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The Eclipse of the Moon
One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four… kneeling over a woman who collapsed on our return flight home, performing CPR, I might expect to be panicked but I am not. Actually I am quite calm. My mind keeps wandering elsewhere, while my body follows the repetitive movements on its own. Oh, I am still nervous; even if most of the 90 people onboard can’t see the woman laying on the floor (mercifully, since we had to open her shirt and she now lay partially exposed), they can still see me and I feel as though all eyes rest on me. This is the ultimate test of my medical abilities. I wanted to be a nurse once, and had been an apt student in classes where we often served as our own guinea pigs, injecting each other with saline solution, and administering large, purple bruises that took weeks to heal in the process. Yes, it was a glorious life indeed, but one I ultimately decided wasn’t for me, but here I am testing my knowledge regardless. Not only is it a matter of how well I paid attention, but how well I retained that knowledge. My son is among those watching, six-years old and tall for his age. He is not scared, merely confused. He’s never heard of CPR before, nor has he ever been touched by death, not even the loss of a pet. The muscles in my arm begin to burn as if from an intense workout. This is an intense workout. With the first dozen chest compressions I can feel bones being broken, one rib and then another, under the strength and brutality of my own hands. I think, “She’ll be black and blue tomorrow, and sore as hell.” It never crosses my mind that she won’t see another tomorrow. …five one-thousand. I stop momentarily while the nurse next to me breathes deeply into the woman’s lungs. Her stomach has begun to bloat however, and I’m not sure that it’s going the way it should. Maybe he doesn’t have a good seal on her face, or her head is not tilted back far enough. Her dentures are lose and rattling around in her mouth as he presses on her extended stomach to release the air. Her color is still rosy though and her lips have not turned blue so she must be getting enough oxygen. My lower back begins to whine about the uncomfortable position I’ve demanded of it for nearly twenty minutes now. Twenty minutes. My mind wanders back to the dark, cloud-filled sky. Have they drifted enough to view the lunar eclipse? I wonder. Our day-trip to Mt. Rushmore had been planned to coincide with the lunar eclipse. We’d planned to view it from the airplane on the way home. I glance up at the silent passengers; no one is looking out the window. Does that mean that the clouds are still in the way? I don’t think so. My son has his face glued between the seats in front of him. He has the best seat in the house. What a macabre thought. I wish my mom would (could) distract him somehow. What if he watches this woman die? What will that do to him? What if she dies? That’s the first time the thought has entered my mind. I had watched her with her son and daughter-in-law in the airport in South Dakota (was that really just today?) and they seemed so happy. My son, Justin, being preoccupied with approaching eclipse, had been rattling off astronomy facts and trivia. Although this was an interest we both shared, I was more excited at his contagious glee. I overheard part of their conversation, and they were discussing the eclipse as well, but it was obvious that it was a shadow to the excitement she felt about going to visit a young niece in Salt Lake City. The old woman was also excited (and a bit nervous) because this was going to be her first plane ride ever. She’d never left South Dakota in her life. A woman like that can’t die on an airplane bound for strangeness. A woman like that dies in bed with her family and loved ones around her, mourning her passing and reminiscing about the joy she brought into their lives. Here she was surrounded by strangers complaining about the delay in their busy lives and hectic schedules. No one here would miss her. No one here even knew her name. No. The nurse knew. He’d talked to her as she started complaining of not feeling well. I think he called her Mary. Mary, is that right? Mary didn’t get to see the eclipsed moon either. I know she would have liked it, and it would have been a real treat to see from this altitude, above the city lights. I wondered what else Mary had missed out on in her life. The thin, gold band on her hand tells me she’d been married once, but there was no husband at the airport seeing her off. Was he already gone? Maybe she hoped to be reunited with him. Or maybe it was a loveless marriage and she was glad to be rid of him. Maybe that’s why she had waited to travel all these years. I don’t like the thought, it’s too sad and depressing and I push it out of my mind. