by Alex Morel
I dip into my bag and pull out my pills. One by one, I press them through the blister packaging. The bumpiness of the flight makes it difficult, but I manage to fill a small white paper cup with what I’ll need. I pull another cup from the metal sleeve and fill it from the tiny sink. I steady myself.
I say my takeoff prayer again and hope my angels will carry me home. What works for one flight should work for all, I tell myself. I open my mouth and reach for the pills. The plane hits an air bump and jumps up and down. I quickly put my other hand against the wall and steady myself.
Sign of the cross. I stand, looking at myself in the mirror one more time, one last time. It’s the eyes, always the eyes. There’s a language in them. What do I see? Helpless. Sad. Alone. Disintegrating. Desperate. I see my great-grandfather; his eyes are mine. He was a man I never knew, but the darkness began with him, or maybe even earlier. I know his sad secrets are my own.
I put the cup to my mouth and reach for the water cup.
There’s a smack and a zap. The light flickers, then off. Blackness. For a moment I believe I am already in that pre-death dream spiral I had longed for. But then the bottom of the plane drops out on me. I fly off my feet and my head strikes the ceiling. The pills scatter from my hand like a shotgun spraying pellets.
I tumble against the wall on my way to the floor and the light flickers on, but I am dizzy. I hear screams from outside the bathroom and I wonder if they are trying to get me out. But then the attendant tells everyone to remain calm. I try to stand, but I am too dizzy. I feel a warm sensation on my right cheek, and suddenly I notice drops of red on the floor in front of me. I put my hand to my head and it is immediately covered in sticky red blood.
I push against the walls beside me but only manage to move myself into a tucked position beside the toilet and the sink. There’s a second zap and then the whole plane goes black. Again the bottom drops, but I remain jammed against the toilet this time.
A red light flashes above me and then it dies too. The plane stops whining. I can feel it just gliding along through the air, being tossed up and down. There’s no response. For a long time, we are like a dead body floating downriver, just gliding to nowhere. I wonder where I am for a second and I remember my angels and I wonder if they are holding up the plane. I wonder if this is how I am going to die.
Then there’s another big drop. Fear takes hold of me and I scream as loud as I have ever screamed. When I finally breathe again, I choke on the pills left in my mouth and cough them out even as I try to swallow them. I hear terrified screams from the front of the plane, and I start to sob and pray again and again. I realize that the nose of the plane is angled downward, and the angle grows steeper by the second. And then it levels out, and the howl of the wind shrieks like a dying bird.
My stomach flips and spins and I black out. I awake a minute or an hour later; I do not know how much time has passed. But it is silent and black and for a moment I think this is it. Heaven is black and cold and silent; that’s the opposite of hell, no? I touch the side of my face again and the blood is sticky but still moist. And then the plane drops suddenly, followed by a series of massive air bumps jolting me up and down. And then smack. Blackness descends.
Part II
Survive
Chapter 11
I wake. The room spins wildly, but I feel the force of gravity holding me down. I put my palm to the wall and steady myself. I breathe deeply. After a few moments, the whirling slows and only nausea remains. I gently touch my scalp with my other hand. There’s a lump the size of a lime above my forehead. I rub it with my fingertips and caked blood crumbles off.
It is dark, but my eyes adjust and the airplane bathroom comes into focus. I remember where I am, but I don’t know why I am here. Why was I left behind? I put one hand on the toilet and the other in the sink and push and pull and manage to lift myself up. The spinning accelerates and a slingshot of vomit launches from my mouth against the mirror.
My left hand finds the slotted door handle, and I pull it open. I lift myself up and then fall forward out the door. I hit the ground, but not too hard. There’s a pillow of white powder thirty inches deep. My arms and legs scramble to find footing, and after a moment I stand up.
An icy wind rips across my face and it feels like a thousand tiny needles piercing me. I cover my eyes with my forearm until the gust dies down.
