Think of this one like an origin story. Is he a hero or a villain? I don't know yet.
Abuelo takes another slow breath. Victor doesn’t like the sound of it. The nurse called it sonajero muerte. The death rattle. Listening to it now, he thinks that’s a pretty good description. Victor watches Abuelo’s chest fall as he exhales, and when his chest no longer moves, Victor starts counting under his breath. “Uno, dos, tres…” Last time he’d made it to treinta y cinco before Abuelo breathed again.
Next to him, his twin sister Vanessa sniffs loudly. She’s been crying since they got to Abuelo’s hospital room. She isn’t sad, not exactly. At six, the twins aren’t really sure what dying means. There’s a vague understanding of Heaven and Hell, good and evil. But Vanessa is crying because Mama is crying. Mama calls her pregonero simpatia, a sympathy crier. If someone is crying, so is Vanessa.
Cuarenta, cuarenta y uno, cuarenta-
Abuelo inhales, but Victor thinks it sounds more like a strangled scream. It must have disturbed Mama too. She turns around and says, “Quedate aqui.” Then she gently lays Abuelo’s hand, which she’d been cradling, on his chest and leaves the room. Victor assumes she’s getting the nurse. She’d said the death rattle meant Abuelo’s time was near.
Victor holds his breath as he counts this time. Forty-two seconds is a long time to go without breathing. He wonders if he can do it, and if he does, if it means he will go to Heaven with Abuelo. He wonders if he really wants to go to Heaven. He would miss his friends and his dog, Oscar. And then he wonders what part of you actually goes to Heaven. He knows it isn’t really his body, but something called alma, the soul. But what is the soul? Sometimes he thinks it’s like the ghost version of yourself, but Mama says ghosts are evil, that if your loved one was happy and in Heaven, then you won’t see their ghosts. That’s why it’s important, Mama said, to say goodbye to your loved ones and make peace with them before they die. That’s why they are here with Abuelo now, why they had been here for the last three days, sitting vigil as Abuelo slowly dies.
Today is different, of course. Because of the death rattle. This time it’s almost a minute before Abuelo breathes again. Victor had let his breath out at veintios. Victor hopes Abuelo keeps breathing until Mama comes back. He doesn’t know what will happen. He’s never seen anyone die before. He wonders if you can see someone’s soul leaving their body. Will he see Abuelo’s soul? Will Abuelo’s soul sit up, walk away from his body and through the door? Or will he float through the air, wave goodbye, as he disappears through the ceiling? Can you feel a soul leave a person’s body?
While Victor is concentrating on all of these interesting thoughts he’s never had before, he gets up from his chair and walks to Abuelo’s side. Gently, he takes his grandfather’s cool, frail hand in his own. Then he leans over and also clasps Abuelo’s other hand. Completing the circle, he thinks. But he doesn’t know what that means, or where that thought came from.
“Que estas haciendo?” Vanessa asks, but Victor doesn’t respond. Very quickly he’s become confused. His hands are warm, uncomfortably warm. And it feels like they are heating up, like he’s holding them over a fire.
Vanessa walks around to the other side of Abuelo’s bed. She holds onto the railing and stares at him. “Victor,” she gasps. “Tus manos!”
Victor looks down. His hands are beginning to glow. Victor opens his mouth in disbelief, but almost immediately wishes he hadn’t because now his mouth won’t close. Instead, it’s opening wider and wider, until he thinks his jaw might fall off.
Across from him, Vanessa now cries because she’s afraid. Victor understands – he’s afraid too. Not only does he not understand what’s happening to his body, but he cannot control it. Like his mouth, his eyes open wider than he thought possible, and like his hands, his eyes feel too warm and glow. The burning in both his hands and his eyes becomes an excruciating, burning pain. His mouth opens yet wider.
