44. Chase
Chase
The flight tour is two and a half hours long. We’ve been in the air for forty minutes, and I’m not sure Logan has looked out the window once.
“So, you’ve gotta do the startup for your engines individually?” Erik asks, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple. “Doesn’t that waste precious time?”
I don’t understand anything but the last sentence.
Since I’m seated directly behind him, correctly assuming he’d feel better in the front where he felt like he had some control, I gently massage his shoulders.
“Hey, we’re gonna be okay. Something better will come along. You could always apply at Mass General,” I tell him.
Technically, Mass General is Boston Memorial’s competition, but hey, if Boston Memorial is stupid enough to let Logan go, then Mass Gen. deserves a shot at him.
“I don’t know,” Logan says, patting my hand as we bank left around the northernmost tip of the island.
“I hated being on the opposite schedule as you for the last quarter. Ideally, I’d work days like you so we could spend all our nights together, so I’m not sure taking another gig at a hospital would work. ”
Before I can respond, Erik’s voice fills our headsets.
“If you guys look to your left, you can see the California lighthouse. The views from the top are pretty awesome, but it… doesn’t beat what you’re seeing… up here.”
Erik almost sounds like he’s losing his breath despite sitting perfectly still—minus using the joystick.
“Hey, man. You feeling okay?” I ask, ever on alert thanks to my day job.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. Sometimes I just get a little overheated up here.”
Craning my neck, I see that one drop from earlier has multiplied. I mean, we are basically in a glass box flying into the setting sun… and it is the Caribbean.
Erik’s not a small man, either. The Dutch tend to be very tall, and Erik is on the heavier side and in his mid-fifties. I assume he made his fortune, raised his kids, and then left his homeland to fly tourists around in paradise as a retirement plan.
And not a bad one.
Erik recovers and points out the white-sand beach below us.
“That’s a pop…popular spot for…locals,” he says, barely getting the words out before he slumps forward, totally unconscious.
When his body pitches forward, he pushes the stick forward too, making the nose of the helicopter dive straight toward the ocean. As if that weren’t bad enough, we’re also starting to roll to the right.
I don’t know much about helicopters, but I’m pretty fucking sure flying sideways or upside down isn’t something they can do.
“FUCK!” Logan yells.
“ERIK!” I cry at the same time.
“Chase!” Logan calls. “You’ve gotta pull him back there with you. I can’t get him off the stick!”
Unstrapping my seatbelt, I almost land face-first on the glass as the ocean looms closer.
Grabbing Erik by the shoulders, I pull him upright so Logan can grab the cyclic stick.
The man is bigger than I thought, but I pull until I have his upper body in the back with me, trying to create as much room for Logan as I can. I’m pulling him against gravity, though, and it’s really fucking hard.