Trials of a weary traveller
Ok, so this will be another short foray into my (nonexistent) travel writing career. So much is written about the destinations, the experiences that we have when we find ourselves outside our normal sphere of contact. These are often delicious narratives, of course. But I seem to be more drawn to the process of travel itself, and yesterday's ordeal was too ripe with heuristic mishaps to be left unnarrated.
So invoking Murphy's law before a long journey is clearly not a wise thing to do, and were it not for my penchant for good-humor (or the guise of it for my child's sake) I would most likely not be writing about this in a sane fashion. Let me begin with the end, just to get it out of the way. They did not lose our luggage. This may seem an extraneous piece of information, but I beg of you dear reader to bear with me, as the loss of luggage was my only certainty and acted as my anchoring point throughout the prolonged duration of the journey in question.
It began in the morning. Isabella's fever had not broken, in fact she was fed the last two tylenol just before we stepped into the shower together at approximately 9:30 am. It had been a long night, I was on call, cold-water duty and blanket monitoring for the length of the night. "Mommy I'm cold... I know I can't have the blanket because I need to get cooler, but..."
I believe I made upwards of seven trips between the hours of 12 and 7, going with her to the bathroom and the kitchen to refill her cup. But, I pleased myself with the apparently upbeat appearance of the girl-child who was excited to see her Bobie and Zadie. Who needs sleep before a day of travel? Certainly not me. And so, I had a neatly calibrated schedule, out the door by ten, dropping the movies off, buying fever-reducer for the flight, (I never ever travel without it, especially after a miserable 12 hour bus ride from México D.F. to Puerto Vallarta, on which I did in fact have parcetamol, unfortunately stowed beneath the bus, as she spiked 104 two hours into the midnight ride.), stopping by the university to run off a copy of her birth certificate and copies of my cancelled checks to complete the application for health insurance, and to pick up the flowers that I was determined not to kill having left them sitting on my desk. Back by 11, so Ana could drop us at the airport by 11:30 for a 1:30 flight to LA.
Now, clearly I was focusing on all the wrong details, like A) Santa Barbara airport is tiny and 2 hours of wait is excessive as they don't even allow you in the waiting room until an hour before the flight and B) Isabella was clearly feeling worse than I allowed myself to believe.
"Are you hungry baby?"
"Yes," shiver, shiver, simper, whine.
"What can I get you?"
"..."
"Do you want chicken nuggets?"
"Yes!" emphatic approval, "at the star place... Daddy and I sometimes go."
So I pull into the Carl's Jr. against my better judgment but with the hope of a quick and filling meal for the girl, aware that we would have long stretches on planes with short layovers. I thought.
I order food and the boy asks me to pull over because the chicken will be ready in a few minutes. I look at my cell to see the time. Ok, still on schedule. He brings us a bag out to the car and as I am settling back into the driver's seat, turning the motor over when I hear a strange gurgling noise and the whimpering voice, "Mommy, I threw up..."
And sure enough she had vomitted on her clean shirt and showered body, and surprisingly nothing else. I pulled the shirt off her, cleaning her hands and chest with a napkin. "Are you mad at me, Mommy?" "What sweetie?" "Oh no, you would never be mad at me for throwing up..." "No, of course not darling, let's just get you cleaned up, it's going to be fine, just relax."
Internal monologue says: "fuck! fuck! fuck! now what?"
So we still need the acetominophen and I try going through the drive-thru but they only service prescription drugs. Ok, plan B. "Baby, I am going to put a different shirt on you."
"But we don't have any."
Lucky for us, I hadn't cleared the trunk of camping gear from the last trip, so there was a mildly clean t-shirt among the other objects including, hey, cooking gas, maybe that shouldn't be kicking around the trunk. Note to self, deal with this later.
So we got medicine and jello cups of rehydrating pedialyte-type snacks for the trip. It was already promising to be a nightmare. Then racing to the university, damn, my TAP pass was all used up, ok, parking illegally with the meter hung as if it were functioning, I doubt they always check if they are really turned on anyway. Up the rickety elevator four floors, "Mommy, I think I need to throw up again."
