basic salad for lunch at one of the kiosks and figured I could get something else to eat in Denver before the second flight. I didn’t have much of an appetite anyway.
My fellow passengers in the boarding area were the usual mix of work types buried in their laptops, a few older couples who I guessed to be on retirement trips, a guy at the counter trying to gate-check a snowboard, a woman with a baseball cap so low I couldn’t see her face, a group of middle schoolers jostling one another as chaperones kept shushing them, and moms and dads laden with diaper bags and strollers and looking stressed. Please don’t let there be a screaming baby , I thought. An uneventful flight would be a perfect flight.