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand… I have to work tomorrow. Man! My body is beginning to ache all over and I know I’ll feel it much worse in the morning. The pilot tells us that we will divert to Cody, Wyoming. A pent-up sigh seems to travel through the passengers, but it’s just my own breath escaping me. Salt Lake City is still more than ninety minutes away. No one is physically capable of carrying on like this for that amount of time without some relief, someone to take over or trade off with. Looking at my legs (I’ve been sitting on my feet on their tippie-toes this whole time) you can see the muscles quivering under my Levis. My back is burning now and I can feel the first symptoms of nausea brought on by exertion setting in. I suppose I could ask if anyone else on the plane knows CPR and could help. My dad knows; he’s worked at the hospital my entire life and has been called on “codes” hundreds of times. I look up at him and for the first time I see worry in his eyes. Our eyes meet and he smiles at me gently, the way he used to do when I was young. My eyes fill with tears and I lower my head trying to blink them away before anyone can see. A single tear falls and lands in the hollow of Mary’s neck. The nurse lays his hand on top of mine and I know that Mary is going to die. Nothing we do will bring her back. Something, some kind of sanity-saving device will not allow that thought to be processed, yet, and I go on with my counting. I will not ask for help after all. I volunteered for this and it is my burden to bear. Would it be kind of me to ask someone else to share in that now? No. The plane pitches forward drastically. We’re near Cody and we’re coming in fast. The pilot hasn’t set the flaps or lowered the speed and we’re angled at something like sixty degrees. Anything stowed under seats is sliding forward and slamming into the wall next to me. Mary is sliding away from us and we each grab under her arm, but she’s too heavy. I prop myself up using my leg, my shin pressed painfully against the metal edging of the doorway. I’ll have a bruise there tomorrow. Yep, it’ll be a doozey, it’s already throbbing viciously. Well, at least the strain on my back has lessened as I’m practically lying on top of Mary to keep her stationary. We leveled out only moments before the plane touches the ground and we came in fast, yet it was so smooth I don’t remember ever hearing the wheels bounce. I don’t remember hearing anything! Suddenly the plane has stopped and even as I begin my task again, I can hear the catwalk being extended to the plane. The door is opened and an EMT crew, laden with tackle boxes and cases, steps aboard. They fire questions at us and I move out of the way, content to let the nurse fill them in. I sit back with my dad and he squeezes my knee. I try to hold the tears at bay, but it’s difficult with the adrenaline still surging through my body. I feel queasy. Then the waiting begins. The captain announces over the intercom that the paramedics have pronounced her Dead on the Scene. I can’t detect any difference in his voice from when he’d announced what altitude and speed we’d be flying at. He also tells us that we will be delayed for some time, but the airline will make restitutions for any missed flights. Then he allows us off the plane. It was a nice gesture, but perhaps ill-timed as the paramedics had not yet moved Mary’s body from the middle of the boarding ramp. In order to find a path around her passengers had to either climb over rows of seats or walk half the length of the terminal. At least no one stepped over her body. The passengers, these sheep, have no idea just how serious this is. By law the FAA requires that if a passenger dies on a flight, the flight must remain in quarantine for at least 72 hours—the plane undergoes a partial overhaul, the three rows in front and the three behind the deceased passenger’s seat are ripped out and replaced, along with the carpeting, the wall paper and the overhead bins—regardless of the cause of death. Of course the airline will send another plane to ferry their passengers but it is well after midnight in Cody and the airport is closed. The earliest flight would be at seven o’clock the following morning. I don’t have to be to work until the afternoon, so I have some time. I toy with the idea of renting a car to drive back to Salt Lake but stop short once I realize that everything in the airport is closed—including the rental car stations. My family and I get off the plane hoping to find a vending machine—this day has turned out to be a long one—and as I pass the bank of pay phones I hear passengers complaining bitterly about their ordeal. I was shocked. They practically had to step over a dead woman’s body to get to the damn phones and they were complaining about missing a flight? As it turned out we were only delayed at the airport for about two hours. Some guy there didn’t want to hassle with the paper work it would require to quarantine the plane at his airport, nor the extra hours he would have to stay, and so he sent it on to the main hub in Salt Lake—we were free to leave—and we did in a hurry! We took off almost as fast as we landed. I don’t think the pilots wanted to give anyone a chance to change their minds. The remaining flight was subdued with people talking more softly than a “normal” flight. The flight attendant passed out drinks on the house (the pilots aren’t authorized to do that, but under the circumstances I didn’t think they’d get in any real trouble over it) and she remarked to me later how much more alcoholic drinks she’d served than any other Rapid City/Salt Lake City flight she’d been on. Go figure. I finally got to look out the window at the moon. It was only partially eclipsed now, coming out of the cycle. It didn’t really matter to me. I pointed it out to my son, but he was nonplussed as well. He was tired and quiet, but I was worried for him for other reasons. How would this effect him? My mom suggested setting up an appointment with a therapist for him. I felt that was a bit extreme, but I’d have to remember to really talk with him about the events when we were alone later. As we made our descent into Salt Lake, it was normal, unhurried. I was anxious to get home and crawl wearily into bed. This descent seemed to be unusually long and slow. I personally would like to see every pilot take a landing like the engines are on fire! Talk about saving time. But maybe the pilots weren’t as eager to arrive as I was. After all, they would be filling out paperwork