"Just hold it, baby, we'll be there in a sec!"
Running to the copier after she tried, to no avail, to relieve the stomach pressure a second time. And my photocopy limit was reached. ahhh. Quick,"Sara, (profesora) can I use your code for two copies?"... Thank God there were people still at the department working. We didn't forget the flowers and made it back to the house by 11:12, called Ana and got out the door freshly changed, Isabella, flowers watered, mail posted with minutes to spare. And how many minutes would there be???
So many, it would seem that there was no one to check our bags for a good 20 minutes and then once he did, we left them on the "security table" (well within the reach, I might add, of the most casual passerby). Ok. So we stationed ourselves like sentinels keeping vigil over the two checked bags, and Isabella commented cheerily that she was feeling a little better, as she worked on one of the jellos. Our bags were opened, checked and swabbed for explosive traces before being sent on their way. Good. An iota of relaxation, our bags were now out of our hands and therefore out of our minds until Manchester, NH. I thought.
With the forethought of only a seasoned veteran, I purchased, for later consumption, a bagel with cream cheese (never mind that they are not worth your spit in CA) for the child. Then came security check. Now if I had been scoffing at the apparent lack of baggage security, it was made up for ten-fold as we passed through the metal detectors. Isabella passed problem free, but I was another story. The detectors were so sharp that I imagine even the titanium screw in my knee would have set them off, thankfully no inner-body exploration was done, though I had my doubts. First, there was no woman to search me, so I was asked to sit to the side and Isabella was separated from me. "Ma'am, she can sit over here near you but she can't come into contact with you or else we'll have to search her too." So my sick child cowered in a corner and shot me her most heart-rending looks of abandonment (think puppy dog desirous of rightful table scraps that are being cruelly denied him). When she finally came her tone was perfunctory, no smiles for me... and if I had wanted to be felt up by a woman, this was certainly not the way it would have been envisioned. She patted every part of my body, including my crotch (except of course, between my breasts! I could have had a detonator snugly nestled there, no prob), and I was beginning to wonder if she wasn't going to do a body cavity search. Alas, that will be a story for another day. Never mind the fact that I tried to be friendly (I'm generally a likeable person, I hear), this was all business, and after they ransacked my laptop case and destroyed what little order I had in my carry-on, they neatly dismissed me, without returning my shoes. "There's your stuff, you can go now," says the man. "Uh, I think I might need shoes for that." "Yeah, all your things are there." "No, my shoes are decidedly not here," (impatiently tapping my socked foot on the institutional carpet - ah, yes, shamed for my lack of darning abilities as there was a sizeable hole in the left toe.) Puzzled looks, where could her shoes be? Rummage, rummage. "Oh, they haven't gone through yet! Here they are, sorry about that." "No worries."
Now fully fondled and checked we sit in the miniscule waiting room as the gawky-looking runway worker/ticketing agent approaches. "Err. Um, we have a slight delay here. The plane is on its way, but we will be about 20 minutes late. You two are the closest connection we have. You might miss it. You need to take the number 5 bus to the Delta terminal, but I will call ahead so it doesn't sit there for fifteen minutes like it sometimes does." Great. I try to breath deeply, all in a day of travel. "There aren't any more flights out to Manchester until 11 pm." Fantastic. What do I do for the day with a feverish child in an airport. Oh well, I breath again. I am the picture of serenity. "Oh no! Now we're never gonna get to see Bobie!" she begins to whine. Don't start, don't start. "No, sweetie, we'll get there, maybe just a little later than we expected, but don't worry babes there is always a solution, maybe they can route us to Boston."
"I don't wanna go to Boston."
"They'd pick us up, silly."
"Oh."
I say these things calmly, for her sake, I smile cheerfully if deceitfully as I betray my calm only to the knowing few, biting my nail to the quick drawing blood from a hangnail. "Can't control everything, now can we?" said more for my own benefit, even though I wish against hope that it weren't true and that I could control everything, or almost everything. No, no. The Zen of flying, I will let myself go, floating amongst the clouds, offering up my tension to the gods of aeronautics. What else can I do?