Suddenly Abuelo draws in another ragged breath. He lifts his head from the pillow and looks up. He stares beyond the twins and raises an arm as if to reach out to someone. He smiles and suddenly looks peaceful. “Teresa,” he whispers.
But Victor doesn’t let go of Abuelo’s hand; he can’t.
Then, as if drawn by a magnet, Abuelo’s head jerks towards Victor. Victor stares into Abuelo’s watery grey eyes as they focus on him. He watches as his grandfather becomes terrified. His eyes bore into Victor and Victor feels Abuelo’s fear. He feels his grandfather’s fear and then he absorbs it. It becomes a part of him. Then Victor slowly absorbs Abuelo.
From across the bed, Vanessa is now so terrified that her sobs are silent. What she sees is a faint glow coming from her grandfather, a glow that she will later describe as a heavenly light. And that light is slowly being drawn towards her brother in a sort of funnel of light. Victor’s wide eyes and mouth hungrily suck in this glow, turning it into a vibrant orange light so bright it nearly lights the room. This light slowly engulfs Victor until he’s just a person-shaped beacon.
Suddenly the light disappears. Victor drops Abuelo’s hands, which fall lifelessly to the bed. Abuelo’s body sinks into the bedclothes like a ragdoll, and he immediately looks...empty.
Victor staggers back into his chair, sobbing loudly. He didn’t mean to do it! He didn’t know what he was doing! He drops his head into his still warm hands. They are still full of his grandfather’s soul, slowly seeping into Victor’s own.
“Que hiciste?” His sister shouts.
Victor doesn’t reply. He doesn’t know what to say. He might only be six years old, but even he knows that no one will believe what just happened. No one will believe that he had eaten Abuelo’s soul, had done the one thing to prevent Abuelo from being happy in Heaven with Abuelita.
Why had he done it?
How had he done it?
And why did it make him feel so...good?
The Giver of Time
There is a balance to the universe, and as such, a balance to life. There is light and dark. Good and evil. Yin and yang. And if there is a person who can eat souls, who can end both natural and eternal life, then there must be a balance. And because they are twins, the balance to Victor’s insatiable hunger for souls is his sister, Vanessa.
This is a story of several people involved in and connected to a plane crash, and how their lives intersect with each other.
ONE
Florida
The night sky is clear. Millions of stars twinkle in the inky blanket of space. The glassy water reflects the crescent moon in its velvety blackness. The air is filled with the song of late summer: chirping crickets, croaking frogs, a hooting owl, the faint sounds of creatures slipping into the water.
Drifting near the middle of the lake is a skiff. It holds a girl, Allie, and her dog, Blue. Allie reclines on the bottom, hands behind her head, a contented smile on her dirty face, hair splayed out like it hasn’t been brushed in a week. She contemplates the stars, pretends she’s on a spaceship, exploring the edges of the universe. Blue, a big yellow mutt, sleeps with his head on Allie’s stomach, contemplating an imaginary steak; he licks his chops in his sleep.
It’s late, Allie knows, long past curfew. Midnight maybe, not that it matters. Summer curfew is dark, and Doc will be hopping mad, but that’s a problem for Future Allie. For now, she enjoys the stars and the night sounds and the fresh night air.
Blue startles awake. He pops up, rocking the boat. His hackles rise with a growl.
“Shh!” Allie swats him on the back. He sits, but he doesn’t relax. “You were only dreamin’.” Blue argues with another growl. Allie is about to admonish him again, but then she hears the low rumble that set him off. “Oh, it’s only an airplane stupid.”
Blue keeps growling, a low, barely audible noise. Allie, intrigued, sits up. She sees the lights of the plane as it approaches. Right away she can tell something isn’t right. It’s not unusual to see an airplane over the lake at night; this area is less populated, so the engine noises won’t disrupt the sleep of very many. But this plane is much lower than most, and it’s quieter. She thinks maybe one of the engines isn’t working.