and forms long after I’d gone to sleep. The passengers filed off in an orderly fashion…no one rushed to be the first in line like on so many other flights I’d been on—and then we walked in absolute silence to the terminal. We had all been asked not to talk about the situation until we were in our cars, the niece and her family hadn’t been notified yet. No doubt they were waiting in the lobby, anxiously looking for Auntie Mary. I looked at every face as we made our way through the terminal and up the escalator to the parking garage, and I wondered if that was the one…maybe that one. Who would break the news to her? Would it help her to know that Mary didn’t suffer much? She’d only complained of a shortness of breath before passing out and never regaining consciousness again. I wondered if the bruising would still occur. Did dead people bruise? I didn’t imagine so since the blood was no longer pumping, but I’m not sure to this day. I’ve never bothered to look it up, even though I still think about that day from time to time. My son never understood that Mary had died. I asked him about it a couple of years ago when he was about 12. He only knew that she got really sick and that I helped her while we were on the plane until she could see a doctor. I was prepared to leave it at that, but then he asked, “What did happen to her, Mom?” Maybe it’s because my son looks so much like a younger version of my dad that I could see my dad’s face all over again, with his gentle smile and worried eyes, wishing he could help me. My throat tightened the way it always does when emotion washes over me, tears threatening. For that split second I was back there, kneeling on the cabin floor with my hands covering Mary’s heart. I took a deep breath letting the memory slide away from me like watercolors in the rain, and watched his face as I told him that she’d died. “Oh,” he said, and took another bite of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was another six months before he brought it up again, curious about death. I asked him how that made him feel—I hated using that term, it made me feel so psychological—but he just shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, kinda’ sad I guess. What happened to her?” I knew what he meant because I’d pondered it often enough myself. “I suppose her body was sent back to South Dakota to her family for a funeral.” “Oh,” he said, and stuffed the last half of his banana in his mouth. He was always eating, and so unlike me emotionally; so stoic. Personally, it made me feel like a failure. This is not a test you want to fail, and I was racked with guilt for months! The following day, when I arrived at work, I walked into the break room and received a standing ovation. I turned quickly to see who had followed me in—I couldn’t understand what they were applauding! Then the supervisor came over to me and presented me with a damn award from work for volunteering in a crisis situation where others wouldn’t. Was he serious? I was just doing what anyone would do, wasn’t I? And did they all miss how the story ended? She died. I was no hero…I didn’t deserve any award! I think that only compounded the guilt, and eventually I would spend two hours talking to a company-employed therapist. I was surprised at how much it helped. We talked about a lot of things and I left feeling like I’d made a new friend. Of course this friend charged $150 an hour to listen to your bullshit, but she was very nice while she listened to it just the same. I never did hear about Mary’s niece or who had to tell her the bad news. But I did run into the flight attendant again. We were both passengers on a flight to Southern California. I wouldn’t have known her from Adam, but she approached me with squeals of delight like we were old college roommates. She wrapped her arms around me and gave me an awkward hug; awkward mostly because I had my arms in a semi-raised position in the air as if surrendering to an armed gunman, and didn’t quite know what to do with them from there. She insisted that we sit together and asked several comfortably seated people to rearrange so that we could “catch up”. After inconveniencing as many people as I thought humanly possible we sat together and talked and drank. After a few drinks she confessed that after five hours of filling out official forms and documents she was bitter towards the airline, and accepted the two-week leave of absence with that in mind, not Mary’s death. I confessed that I had been disappointed at missing the lunar eclipse. She didn’t know what I was talking about. After trying to explain to her what a lunar eclipse was (she was having the hardest time grasping the concept of the moon passing through the earth’s shadow) I gave up and ordered another drink. Lucky for us the flight attendant was a friend of hers, and feeling sympathetic for us he allowed us more than the allotted three drinks before cutting us off. In fact, I quit counting somewhere around nine. One might say that we were pretty well inebriated by the time we got there; truth is we were three sheets to the wind and just shy of needing help off the plane! But as I walked with her to the luggage carousel (only someone who’d never seen the inner workings of a baggage department would ever check her luggage—I had my own carry-on hanging from my shoulder) she said that our little talk was just what she needed, and I didn’t even charge her $150 to listen to her bullshit. I left feeling stronger than before, like somehow maybe I didn’t have it as bad as I’d thought. I was coming out of the shadow. My time in the dark, my personal eclipse, was ending. I would spend some time in the sun, and I’d be ok. I was sure of that. |