The plane arrives, I am the first in line up the stairs, seated in the back. I try to relax, not sitting on the edge of my seat. This is an exercise in futility, of course, and Isabella wants to eat her bagel. Ok, focus on the spreading of the cream cheese, be one with the cream cheese. Breath. "You aren't going to puke are you?" I ask.
"No, I feel better."
Good. The silver bird touches down and I almost lose my camera, having slipped from my open bag. "Come on kiddo, we gotta haul..." We race down to the shuttle only to find that the #5 is "on its way" and after what seems like an eternity, it arrives and we ascend. "Did you get a call, we have a connection to make now."
"I ain't got no call."
But he doesn't sit, and instead heads leisurely back towards the correct terminal. We make a dash up the stairs and to the nearest ticket counter where the man directs us to gate 54. "They're probably in final boarding." Dead sprint, sick child trailing behind, gripping my hand conspirationally. Thank god she is a fast runner. We are panting at the tail end of the line and happy to be boarding, despite the fact that we are seated in the final row of the 747, next to the open bathrooms. "Good thing we made it mommy!"
Yeah, good thing indeed. We have the entire row to ourselves and she climbs in to the window seat. I move in next to her acting, as usual, as her pillow. I allow myself to slip into sleep as she watches the in-flight movie with my headphones. I don't care to hear music anyway, but it seems that her ears are as iPod defective as my own. Damn genetics. I am awoken by loud talking and there is a man's thigh just in front of my face. I surreptitiously look up. He is gesticulating, he is from Ohio, he did not vote for Bush, so I guess I can forgive him this intrusion on my personal space. Then, over the intercom: "If there is a doctor on board, please report to the back of the plane." (I thought this only happened in movies.) The man and his female interlocutor return to their seats, clearly scared away from the bathroom by the man writhing in agony at the rear of the plane. No doctor materializes despite the second call. The flight attendant reaches in across my face to grab the airphone. As an afterthought, "Excuse me, could you dial this for me?" I try typing *364, still groggy from my unceremonious arousal. She relays that the man has a severe headache, that he is 38, that he threw up. Then she brings him, wobbling to the phone and seats him next to me, for the remainder of the flight. Now I want to be compassionate, I really do, but the thought of a dying 38-year-old Japanese businessman next to me is not one that I savor. He was hurting, yes, I did feel bad, but as it became apparent his malaise did not stem from a cerebral infarction, neither a pulmonary embolism migrated to his brain, but rather was related to severe upper-respiratory illness, my latent hypochondriac began her inward scream... Lepers to the left of me, pukers to the right, there I was, stuck in the middle of sick bay, and none too happy. I began to feel nauseous, and the onset of a pulsing headache. Stop. I can't let the suggestion of illness make me ill, but this man, this poor, poor man (who I dearly wish would go back to his seat and infect other passengers) who keeps coughing, spewing multitudes of invisible germs, smells bad. Not just body odor bad, I mean bad in the way that only really sick people smell. You know, when it all comes down to it, we are still pack animals and we shun the sick and weak based on our own olfactory sharpness. I tried to not grimace as he covered his head with a blanket and inhaled vapor, as the nurse who woke up an hour after the initial call (who would later accompany us on the last leg of the journey) gently massaged his head. Yes, she was a much better person than I, but it would have been odd nonetheless if I, the accidental companion, were to have stroked his head lovingly, now wouldn't it?
Isabella asks, "who's going to be my doctor?" and I bend over to kiss this wonderful child who is sitting quietly, patiently, in spite of her toy and book free travel. "Oh yeah, you're my Doctor... and my teacher, and my teddy bear, and my mommy and my best friend. You're my everything." At least I have one die-hard fan? Perhaps more than one is too much to hope for. I let myself relax into my own restlessness, unable to read a single line, or listen to a song, instead writing stories in my head.
It proved to be a flight full of firsts as not one but two oxygen tanks were taken out and tried (the first didn't work, now there is food for thought) on this patient of chance. Then, a little girl, aged five or six got herself locked in the lavatory, and it is a good thing she remained calm and did not tamper with any devices or she *might* have been fined by the FAA. No this was certainly a flight to remember.
