CHAPTER ONE
ONE MONTH EARLIER
A petite stewardess appeared from the front cabin. She didn’t look older than twenty, her expression pinched with a fake calm.
“Ma’am, you have medical experience?” she asked.
“Please, come with me.” The stewardess turned quickly, evidently expecting a speedy pursuit. I didn’t even have time to slip on my tennis shoes, but padded down the narrow aisle in my cushy socks, the ones I always brought on flights.
I passed sleeping bodies—whiffs of stale body odor, and stinky feet wafted through the circulated air of the cabin.
Passing through the curtain that separated coach from first class, I saw the man immediately.
Sitting up, his back leaned against the wall of the cabin.
The overhead light cast his round, pain-twisted face in a warm glow.
A sky marshal stood over him placing a wet rag on his forehead.
I passed a few lumps of sleeping passengers, marveling briefly at what it would be like to lay flat for the twenty-six hour flight from DFW to Jakarta, Indonesia.
I’d noticed this older man when I boarded the plane six hours ago. Wearing an expensive looking suit and barking into a phone in Spanish, he’d been red-faced and sweating even then.
“How are we feeling tonight, sir?” I said, with practiced calm, trading places with the marshal and quickly checking the man’s pulse at his thick wrist. “What’s your name, sir?”
“Morales…Manuel Morales…”
“Mr. Morales, I’m Sidney, and I’m going to get you checked out, ok?”
I turned to the sky marshal, my mind snapping into familiar action. “Get me some aspirin and can we drop down the oxygen mask? He needs air.”
These items were promptly provided and I felt a momentary relief at having something to do as I slipped the aspirin in Mr. Morales’ mouth and provided him with a small cup of water. The oxygen mask made a soft whoosh sound as I pressed it against his full cheeks.
You’ll miss the ER…Greg’s words floated through my mind behind the thrill of bringing order out of chaos.
He’d said them just a few months ago. We had been working at Coffee Trend, the only place that made a cortado the way I liked—with whipping cream instead of milk.
It was our favorite place to set up shop between shifts because it was in the heart of the TMC.
While he charted patients files, I researched different clinics to apply to now that I had passed my NP classes.
The ER night shift had been my life for three years. Memorial Hermann Emergency Department was only one of the many hospitals that made up the Texas Medical Center, where Greg and I both spent way too much of our time.
ER life had worn me out physically and to be perfectly honest, jaded me emotionally, that is…when I actually allowed the time to think about it.
When you’ve been on top of another human, attempting to pulse life back into them but they die anyway, you have to stop allowing emotions to have a say.
It was a job, and as much as I hated that I turned numb to the things I saw day in and day out, it was also the only reason I’d survived life at the ER for so long—and done so well, a silent thought bloomed to the surface.
If I don’t do it, who will? At least that’s what I told myself after a particularly hard night at the ER.
It was more than a job…it was my calling, what I had been born to do—and I loved it, I did, but I was ready for the slower pace of seeing patients who weren’t depending on me to save their lives.
A nice privately owned clinic, outside of the TMC monster, where I could put my new Nurse Practitioner degree to work—work during the day, and sleep at night like the rest of society.
“More like the ER will miss me…” I had smirked to Greg, nudging his knee underneath the table.
It was true though. I missed the excitement of the unknown that walked in and presented itself like a glaring challenge, daring me to apply my skills to the competition, and competitive I was.
I won often, but when you play against death the losses were difficult not to take personally.
Of course, my hands were often tied, because of hospital policy and regulations, I was prevented from prescribing or treating my patients the way I felt I could and should.
It was all so infuriating—the way a place of healing had turned into a place that was more concerned about making money, oftentimes at the expense of the very people we were supposed to be helping. Damn capitalism.
I just could not take the bureaucratic log jam, the politics that turned patients into profits—people into dollar signs.
It kept me from doing my job well. So that’s when I quit and moved to seek employment within a small, private clinic.
I came to the realization that fighting the system was a losing battle.
But that wasn’t the real motive for leaving the ER.
I used my thumb to twist the engagement ring around my ring finger and thought back to last week when I’d walked into work to the shouts of “Surprise!” I’d known about the party, of course.
An email had gotten out and whoever sent it forgot to remove my name from the list. But everyone still pretended.
Lonnie gave me one of those obnoxious singing cards, that played Celebration by Kool and the Gang, with a great big 34 popping up and out—as if I needed the reminder.
That image still irritated me. My biological clock was ticking and I wanted the whole nine yards—the career and the family, and I wasn’t about to settle for anything less.
“How are you doing, Mr. Morales?”
His eyes fluttered and his big body began to scrape against the cabin wall as he fell sideways toward his outstretched chair.
I cursed under my breath and jumped up, attempting to yank my unlikely patient flat on his back. “Help me!” I shouted at the marshal who had disappeared in the lull of excitement. “Get him flat!”