As Allie watches, she realizes the plane is truly approaching their little boat. It’s getting larger and larger in the sky very quickly, and yet – it isn’t getting any louder. In fact, it’s now deadly quiet. Allie knows very little about airplanes, has never even been on one. But she’s seen and heard enough of them to know that the giant commercial plane bearing down on their tiny boat has no working engines.
Blue whines and slips his head into Allie’s armpit. Before she can even process that the airplane is going to crash into this very lake, it’s sailing a mere fifty feet over their heads. It’s so close she can see the logo on the tail as it passes. The air pulled behind it washes over them, nearly toppling the boat, tugging them toward the doomed plane’s final resting place.
Just before the plane hits the water, it’s so quiet that Allie can hear the screams of the 207 souls on board.
The crash is deafening, as if the plane has smashed into solid rock instead of water. The massive body cartwheels. A wing breaks off, skids across the water. There’s a burst of light followed by heavy black smoke. Gasoline slicks the water’s surface, catching fire. Flames dance in the dark. The cockpit skips across the lake’s surface like a pebble, launching through the trees on the opposite bank. The fuselage, broken into three pieces, begins sinking almost immediately.
Allie hasn’t seen most of this. The crash creates massive waves, overturning her little skiff. She comes up for air choking and coughing. She’s not a very good swimmer, and she flails around, looking for the boat in the rocking water and orange glow. Blue has popped up also, but he’s not nearby. Most dogs love water, but not Blue. Allie sees his head bobbing in the water as he dogpaddles to shore, away from the flames and noise.
A bump on the back of Allie’s head tells her she’s found the skiff, but it’s still turned over. The water is deep, and she can’t flip it by herself. Instead, she crawls on top, which isn’t easy either. She flops onto the boat and lays down, panting.
That’s when the real screaming starts. Survivors. They cry out in pain and beg for help. Someone calls out to God.
Allie sits up and tries to find the owners of the voices. She has an urge to help them, but what can she do? She’s only 11 and small for her age. Her eyes scan the crash. She sees little orbs bobbing in the water. Heads. Attached to human bodies. They are facedown. As Allie begins to process what’s just happened, as her brain tells her these people are dead or dying, she begins to cry. The shock and sadness overwhelm her.
Suddenly a hand grabs the side of the skiff. A woman clings to the side. Or at least, Allie thinks it’s a woman. She has been horribly burned by the accident, but her eyes are clear. They stare up at Allie, her lips moving. The woman’s voice seems to be gone, but Allie can read her lips. She says, “Help me.”
Allie reaches down and grabs her hand. “Hold on!” She tries to pull the woman up by her arm, but her skin sloughs off like a glove and the woman releases a howl of pain so strong that Allie feels her pain too.
“I’m sorry!” Allie sobs. “I’m sorry! I’ll just hold on, okay? I’ll hold on to you. I won’t let go. I promise.”
The sounds of sirens have started in the distance.
“Help is coming,” Allie says. “Please don’t die.”
* * *
Though it’s still dark, you’d hardly notice. There are too many emergency vehicles for Allie to count, all with colored lights strobing over the crash site. Policemen have set up klieg lights along the shore to aid those in the water, still looking for survivors. Allie doesn’t think they’ll find any; she hasn’t heard any cries for help in a while.
A few fire trucks were the first to reach the lake. Armed with search lights, they found Allie and the woman pretty quickly. By then, the woman was unconscious, and Allie’s arms had grown tired. If it had taken any longer for the men to reach her, she might not have been able to keep her promise. They loaded the woman into the first ambulance that arrived and rushed her away.
Allie now sits on the bumper of an ambulance, wrapped in what someone told her was a blanket, but she feels like a potato wrapped in tinfoil. The firemen had given her a thorough once over and remarked how they couldn’t believe she was alive, unhurt. How could a child survive a plane crash like that? “Looks like it wasn’t your time,” one of them told her.