When it finally terminated, we disembarked slowly, being trapped at the back of the plane as we were, and without incident, despite the re-elevation of Isabella's fever, we navigated the shuttle in Cincinatti to terminal C, where we found a room with 20 gates. At one of the gates our flight was scheduled, on time! Miracle of miracles, and we even had time to visit the restroom. As we returned, the flight was boarding and gleefully, if mistakenly, I gloated about how this 11:15 flight was at least going to be uneventful. I thought.
As we were traversing the hallway to gate C50, a semi-frantic ticket agent pleaded into a walkie-talkie, "And why is it that the Manchester flight is deplaning?"
What?! I was so close, we were so close... But no, the first crew member of the three person tripulation had fallen ill, it would seem, a victim to ruinous food poisoning; and there was no one, at this advanced hour, to take his place. After the girl tried to explain to an angry throng that they would either put us up for the night at the Radisson, and book us all on the first flight out in the morning (which wasn't until the afternoon because the fog had provoked a series of cancellations earlier in the day, thereby overbooking subsequent flights) OR we could wait until 12 am when they were officially allowed to call a new possible crew member, at which point he was given 15 minutes to decide whether to take the gig or not, and then and hour and a half to arrive at the airport ready to fly, pushing our theoretical departure time to 2am.
Sigh. Maybe it would have been best to miss the first connection in LAX and taken the red eye? Oh well. What is done is done, and as long as I don't die from pneumonia, I guess I'll live. Meanwhile the girlchild is hungry with a capital H and sadly, no restaurants are still open at this time. The customer service representatives scurry about and manage to scrounge a measly snack of pretzels, cheese crackers, peanuts and cookies with beverage options for the remaining hopefuls, and there we waited, breath held, expecting the worst but hoping for the best. Finally, at 12:15 the verdict was in, we would be flying out by 2.
I wondered if anything else could go wrong, and pondered the possibility of my luggage being able to catch up with me because of the delay. Dubious, I thought.
And for the very last time of the evening, I was wrong. We arrived without incident at exactly 3:45 eastern standard time, a mere 12:45 body time for us, and there were my parents, and there was our luggage, waiting to greet us at the baggage claim. A happy ending if ever there was one.
So invoking Murphy's law before a long journey is clearly not a wise thing to do, and were it not for my penchant for good-humor (or the guise of it for my child's sake) I would most likely not be writing about this in a sane fashion. Let me begin with the end, just to get it out of the way. They did not lose our luggage. This may seem an extraneous piece of information, but I beg of you dear reader to bear with me, as the loss of luggage was my only certainty and acted as my anchoring point throughout the prolonged duration of the journey in question.
It began in the morning. Isabella's fever had not broken, in fact she was fed the last two tylenol just before we stepped into the shower together at approximately 9:30 am. It had been a long night, I was on call, cold-water duty and blanket monitoring for the length of the night. "Mommy I'm cold... I know I can't have the blanket because I need to get cooler, but..."
I believe I made upwards of seven trips between the hours of 12 and 7, going with her to the bathroom and the kitchen to refill her cup. But, I pleased myself with the apparently upbeat appearance of the girl-child who was excited to see her Bobie and Zadie. Who needs sleep before a day of travel? Certainly not me. And so, I had a neatly calibrated schedule, out the door by ten, dropping the movies off, buying fever-reducer for the flight, (I never ever travel without it, especially after a miserable 12 hour bus ride from México D.F. to Puerto Vallarta, on which I did in fact have parcetamol, unfortunately stowed beneath the bus, as she spiked 104 two hours into the midnight ride.), stopping by the university to run off a copy of her birth certificate and copies of my cancelled checks to complete the application for health insurance, and to pick up the flowers that I was determined not to kill having left them sitting on my desk. Back by 11, so Ana could drop us at the airport by 11:30 for a 1:30 flight to LA.
Now, clearly I was focusing on all the wrong details, like A) Santa Barbara airport is tiny and 2 hours of wait is excessive as they don't even allow you in the waiting room until an hour before the flight and B) Isabella was clearly feeling worse than I allowed myself to believe.