We heaved his body and I pressed my ear against his chest, cursing myself for not packing my stethoscope.
I moved my face to his mouth but felt no breath.
My fingers probed the folds of his chins, searching in vain for a pulse.
Sighing, I knelt beside him, and pressed the heels of my hands on his chest, pressing rhythmically.
One, two, three, four, five…“Get the AED powered on!”
I finished the compressions, pressed my mouth to his, breathing twice. There had to be an ambu bag on the plane but I didn’t have time to wait—I kept going with another round of compressions.
The AED machine appeared, on and ready. I bit the top of Mr. Morales undershirt and ripped it down the front, grabbed the paddles and stuck them to his plump chest. Everything clear! I pressed the button and the large body rippled slightly with the impact.
I heard a shriek from a passenger nearby and became briefly aware that several eyes were now watching the commotion unfold.
The young stewardess was praying for a complete stranger.
Praying? God doesn’t do anything. I proved that when I prayed with everything in me that Jonathan wouldn’t die. But he did.
I checked again for a pulse and shuddered with relief. It was weak, but it was there! I grabbed the oxygen mask and pressed it again to his mouth.
“Breathe, Mr. Morales, breathe!” Another glance at my wrist showed 3:12 a.m.
“What’s the status?” asked the sky marshal, getting right to the point.
“He has a pulse, but we need to land ASAP or he will most likely die.”
“We are still hours from our destination!” the pretty stewardess blurted, her mascara running down her cheeks.
“I don’t know how long I can keep him breathing. We have to land…”
I heard a murmur ripple through the passengers of first class, who were all now awake.
“I’ll tell the captain,” the marshal said, turning.
I made myself comfortable next to Mr. Morales, and kept a hand on his chest, the small rise and fall giving me momentary comfort. The chill crept back into my body as the adrenaline slowly seeped out. I’d gotten lucky—it wasn’t every patient that came back after one shock.
I played a different scenario in my head, one I always allowed to keep my mind sharp in case I wasn’t so lucky next time. What would I have done if he had not revived? What had I missed and what would I do differently the next time…God forbid there be a next time.
I certainly hadn’t expected to perform CPR and shock a man back to life when I boarded the plane just six hours before.
I had scrolled social media during the pre-flight protocol and once in the air had done a little work, rescheduled my facial, checked my itinerary for the thousandth time, and reread Greg’s last email.
You’re gonna love it here. His last few words he’d sent just yesterday with all the details of when and where we’d meet once I landed in Jakarta, Indonesia.
From there, I would catch the connecting flight to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, take the charter flight to the Solomon Island chain, and finally a boat ride to the mission outpost where Greg had been for the last two weeks.
My body ached with fatigue just thinking how much farther I had to go…and now, who knew how it would all work out with the impending delay.
Irritation fumed beneath the surface, making me fidgety. I didn’t even want to go to Papua New Guinea, but Greg had convinced me as he always does. “Where’s your sense of adventure?” He’d said.
I’d just started dozing when a crackle came over the loudspeaker with the captain’s voice.
“…apologize for the middle of the night announcement, there is a passenger on board in need of medical attention. We are thirty minutes away from the Hong Kong International Airport where we will make our landing. I apologize for the delay and ask you to stay on board until we can see the passenger to safety.”
The cabin began to stir with movement from coach to first class. I wished I had my phone so I could at least type out an email to Greg to send when we eventually landed.
I swallowed my frustration—it had taken me weeks to plan the perfect itinerary, now what was I going to do?
I looked again at my patient. His breathing rhythmic, but I decided not to take the chance of my momentary absence for fear he might slip back into cardiac arrest. Not that my presence was strong enough to keep the life inside his body—but I liked to think it was.
The bump and screech of the landing gear and jolt and jerk of the cabin shook any last vestiges of sleep from my body. My watch showed 4:08 a.m.—Mr. Morales was still breathing.
The medical team came aboard after a long taxi, and I gave the full, albeit brief, report of what I had done for Mr. Morales. One of the female nurses I noticed was translating it to the others rapidly in Chinese.
With my patient successfully disembarked on a gurney, I allowed the other passengers to exit before I went back for my things in coach. I was making a mental list of what I needed to do next, peeing being the chief concern, right before finding another flight to Jakarta.
“What you did for that man…” said a tremulous voice behind me. The young stewardess, in tear-streaked makeup, stood halfway behind a blue vinyl seat, her eyes not really meeting mine. I swung my backpack over my shoulder, slipping my thick socks into my untied Nike tennis shoes.
I shrugged. “He was lucky. I’m just glad he made it ok. Hope he survives,” I mumbled that last part under my breath.
The stewardess gave me a shy look of awe. “You were brave….you…you saved his life.”
I grunted quietly with a small shake of my head as I passed the girl, leaving her in the empty cabin.
If I don’t do it, who will?