Allie hadn’t told them she wasn’t on the plane. She hadn’t told them anything. And that seemed like it was okay because they left her here with the “blanket” and returned to the search. They had only pulled one other person from the water, a man. He wasn’t burned, but he was bloody, and his face didn’t look right, like a scrambled Mr. Potato Head.
Allie had hoped with all the chaos around her that they might forget about her and she could sneak away. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but she knows they’ll want to know who she is. They’ll want to know her name and where she lives. And she can’t tell them. If she does, they’ll take her away from Doc, away from her friends. She doesn’t want that to happen.
Alas, they hadn’t forgotten her. Instead, they assigned a police officer to her. He’d tried to talk to her a few times, and when she ignored him, they sent a lady officer to try her luck. When that didn’t work, they mumbled to each other about shock. The lady eventually shrugs and leaves Allie and the other officer to watch the rescue efforts together.
Although no one says it out loud, it’s understood they aren’t looking for survivors anymore. The policeman calls it a “recovery effort,” even though she doesn’t ask. He tells her they’ll just be pulling the bodies out now and suggests she sit inside the ambulance. “You don’t want to see that, sweetheart.”
Allie shrugs. She’s seen worse on TV, but she doesn’t want to talk to the policeman, so she climbs through the open back doors of the ambulance. She sits on the stretcher and stares out toward the tree line. A few minutes pass before she sees movement there – a big yellow lump. Blue! She’d assumed he ran home like the scaredy cat he is. But he’s also loyal. He’s waiting for her. Like Allie, Blue is suspicious of other people, so he doesn’t approach the sea of emergency vehicles. She watches his mouth open and close, but doesn’t hear his bark over the noise around her. She doesn’t want him hanging around. He could get picked up by animal control and she might never see him again. But she can’t very well shout to him, so she communicates with him another way – sign language.
With her thumb and fingers together, she touches her cheek. She moves her hand from her cheek to her ear. Home. Blue just stares at her with his ears up. He barks. She makes another sign; with her fists facing up, she sticks out her pinkies and thumbs. She holds her fists near her shoulders and then drags them down. Now! She repeats the two signs together. Home! Now! Blue barks again before running off. Allie leans back, relieved. One problem solved.
“So that’s why you’re not talking, is it?” a voice behind her asks. “You’re deaf?”
Allie startles and jumps off the stretcher.
A paramedic has entered the side door in the back of the ambulance. He holds his palms up. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
They stare at each other like two cowboys in a standoff. The paramedic is young, like Doc’s daughter, so he’s maybe in his twenties. He has dark, close cropped hair and kind blue eyes that sparkle in the white light of the ambulance. He’s tan and he looks strong, sturdy. He slowly moves his hands down to his sides.
“It’s okay,” he says again. “I’m not going to hurt you. Promise. It’s pretty much the opposite of what I do.” When he smiles, the skin around his eyes crinkle. He looks kind, which comforts Allie. She sits down again, but watches him carefully. He sits on a bench next to the stretcher. He puts his elbows on his knees, leans toward her.
“So,” he says. “You heard me, didn’t you?”
Slowly, Allie nods.
“Okay, so you aren’t deaf.”
Allie shakes her head.
“But that was sign language, right? Are you mute?” he asks. Allie doesn’t answer him this time. She isn’t mute; her voice works just fine. Sign language is something she doesn’t really remember learning, but has always known. She’d added some words to her vocabulary as she got older, using some old textbooks in Doc’s basement. She and her friends use it to communicate after lights out. If Doc hears them talking, he comes to their room and starts yelling about how he has to get up early, even though he doesn’t. Sometimes he doesn’t get up until noon.
The paramedic looks at her like she’s a puzzle he’s trying to solve. “Maybe you just don’t want to talk,” he says.
Allie eyes him carefully, wills herself not to give anything away.
“Maybe she just doesn’t wanna talk to you.” Another paramedic, a handsome black man with a shaved head, stands at the back doors. “Lord knows I don’t.” To Allie he says, “Buckle up, miss. We’re headin’ out.” and then closes the doors.