"Are you hungry baby?"
"Yes," shiver, shiver, simper, whine.
"What can I get you?"
"..."
"Do you want chicken nuggets?"
"Yes!" emphatic approval, "at the star place... Daddy and I sometimes go."
So I pull into the Carl's Jr. against my better judgment but with the hope of a quick and filling meal for the girl, aware that we would have long stretches on planes with short layovers. I thought.
I order food and the boy asks me to pull over because the chicken will be ready in a few minutes. I look at my cell to see the time. Ok, still on schedule. He brings us a bag out to the car and as I am settling back into the driver's seat, turning the motor over when I hear a strange gurgling noise and the whimpering voice, "Mommy, I threw up..."
And sure enough she had vomitted on her clean shirt and showered body, and surprisingly nothing else. I pulled the shirt off her, cleaning her hands and chest with a napkin. "Are you mad at me, Mommy?" "What sweetie?" "Oh no, you would never be mad at me for throwing up..." "No, of course not darling, let's just get you cleaned up, it's going to be fine, just relax."
Internal monologue says: "fuck! fuck! fuck! now what?"
So we still need the acetominophen and I try going through the drive-thru but they only service prescription drugs. Ok, plan B. "Baby, I am going to put a different shirt on you."
"But we don't have any."
Lucky for us, I hadn't cleared the trunk of camping gear from the last trip, so there was a mildly clean t-shirt among the other objects including, hey, cooking gas, maybe that shouldn't be kicking around the trunk. Note to self, deal with this later.
So we got medicine and jello cups of rehydrating pedialyte-type snacks for the trip. It was already promising to be a nightmare. Then racing to the university, damn, my TAP pass was all used up, ok, parking illegally with the meter hung as if it were functioning, I doubt they always check if they are really turned on anyway. Up the rickety elevator four floors, "Mommy, I think I need to throw up again."
"Just hold it, baby, we'll be there in a sec!"
Running to the copier after she tried, to no avail, to relieve the stomach pressure a second time. And my photocopy limit was reached. ahhh. Quick,"Sara, (profesora) can I use your code for two copies?"... Thank God there were people still at the department working. We didn't forget the flowers and made it back to the house by 11:12, called Ana and got out the door freshly changed, Isabella, flowers watered, mail posted with minutes to spare. And how many minutes would there be???
So many, it would seem that there was no one to check our bags for a good 20 minutes and then once he did, we left them on the "security table" (well within the reach, I might add, of the most casual passerby). Ok. So we stationed ourselves like sentinels keeping vigil over the two checked bags, and Isabella commented cheerily that she was feeling a little better, as she worked on one of the jellos. Our bags were opened, checked and swabbed for explosive traces before being sent on their way. Good. An iota of relaxation, our bags were now out of our hands and therefore out of our minds until Manchester, NH. I thought.
With the forethought of only a seasoned veteran, I purchased, for later consumption, a bagel with cream cheese (never mind that they are not worth your spit in CA) for the child. Then came security check. Now if I had been scoffing at the apparent lack of baggage security, it was made up for ten-fold as we passed through the metal detectors. Isabella passed problem free, but I was another story. The detectors were so sharp that I imagine even the titanium screw in my knee would have set them off, thankfully no inner-body exploration was done, though I had my doubts. First, there was no woman to search me, so I was asked to sit to the side and Isabella was separated from me. "Ma'am, she can sit over here near you but she can't come into contact with you or else we'll have to search her too." So my sick child cowered in a corner and shot me her most heart-rending looks of abandonment (think puppy dog desirous of rightful table scraps that are being cruelly denied him). When she finally came her tone was perfunctory, no smiles for me... and if I had wanted to be felt up by a woman, this was certainly not the way it would have been envisioned. She patted every part of my body, including my crotch (except of course, between my breasts! I could have had a detonator snugly nestled there, no prob), and I was beginning to wonder if she wasn't going to do a body cavity search. Alas, that will be a story for another day. Never mind the fact that I tried to be friendly (I'm generally a likeable person, I hear), this was all business, and after they ransacked my laptop case and destroyed what little order I had in my carry-on, they neatly dismissed me, without returning my shoes. "There's your stuff, you can go now," says the man. "Uh, I think I might need shoes for that." "Yeah, all your things are there." "No, my shoes are decidedly not here," (impatiently tapping my socked foot on the institutional carpet - ah, yes, shamed for my lack of darning abilities as there was a sizeable hole in the left toe.) Puzzled looks, where could her shoes be? Rummage, rummage. "Oh, they haven't gone through yet! Here they are, sorry about that." "No worries."