A dull gray light hovers over the world. It must be morning, I think. We must have crashed. How long have I been out? Where am I?
Above me are several mountain peaks. Behind me, a short rocky wall that rises a hundred feet or so to a plateau that sits like a bed with four mountain peaks for bedposts.
I pull out my gloves and hat from pockets and put them on, wincing at the pain in my head. I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to pee. I pull down my pants and semi-squat over the snow. I start to laugh out loud. I’m alone on top of a mountain in the middle of a fierce blizzard. Peeing!
I look around and take it all in. Where is everyone? Did they leave me behind? I try to remember the events of last night, but everything is fuzzy. I take a deep breath to try and clear my head.
I must try to find others. If I survived, then others must have as well.
I turn into the wind and hard, pellet-like snow hits my face. I can see only a few feet in front of me. I walk slowly, with my hands inside my coat for warmth. Scattered wreckage is everywhere. Twisted metal, ripped fabric, and mangled seats, and in the distance, what I believe is the main cabin.
The air stinks of jet fuel and smoke, and my nose burns from the fumes.
I move toward the cabin. The snow is thigh high and even waist deep in some places. My gloves are thin and my hands sting, so I put them in my pockets. What would I do without my hands? Note to self: Must find better gloves to survive.
Each step is hard work, pulling one leg up through several feet of snow and then lifting my foot out over the drift, praying that it lands on solid ground. The snow protects my legs from the sharp wind, but now I feel the cold moisture soaking through my jeans.
How much time do I have out here? A couple of hours? Maybe a day? I’ve read that when you crash into the ocean, the cold water rips the air from your lungs and your body goes into hypothermia in a matter of minutes. What I wouldn’t give to be back in that cold sterile room at Life House right now.
I think of my window and my father’s watch and the endless hours I spent staring out onto the empty courtyard. I slide my hand into my pocket, expecting to cradle the watch, but it’s gone. I check the other pocket too, but it’s empty. I panic, padding down my entire jacket and pants pockets several times. Nothing. For a split second, I look all around, but I know it is useless. Nausea swells inside of me, like I’ve lost a piece of him again. My lip trembles, and a feeling of emptiness overwhelms me.
I look back toward the tail of the plane, but it has disappeared behind a swirling veil of white. Then I look ahead toward what I thought a few minutes ago might be the main cabin of the plane, but I can’t see beyond the blinding ice darting at my eyes. My heart sinks. I turn back and forth a few times hoping to see either tail or cabin, but they’ve disappeared behind the storm.
I’m lost. I’m going to die. On this godforsaken mountain, I’m going to die. Well, isn’t that what I wanted?
There’s no easy answer on my lips or in my mind.
Is it what I wanted? Is it?
Chapter 12
A lump rises in my throat. Tears well up and freeze on my face. I feel dizzy again and my legs buckle. I fall to my knees. Snow swishes around me, burying me, like a heartless killer shoveling dirt on top of a still-breathing victim. I’m alive, but as good as dead. I look up to where I believe the sun is, but all I see are patterns of gray and white dancing before my eyes.
A huge sob heaves up, and I let out a primal scream that emerges from the darkest part of my heart. It is as if some part of me has been tied up and gagged since my father died, and now it has been let loose to be heard befo
re it dies.
“Oh God, oh God!” I hear myself holler to the sky.
A river of uncontrollable sounds follows, cascading up through my chest and out of my mouth. My voice has no words for what is bursting forth now. It is wild and guttural. It is life sounding off against death, before death. As I kneel and gasp, inside my head I can hear that old angelic voice whispering: Let yourself go, Jane. Let it be. This is what you’ve wanted for so long. Let the clean white snow wash over you. Don’t fight it; let it be joyous; let it take you and bury your sad, black heart once and forever.
A big gust of icy air slaps my face. I tuck my head to my chest to protect myself and then, as if I have become two people, I hear my own voice dancing on the wind. And then I hear it again, but my mind knows it can’t be me. Distant, clear, familiar. It keeps coming, and more clearly now, as the wind momentarily dies down.