“Don’t listen to Steve,” the first paramedic says as he shows Allie how to work the seatbelt on the stretcher. “He loves talking to me.”
Allie hears Steve climb into the driver’s seat, and then feels the motion of the ambulance as it travels over the bumpy ground, back to the road. Inside, Allie panics. Where are we going? she wonders. What’s happening? How will I get home? Doc’s gonna kill me.
The paramedic must see the panic on Allie’s face. “It’s okay,” he says. He reaches over to pat her hand, but she draws away. He frowns. “Look, let’s make introductions, okay? That’s Steve with the winning personality up front. I’m Manny.” He holds out his hand. Hesitantly, Allie takes Manny’s hand, and he shakes it with exaggeration. She smiles despite herself.
“See?” Manny says. “We aren’t so bad, right?”
Allie shrugs.
“You’re hard to impress, aren’t you? Well, what about you?” Manny asks. “What’s your name?”
Allie hesitates.
“You certainly are suspicious for a little thing,” Manny says.
“She probably doesn’t like being called a little thing,” Steve says over his shoulder.
Manny rolls his eyes at Steve and Allie smiles again. “You don’t have to tell me. You can show me, right? Show me with your hands, just your first name, okay? So I don’t have to call you ‘little thing’ anymore.” He smiles.
Allie smiles back. She holds up her right hand and makes a fist, with her thumb along the side.
“I know that one,” Manny says. “A, right?”
Allie nods again and then sticks out her thumb and forefinger.
“Oh, well that’s an L, right? Okay, A, L. What’s next?” He holds up his hand to mimic her movements.
Allie shows him the L again, and then holds up her pinky finger, separated from her fist. This one seems to stump Manny for a minute. “Hmm… I want to say it’s a lowercase L, but that doesn’t make sense does it? I think it’s… an I. Right again? Look at me, on a roll!”
“There’s a first time for everything,” Steve says.
“Okay. A, L, L, I. Is it Allison?” Manny guesses.
Allie shakes her head. She holds up her fist a final time. She pulls her thumb inward and curls her fingers down.
“An E,” Manny says. “Okay. So… Allie? Am I right?” She nods.
“Awesome!” Manny seems genuinely excited. She watches him write her name down on a clipboard. Then he asks her a question she’s always dreaded. “Okay, what about a last name?”
Allie freezes up. She doesn’t actually know her last name. Allie isn’t even really her first name; it’s just what Doc’s called her ever since he found her. He said he’d found her in an alley behind a grocery store, digging through trash like a hungry cat. That was when he’d taken her in, as he’d taken the others in. He’d always called her Allie Cat after that.
Manny sees she’s uncomfortable again. “Okay, what about just a letter, just the first letter of your last name?” He watches her as she thinks it over. Eventually, she doesn’t know what else to do, so she just shows him her hand, shaped like a C.
“C. Great. I can work with that.” He smiles at her again.
Allie wants to ask Manny why they’re taking her to the hospital. She isn’t hurt. She wasn’t even on the plane! Once she gets to the hospital, they’re really going to want her information, all of it: a real name, an address, her parents’ names. Not only can she not give them any of this information, she doesn’t want to. They’ll call child services, and that, Doc said, was Bad News.
Manny looks up at her again, keeps smiling. “Okay, now I need to do some things okay? I know you look okay, and you might even feel okay, but that doesn’t mean something might not be wrong. I promise I’ll only ask yes or no questions, and I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do. Okay?”
Allie doesn’t know what to do. If she tells Manny she wasn’t a passenger, she might just be allowed to go home. But going home meant contacting Doc or giving his address to someone. That was just as likely to get child services called as anything else. She figures she has to play along for now, and hopes a chance to escape will reveal itself. Realizing Manny has been waiting for a response, she nods.