Now fully fondled and checked we sit in the miniscule waiting room as the gawky-looking runway worker/ticketing agent approaches. "Err. Um, we have a slight delay here. The plane is on its way, but we will be about 20 minutes late. You two are the closest connection we have. You might miss it. You need to take the number 5 bus to the Delta terminal, but I will call ahead so it doesn't sit there for fifteen minutes like it sometimes does." Great. I try to breath deeply, all in a day of travel. "There aren't any more flights out to Manchester until 11 pm." Fantastic. What do I do for the day with a feverish child in an airport. Oh well, I breath again. I am the picture of serenity. "Oh no! Now we're never gonna get to see Bobie!" she begins to whine. Don't start, don't start. "No, sweetie, we'll get there, maybe just a little later than we expected, but don't worry babes there is always a solution, maybe they can route us to Boston."
"I don't wanna go to Boston."
"They'd pick us up, silly."
"Oh."
I say these things calmly, for her sake, I smile cheerfully if deceitfully as I betray my calm only to the knowing few, biting my nail to the quick drawing blood from a hangnail. "Can't control everything, now can we?" said more for my own benefit, even though I wish against hope that it weren't true and that I could control everything, or almost everything. No, no. The Zen of flying, I will let myself go, floating amongst the clouds, offering up my tension to the gods of aeronautics. What else can I do?
The plane arrives, I am the first in line up the stairs, seated in the back. I try to relax, not sitting on the edge of my seat. This is an exercise in futility, of course, and Isabella wants to eat her bagel. Ok, focus on the spreading of the cream cheese, be one with the cream cheese. Breath. "You aren't going to puke are you?" I ask.
"No, I feel better."
Good. The silver bird touches down and I almost lose my camera, having slipped from my open bag. "Come on kiddo, we gotta haul..." We race down to the shuttle only to find that the #5 is "on its way" and after what seems like an eternity, it arrives and we ascend. "Did you get a call, we have a connection to make now."
"I ain't got no call."
But he doesn't sit, and instead heads leisurely back towards the correct terminal. We make a dash up the stairs and to the nearest ticket counter where the man directs us to gate 54. "They're probably in final boarding." Dead sprint, sick child trailing behind, gripping my hand conspirationally. Thank god she is a fast runner. We are panting at the tail end of the line and happy to be boarding, despite the fact that we are seated in the final row of the 747, next to the open bathrooms. "Good thing we made it mommy!"
Yeah, good thing indeed. We have the entire row to ourselves and she climbs in to the window seat. I move in next to her acting, as usual, as her pillow. I allow myself to slip into sleep as she watches the in-flight movie with my headphones. I don't care to hear music anyway, but it seems that her ears are as iPod defective as my own. Damn genetics. I am awoken by loud talking and there is a man's thigh just in front of my face. I surreptitiously look up. He is gesticulating, he is from Ohio, he did not vote for Bush, so I guess I can forgive him this intrusion on my personal space. Then, over the intercom: "If there is a doctor on board, please report to the back of the plane." (I thought this only happened in movies.) The man and his female interlocutor return to their seats, clearly scared away from the bathroom by the man writhing in agony at the rear of the plane. No doctor materializes despite the second call. The flight attendant reaches in across my face to grab the airphone. As an afterthought, "Excuse me, could you dial this for me?" I try typing *364, still groggy from my unceremonious arousal. She relays that the man has a severe headache, that he is 38, that he threw up. Then she brings him, wobbling to the phone and seats him next to me, for the remainder of the flight. Now I want to be compassionate, I really do, but the thought of a dying 38-year-old Japanese businessman next to me is not one that I savor. He was hurting, yes, I did feel bad, but as it became apparent his malaise did not stem from a cerebral infarction, neither a pulmonary embolism migrated to his brain, but rather was related to severe upper-respiratory illness, my latent hypochondriac began her inward scream... Lepers to the left of me, pukers to the right, there I was, stuck in the middle of sick bay, and none too happy. I began to feel nauseous, and the onset of a pulsing headache. Stop. I can't let the suggestion of illness make me ill, but this man, this poor, poor man (who I dearly wish would go back to his seat and infect other passengers) who keeps coughing, spewing multitudes of invisible germs, smells bad. Not just body odor bad, I mean bad in the way that only really sick people smell. You know, when it all comes down to it, we are still pack animals and we shun the sick and weak based on our own olfactory sharpness. I tried to not grimace as he covered his head with a blanket and inhaled vapor, as the nurse who woke up an hour after the initial call (who would later accompany us on the last leg of the journey) gently massaged his head. Yes, she was a much better person than I, but it would have been odd nonetheless if I, the accidental companion, were to have stroked his head lovingly, now wouldn't it?
