By the time the flight attendant switched to English, Layla had unbuckled and leaned forward, clearing her throat delicately at the armrest hog in the aisle seat, who turned to look at her with an expression of surprise. Layla gave him a polite smile, the sort that sat as naturally on her face as a pair of scrubs on her body. She’d call it her professional smile, but what boundaries she had between the personal and the professional weren’t all that clear to her these days.
It just felt like her smile. And maybe it wasn’t the kind of smile that said she was thriving, but she was pretty sure it said calm and unbothered in any language.
So when the man stood from his seat to let Layla pass, she didn’t need any psychological tricks at all. In the aisle, she Face ID’d back into her phone, swiped out of the translation app without even thinking about it, and pulled up the copy of her medical license she kept in her photo library. In this moment, there was no Paris, no Jamie. No family she’d failed, and no universes ending.
There was only this plane and this patient, and that sounded near enough to how she’d been living her life lately that she felt right at home.
By the time she made her way to the closest flight attendant, Layla wondered if perhaps she might not be needed—this was a big plane, a full flight, and she imagined that there was at least one other qualified physician on board. But judging by the plain relief on the uniformed man’s face, Layla was going to be doing this solo, and while a little pulse of adrenaline thrummed through her—this had never happened to her before, and she’d taken alotof flights over the last couple of years—she still felt perfectly in control.
She was good at her job. Good at keeping a cool head in a crisis.
In as hushed a tone as the white noise whir of the cabin wouldallow, the flight attendant—Marc, his name tag read—told her there was a young woman in business class who fainted on her way back from the plane’s lavatory. She was awake now, but quiet, a little confused. She was traveling alone.
“She is American,” Marc said, in that beautifully French way.Ah-merry-ken. “So we will not need to translate.”
Layla nodded, but heat rose to her cheeks as he turned to lead the way up the aisle. She hoped he hadn’t somehow seen her doing the affirmations.
In business class—despite the pleasant accommodations, especially compared to the sardine can where she’d been seated—Layla felt something familiar in the air, a tense temperature she knew from walking into hundreds of hospital rooms. A silent,someone is sickrestlessness that was an infection all on its own. A couple of passengers craned their necks to look at her and Marc, brows furrowed in anxious concern. They’d probably seen the young woman faint.
Don’t worry, Layla thought, silently telegraphing comfort to all of them.I’m calm.
And when Marc gestured toward one of the curved half pods in the middle row, another flight attendant rising from the crouched position she’d been in beside the seat, Layla proved it.
She blocked everything out but the girl in front of her, and did her job.
It was quiet work, the kind Layla excelled at: observing, listening, prompting. There was a small black kit left by Marc at her feet, but Layla didn’t open it yet. Instead, she talked to fifteen-year-old Willa: not only about how she felt (“Better now. Sort of woozy still”), but also about where she was headed (to visit her aunt and uncle and cousins, her first time doing this trip alone), and about the book she was clutching in her lap (“There’s this fae prince,” shetold Layla, voice pitching into liveliness, “and he’s in love with this mortal girl”).
Layla watched Willa’s face carefully as she talked, looking for—but thankfully not seeing—abnormalities that would suggest something amiss with her cranial nerves. She noted the grayish tint to Willa’s skin; she listened to the arid clicking sound the girl’s mouth made during a particularly long sentence.
And when Willa was ready—when she was detailing how the fae prince’s mother gave the mortal girl a dose of deadly poison—Layla made use of the subpar tools in the kit. She listened to Willa’s chest, checked her blood pressure, measured her respiration and heart rate. Layla asked mild questions about Willa’s trip and her book and the five friendship bracelets she had stacked on her right wrist, but in between she asked other things: could Willa squeeze two of Layla’s fingers, did she take any medication, how much had she had to eat and drink today.
It wasn’t complicated, as cases go, and one thing about Layla’s line of work was, she was well acquainted with complicated. What Willa needed was some snacks and a drink and probably a longer adjustment period with the new meds she’d started last week for her ADHD before taking a transatlantic flight. Since the ship on the latter had long since sailed, Layla focused on getting Willa hydrated and fed.
“The food on this plane isnotgood,” the girl said at the suggestion, so dramatically that Layla had to press her lips together to stop a laugh.
“Let’s try a little something anyway,” she said smoothly, switching from her crouched position to sit fully in the aisle. She kept her face placid through a disturbing thought about an airplane floor’s cleanliness, then smiled up at Willa when she was newly settled.
By now it felt different than simple doctoring: Were this ahospital room, Layla would have already made her exit, leaving someone else to take over the logistics of treatment. But here, Layla’s responsibilities were more complicated—now that she’d treated Willa, she wouldn’t leave her until she could place her in the care of the aunt and uncle. Even without those obligations, though, she wouldn’t have minded staying, wouldn’t have minded the opportunity to distract Willa with conversation, to watch color come back into the girl’s cheeks as her blood sugar stabilized and her nervousness eased.
It was the most calm and unbothered Layla had felt in days.
By the time Willa asked her what she was traveling to Paris for, she didn’t even need to take a meditative breath before answering.
“A wedding,” she said—breezily—and thought:I genuinely feel fine.
She thought of Emily, her beloved and now former sister-in-law, thought of the handwritten note Emily had written to accompany the elegant save-the-date that came in the mail to Layla’s barely lived-in apartment in Boston, the earnest phone call they had not long after, both of them trying not to cry. Emily had only been a few years younger than Willa when Layla first met her all those years ago, back when things were brand-new with Jamie, and now Em was gettingmarried, married inParis, and that would be wonderful for her, and Layla could be for her what she was being right now for Willa.
Not a doctor, okay, but still. A pleasant, supportive guest. Unflappable and selfless.
She owed Emily that. She owed the entire family that, especially after staying away so long.
Willa practically beamed at her, and Layla felt it like reassurance, a warranty seal on the fact that this trip would be okay. She would walk into this entire destination wedding week like she’dwalked into this part of the cabin only a few minutes ago. The best possible version of herself.
“I love wedd—” Willa began, and then everything pretty much went to hell.
* * *
It started with a voice—too loud, too angry, and, if Layla had to guess, alcohol soaked.