TWO
Melissa Wainwright is a passenger on the flight that will, very shortly, be at the bottom of a lake. She’s on her final descent into Florida for a bachelorette weekend that she’s a little surprised to be invited to. She hasn’t talked to Jennifer much since they graduated, and Melissa lives in Colorado now. But they’d been sorority sisters, and a bunch of the other sisters will be there. Maybe it’ll be fun to catch up in real life.
Sebastian, Melissa’s fiancée, thinks it’s a bad idea. He thinks everything that doesn’t concern him is a bad idea. Truth be told, she needs a little space. They’ve been together two years. She moved into his high-rise Denver apartment six months ago, and he proposed three months ago.
They’d gone out to an expensive restaurant. Melissa just wanted to go to a Thai place around the corner, maybe get takeout. She wasn’t in the mood for a night out, but Sebastian was adamant. A little wine had smoothed things over, but she was floored when Sebastian got down on his knee and proposed with his grandmother’s ring.
Melissa looks down at the ring now, a pearl nestled in a swirl of white gold. She thinks about that night. She thinks maybe she just said yes because that’s what you’re supposed to do. That’s when she notices the noise. Or rather, the lack of it.
Ten minutes earlier, Melissa had noticed a change in the pitch of the engines. She’s no expert by any means, but she thinks it sounds like one of the engines has lost power. She doesn’t fly often – she’s kind of a nervous flyer. But when she sees no one around her appears concerned, she folds back inward, turning the ring around her finger, stirring her thoughts around and around.
But now Melissa’s certain something’s wrong. It’s nearly silent and the lights have gone out. She senses the change in forward motion; the plane is slowing down. Most importantly, since Sebastian paid for her front row seat, she has a clear view of the two flight attendants sitting in their jump seats behind the cockpit. Both of them have gone pale. One of them hurries to the cockpit phone. Melissa can’t hear her, but the fear etched on the attendant’s face tells her all she needs to know.
The other passengers are becoming alarmed now. Looking out the windows, it’s obvious the plane is descending quickly – too quickly. Although they’re getting closer to the ground, the lights of the airport are absent.
The man next to Melissa starts praying, and the woman on his other side begins hyperventilating. Melissa’s life doesn’t flash before her eyes. She doesn’t panic as the flight attendants begin their rote chant. “Brace, brace, brace! Heads down! Stay down!” Though they’re shouting, they’re also suddenly calm, as if this routine has been ingrained into their brain so well that the calmness comes with it.
“Brace, brace, brace!”
Melissa looks out the window. She can see treetops now, highlighted by the full moon.
“Heads down! Stay down!”
Melissa suddenly remembers advice she once heard on the news after a plane crash. It said for your seatbelt to really be effective, it should be so tight it’s uncomfortable. She tightens her seatbelt now, tightens it until it’s painful.
People are screaming, crying out:
“I don’t want to die!”
“Please God! Not like this!”
“No! No! No!”
Melissa looks out the window again. She’s eye level with the trees. She looks down at her engagement ring. Her last thought before the crash is not about Sebastian, but about another man, from another life. Her hand goes to her necklace, fingers a different ring on the chain. She thinks, I’m sorry, Ben.
The crash is violent, but Melissa is only conscious for a split second. When she comes to it’s because of the pain. It’s a pain that defies all she’s ever known of pain. Her entire upper body, her face, her scalp – all is blinding, white hot pain.
Melissa flails around, feels like she’s drowning in lava. She’s too absorbed by the agony to realize she’s in a lake. When her eyes struggle open, she sees the silhouette of someone above her. She reaches up, tries to ask for help. As they grab her arm, a new pain takes over, a pain so potent she can’t even comprehend it, can’t even define it as pain. Just before she loses consciousness again, she hears an angel’s voice.
“I won’t let go. I promise.”