Isabella asks, "who's going to be my doctor?" and I bend over to kiss this wonderful child who is sitting quietly, patiently, in spite of her toy and book free travel. "Oh yeah, you're my Doctor... and my teacher, and my teddy bear, and my mommy and my best friend. You're my everything." At least I have one die-hard fan? Perhaps more than one is too much to hope for. I let myself relax into my own restlessness, unable to read a single line, or listen to a song, instead writing stories in my head.
It proved to be a flight full of firsts as not one but two oxygen tanks were taken out and tried (the first didn't work, now there is food for thought) on this patient of chance. Then, a little girl, aged five or six got herself locked in the lavatory, and it is a good thing she remained calm and did not tamper with any devices or she *might* have been fined by the FAA. No this was certainly a flight to remember.
When it finally terminated, we disembarked slowly, being trapped at the back of the plane as we were, and without incident, despite the re-elevation of Isabella's fever, we navigated the shuttle in Cincinatti to terminal C, where we found a room with 20 gates. At one of the gates our flight was scheduled, on time! Miracle of miracles, and we even had time to visit the restroom. As we returned, the flight was boarding and gleefully, if mistakenly, I gloated about how this 11:15 flight was at least going to be uneventful. I thought.
As we were traversing the hallway to gate C50, a semi-frantic ticket agent pleaded into a walkie-talkie, "And why is it that the Manchester flight is deplaning?"
What?! I was so close, we were so close... But no, the first crew member of the three person tripulation had fallen ill, it would seem, a victim to ruinous food poisoning; and there was no one, at this advanced hour, to take his place. After the girl tried to explain to an angry throng that they would either put us up for the night at the Radisson, and book us all on the first flight out in the morning (which wasn't until the afternoon because the fog had provoked a series of cancellations earlier in the day, thereby overbooking subsequent flights) OR we could wait until 12 am when they were officially allowed to call a new possible crew member, at which point he was given 15 minutes to decide whether to take the gig or not, and then and hour and a half to arrive at the airport ready to fly, pushing our theoretical departure time to 2am.
Sigh. Maybe it would have been best to miss the first connection in LAX and taken the red eye? Oh well. What is done is done, and as long as I don't die from pneumonia, I guess I'll live. Meanwhile the girlchild is hungry with a capital H and sadly, no restaurants are still open at this time. The customer service representatives scurry about and manage to scrounge a measly snack of pretzels, cheese crackers, peanuts and cookies with beverage options for the remaining hopefuls, and there we waited, breath held, expecting the worst but hoping for the best. Finally, at 12:15 the verdict was in, we would be flying out by 2.
I wondered if anything else could go wrong, and pondered the possibility of my luggage being able to catch up with me because of the delay. Dubious, I thought.
And for the very last time of the evening, I was wrong. We arrived without incident at exactly 3:45 eastern standard time, a mere 12:45 body time for us, and there were my parents, and there was our luggage, waiting to greet us at the baggage claim. A happy ending if ever there was one.
posted by ilana at 4:12 p.m.
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