“Help! Is somebody there?”
I start to cry for a moment and then scream back, “I’m here! Help! Help me!”
“I’m down here! Down here! I’m stuck!” the voice calls back.
“Help me!” I scream again.
Then I realize that, as desperate as I am, I am not stuck. I can move; I can act. Old Doctor’s voice is echoing in my head: “It is a matter of stasis, Jane. You can wither away or help yourself. That’s the only path to wellness.”
I slowly lift myself out of the snow and try to steady myself. My legs wobble. My face is caked with snow and dried blood and old vomit, now beginning to freeze.
“Where are you?” I shout. “Where are you?!”
“Hello!? Hello!?” the voice shouts. And then, “Down here! Down here!”
I know that voice. I know that annoying, but now so incredibly beautiful, voice. It’s Paul Hart. I start moving through the deep snow. My legs pump like adrenaline-fueled pistons, slashing through the drifts with urgency and purpose. My head and heart fill with hope and my body takes flight. I feel like I’m almost running on top of the snow.
I look up and I see the sky opening up below my feet and I jam my heels hard into the snow. My feet skid and then I fall on my butt, sliding to the very edge of a crevice.
I nudge my head over the side, careful not to slip in the process. I look down, and it is black and bottomless. It must be hundreds of feet deep. My heart stops for a second, and then my stomach wrenches when I think how close I came to running right off the edge of the world.
I lean back and inhale deeply, then peer over the side again and see that Paul, a good twenty feet below me, is still strapped in his airplane seat, which is lodged into a tree that is growing out of the side of the mountain.
“Are you all right?” I shout.
He looks up at me from his perch and smiles.
“Just my fucking luck, they’ve sent a philosopher to save me!”
“What?” I say reflexively.
He looks down and then up at me.
“I’m in one piece, but my seat belt is jammed. I can’t get out. Is it just us?” he asks.
“I don’t think so,” I shout. “I don’t really know.”
“There’s a knife in my bag. Did the plane survive? Did you find any bags?”
“I saw wreckage,” I shout.
I don’t move. I’m just staring at his face. Then I say absurdly, “Are you cold?”
“What?” he snaps, momentarily exasperated. “Yes, I’m very cold! Listen, the knife is in my yellow backpack; do you have access to any of the luggage? Is anyone else here?”
“There are bags everywhere—I think the bay opened when we crashed,” I say.
“Look for rope, too, and a sleeping bag or something to protect me if I have to spend the night here.”
“Okay,” I shout.
I turn to walk, but he calls out again.
“Wait, what’s your name?”
“What?”
“I don’t know your name,” he shouts.
“Jane,” I say. “Jane Solis.”
Chapter 13
I inhale the frozen air and let it fill my lungs. My mind fires up and I turn from the ledge and look back across the frozen land. The wind dies down and I can see the thin strip on which the captain crashed the plane. It is a plateau a couple hundred yards wide and perhaps twice as long. It is dotted with thick evergreen trees and shrouded on all sides by mountain peaks. It was pure dumb random luck, I think. We hit a tiny runway tucked on the side of a mountain. A hundred yards more in any direction and we’re dead.
Whatever footprints I made on my way to the ledge have been swept away by the wind. An impenetrable wall of snow and ice moves sideways through the air. I can see neither tail nor wreckage. I close my eyes and imagine my trek to this ledge and then my way back. I open them and step forward with an odd air of confidence.
This isn’t a want. You need to save Paul. You have no choice, Jane. Just go forward.
I take my first step and then a second. Slowly, I trudge through the deep drifts of snow. Each step requires an enormous exertion of energy. I steel myself against the wind and ice, and I let my legs take over. One foot in front of the other until, after ten minutes, in the near distance, I glimpse a speck of red in a sea of white. Lettering, a number, I do not know what it is yet, but through the squall I lock my eyes onto that one spot. It must be the body of the plane.