* * *
Benjamin Baker is a man of many names. To his parents, he remains the formal Benjamin. His sister still refers to him as Bennykins, her childhood nickname for him, and a reminder that she’s the eldest. His frat brothers call him Benny, a name his father also uses, but only when Mother isn’t around. But the name he enjoys the most is BB, the nickname he’d earned at the hospital. He found introducing himself as BB somehow made him more relatable to patients and families, especially children.
His role at the hospital is patient liaison, which is a fancy way of saying social worker. He fills many roles. He helps families work through their grief or sort through medical paperwork. He helps patients find programs, both inside and outside the hospital, to help with rehabilitation, whether they’re recovering from physical injury or addiction. His job also comes with the unfortunate role of notifying people’s families their loved ones are in the hospital, and sometimes, the morgue. And when a patient is unconscious or disoriented, he helps to identify them. Most patients come to the hospital in the middle of a medical emergency. They aren’t thinking about their wallet or their insurance card, a form of identification. And sometimes, they just plain don’t have it. In these cases he becomes a bit of a detective, working with authorities to figure out who someone is, if they’re the victim of a crime, and who to call.
It’s the middle of the night when his phone starts pinging incessantly. BB is a heavy sleeper, so it isn’t until his cat, Saucy, starts pawing his face that he finally stirs and reaches for his phone. It rings immediately.
“Marcia,” he croaks when he answers his supervisor’s call.
“Have you seen the news?” Marcia asks without preamble. She sounds both excited and dumbfounded, which BB considers her natural state.
BB sits up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Marcia, it’s –” he finds the clock, “two in the morning.” Saucy purrs loudly, demanding attention and he has to swat her tail out of his face. “Some of us actually sleep. What’s happening?”
“Plane crash,” she blurts. “Over the lake.”
BB gets out of bed and heads to the living room. Saucy follows, loudly demanding breakfast. He turns on the TV. Though it’s still the middle of the night, he finds the news of the crash on CNN – and every other major news channel. A large passenger plane has crashed into the lake. It’s feared most are dead, but at least 3 survivors have been pulled from the water.
BB is alert now. Marcia isn’t calling just to tell him the news. He’s on call, and she needs his help.
“Alright,” he says. “Give me half an hour. Meet me in the ER. With coffee. Lots of coffee.”
“Done. And tell Saucy to shut the hell up, will you?” She hangs up.
Saucy meows a retort before streaking into the kitchen to wait for her breakfast.
BB sighs. It’s going to be a long day, and likely, a sad one.
* * *
Washington, D.C.
Jennifer Reston is roused by her own phone about the same time as BB. It’s her team leader, Dave Breller. A call in the middle of the night from Breller can only mean one thing – a plane crash. And if he’s calling her, then she’s about to join her first official investigation since completing her NTSB training.
She tries to temper her excitement as she answers the phone; a plane crash isn’t supposed to be a good thing. “This is Jennifer,” she says, trying to sound as if she hasn’t just woken up.
“Reston. Breller.” Dave always starts his calls like this, as if he’s never understood caller ID. He’s an old timer, nearing retirement, so maybe he really didn’t. “We’ve got a crash in Florida. You’re up.”
“Okay, I-” Jennifer starts to reply, but Dave barrels on with the facts in his usual fashion, no interest in banal pleasantries.
“Boeing 767, water landing. 207 souls on board, including crew. 204 dead, 3 pulled alive from the wreckage.” Jennifer struggles to find a pen and some paper in the dark, trying to keep up with Dave’s rapid-fire breakdown. “They may not stay that way for long, so we need to get statements a-sap. Wheels up in an hour.”
By the time she finds something to write on, he’s hung up.
THREE
Jimmy Goodwin sits alone in the last row on the same flight as Melissa Wainwright. He absently bounces his knees, nervous, but not about flying.
He’d hopped on the red eye as a standby passenger, having made his decision quickly, but not recklessly – he hoped. But he’d made the decision, and once a decision was made, Jimmy followed through. That’s part of his therapy. And since his parole is up and he’s finally allowed to leave the state, now is as good a time as any to take the next step.
