Connie’s jaw drops. “You mean you’vesleptthrough all this?”
Apparently so. “All what?”
Another jolt hits us, a good hundred-foot drop, probably, and this time it’s full-on shrieks sounding through the cabin as stuff goes flying.
“That!” Connie says. “That was the worse one yet!”
The captain’s voice, in thickly accented English, comes to us over the PA system. “Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen. We are apparently hitting worse turbulence than was predicted. Flight attendants, please make sure the cabin is secure and return to your seats. Everyone, please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened. Thank you.”
Another hard jolt bounces us. I glance out the starboard window to see tall, dark, angry banks of clouds off to our right. I’m sure the ocean is beneath us somewhere, but I can’t see it with the cloud cover.
“How long ago did we take off?” I ask, tightly gripping my arm rest as another bounce rocks us.
“Almost two hours,” Michael says. He checks the time on his huge-ass, ugly wristwatch, which he resets every damn time we land. “One hour, fifty minutes,” he says.
I snug my seatbelt a little tighter around my mid-section and pray I don’t get sick. Although what’s messing with my stomach and tensing it now isn’t nausea.
It’s fear.
I’ve experienced some pretty bumpy flights in my life in all sizes of aircraft, from tiny turbo-prop commuter flights, all the way up to jumbo wide-bodies, and they’re never fun. But there’s a tense atmosphere now filling the cabin that doesn’t feel…normal.
Not at all.
I pull my purse out enough I can shove the pillow and mask into it before I quickly kick it back under the seat. I don’t want my face to get smashed into the seat-back in front of me if we take another bad bounce.
The pilot banks hard to port, which I’m assuming is north, or at least a northerly direction, because that’s what makes sense, based on our destination and flight path.
That’s when the plane shudders. A loudbangon the starboard side of the cabin makes even me scream. I’m now holding hands with Connie on my right, my other hand white-knuckling the armrest on my left.
“What thehellwas that?” she shrieks.
“It’s okay, honey,” Michael says. “I’m sure that—”
His next words are ripped away—along with his right arm and part of his head—as a large chunk of something hits the side of the cabin two rows ahead of us and tears an even larger chunk about twenty feet long out of the side of the fuselage, along where the windows are. I barely notice the painful way my ears squeeze from the sudden change in pressure because I’m too busy screaming.
Which, ironically, helps my ears pop.
All around us, oxygen masks drop from the overheads like deadly puppets dancing in the air current.
This is where rational Susa and emotional pet take vastly divergent paths, my mind slowing and splitting, every millisecond a seeming forever as it happens, each heartbeat an eternity.
Susa has dropped into cold, calm, crisis-management mode, and is thinking that the engine in the wing on our side lost a part, or had some sort of catastrophic failure, and the debris hit the skin of the plane, with explosive decompression taking care of the rest when a window gave way.
Pet is screaming along with the rest of the passengers, our cries now lost over the roar of the wind and whine of the remaining, struggling engine.
Susa is remembering hundreds of pre-flight safety talks, peels my fingers off the left armrest, and somehow manages to grab the oxygen mask on the first try and push it against my face. Susa also notes how the people around her now breathe mist into the suddenly frigid air, and something about fifteen seconds or less to get the mask on before losing consciousness because of hypoxia comes to mind.
Pet is crying and terrified and thinking of my two men, and that I’ll never see them again.
Susa manages to jerk my right hand free from Connie’s gasp and yank the elastic band for the oxygen mask over my head and tighten it, then reaches for the one in front of Connie and has to slap her left cheek hard to make her turn enough I can force it over her nose and mouth and pull the band over her head, yanking it tight to hold it in place.
Pet is convinced we’re all going to die.
Actually, Susa’s pretty convinced of that, too, and wonders if it was a mistake to put on the masks. At least losing consciousness due to a lack of oxygen would mean a merciful death.
Except for that last-second awakening before impact.
Fuuuuck.