With a shot of hope to charge me up, my right leg flies out of the drift and then my left. Step over step, again and again, I move through the deep snow without thinking, just staring at that bit of red.
The red gets brighter and deeper, but it isn’t a number or a letter. I’m about five feet away, a couple of strides perhaps, when I see a red boot sticking straight up out of the snow. There’s a leg attached. And then about two or three feet from the leg, I see the captain’s head, turned on its side, detached from its body, staring at me.
I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out until my guts clench and I dry heave specks of dark green bile onto the snow.
There’s no air in my lungs and my stomach turns again and the sound that comes out of my body is deep and soul-scraping, like a wounded animal torn in half by a trap. I look around and see luggage, clothing, debris, and what appears to be a woman with her arm draped over the snow at the near entrance of the main cabin. Her hand is still adorned with a giant ring.
“Margaret,” I whisper.
It is weird and unexpected, but a lump grows in my throat. This is so fucking random. I’m alive and Margaret’s dead. Why do I deserve to live? I don’t. I don’t.
I imagine Eddie, and Margaret’s sisters and brothers, her mother and father, all of who are hoping right now that she’ll be the lucky one. I can hear Eddie’s voice as clearly as if I were still standing in line behind him: “If anyone survives, it’ll be Margaret. She’s a survivor.” Well, I guess we all are until we’re not.
And then my mother’s face pops into my mind. That sad, broken face she wore for years after my father died. For a moment I try hard to remember what her face was like on that Christmas Eve before he died. We made cookies. I wonder if she remembers? I wonder if across the continent, our brains could be connecting right now. If she believes I’m a survivor.
Chapter 14
The entrance to the shell of the plane is a few yards beyond Margaret’s hand. Against the hard-falling snow, it sits like a gigantic metal sculpture, unveiled only for my eyes. I move slowly and assuredly through the snow until my hands find the cold metal. I work my way around to a jagged hole once occupied by the plane’s tail, entering what was formally the entire middle section of the plane. There’s another gaping void on the other side where the door to the pilot’s cabin used to be.
The plane must have broken into three parts: the tail, with the bathroom and me; the body, which I’m now standing in; and the pilot’s cabin, wherever that may be. I walk the aisle and stop at a man who is still strapped into his seat. He is ice cold, eyes frozen open with the dull glow of death. I look and check the others quickly. The few who remain s
trapped into their seats are dead. The others are outside, dismembered. No movement, no life.
Then I turn to look at my row and both seats are gone, just ripped out. They were probably thrown because they appear to have been situated right where the end of the plane tore from the middle section. That’s how Paul survived.
A big gust pushes through the shell and I realize how cold I am and how little shelter the cabin offers me since it’s wide open on either end. I look around. Bags are everywhere. Books, toiletries, clothes. The cargo bay has been ripped open, and luggage is strewn across the snow.
Then I see the first piece of good news I’ve had since finding Paul. It’s the green duffle bag the climbers jammed under the seats in front of us. I’d bet my life it is full of hiking stuff.
I try to grab its handle, but my hands are cold and getting a firm grip is difficult. Instead, I try looping my elbow around and pulling back like a mule. It won’t budge and the zipper is wedged tight against the seats. I move myself to the front of the next row and sit on the floor. With my back braced against the seats, I push against the bag with my feet. It nudges forward.
I get up and go back to the other side of the seats. I look at the seat and then pull off the seat cushion, remove the life jacket, and underneath I can see the zipper of the bag. I stand on top of the bag and stamp it down as much as I can. I walk around to the back and I spend a minute blowing on my right hand and fingers until they feel warmer. I grasp the handle at the end of the bag with my right hand and wrap my left around for support. I yank, and it moves, but only an inch. I try again by leveraging my feet against the seats in front of me and push with my legs while pulling with my arms. Nothing.