Jimmy’s returning to Florida for the first time in seven years to get the girl he left behind. He’ll head to her house straight from the airport – even though he isn’t sure he’ll be well received. Actually, if he’s honest with himself, he knows he won’t be well received. The stubborn old man never liked him, probably won’t believe Jimmy’s changed. But he has to try; he’ll never be able to live with himself if he doesn’t.
Things have been going well for Jimmy for a few years now. He’s finally got a steady job, a little savings, a place to live. He thinks he can offer his girl the kind of life she deserves now, thinks he’s the person to give it to her. He had to go through a lot to get here, most importantly a two year stint in jail, followed by parole and a mandatory drug rehabilitation program. Seven years ago he didn’t think this kind of life would be possible for him, this kind of happiness. And he is happy. There’s just the one thing missing: his girl.
Jimmy tries to conjure up an image of her in his mind, but it’s difficult. Seven years is a long time; she’s sure to look much different now. Lord knows he does. For starters he has short, close-cropped hair of his natural light brown color now. Looking back, he’s not sure how he could’ve ever thought a bleached mullet was a good idea; must’ve been the drugs. He’s replaced his old threadbare flannels and ripped jeans with button ups and Polos, khakis and trendy jeans. He’s filled out too, but not overweight. Prison time helped him develop a gym routine, both to pass the time and so he’d be able to defend himself. He’s kept with it since he got out, thinks it’s one of the main reasons he’s been able to hold off relapsing. He looks strong, but more importantly, he feels strong. He wonders if she’ll recognize him, but then immediately hopes she doesn’t. He wants to completely shed the old Jimmy, like a snake leaving his skin behind. He wants her to see him as he sees himself, a new man, one that’s ready to care for her the way she’s always deserved.
Suddenly people are yelling, breaking Jimmy from his reverie. Some people have risen in their seats, others peer out the windows with growing horror. The cabin lights wink out. Jimmy’s confused – the plane isn’t diving. If anything, this is the smoothest part of the flight so far. What’s happening?
Jimmy leans over to his window. He realizes the plane is dangerously low to the ground at the same time he realizes he can’t hear the noise of the engines.
“It can’t be…” He utters. “It can’t be!” Why? Why now, of all times, of all places? Why is this his time and place to go? When he’s just figured things out, just worked everything out so he could finally get his girl? It’s just so…so… “Cruel,” he whispers.
Still staring out the window, a tear streams down his cheek. He calculates he has mere seconds left on this earth. What can I do? He wonders. What can I do?
Without thinking, Jimmy pops out of his seat. He runs down the aisle, sprints past rows of crying, screaming passengers, all lost in their own stories of imminent death. He’s going to the cockpit, but he isn’t sure why. He’s not a pilot, wouldn’t know the first thing about flying this monster in the sky. But he has to do something, anything other than just sit and wait to die.
Jimmy’s halfway up the aisle when the plane hits the water. He’s thrown forward at incredible speed, bounces around the cabin like a ping pong ball. He feels nothing after the first hit, face first into a tray table that was not in its upright position. He comes to rest on a sea of other passengers and luggage spilled from overhead bins. Bodies, luggage, seat cushions, and other cabin detritus swirl on the surface of the water rushing in from the hole in the fuselage. Jimmy’s body, so far forward in the plane, slips through the hole with a few other bags. He rises to the surface with the strap of a particularly buoyant bag around his neck. They come to rest on the surface of the water, the bag holding Jimmy’s face just above the water, so he doesn’t drown. The first responder who finds him nearly misses Jimmy, mistaking his ruined face for a pile of soaked clothing, comments on “the man’s incredible luck” as he pulls him out of the water and loads him on the stretcher.
Jimmy is the third survivor pulled from the wreckage. He’s also the last.