fear of flying

On an early September afternoon, a visitor in Ward 7 gazed out of the sixth-story window at the palm trees that lined the main entrance. She sat hunched in the only chair in the room, waiting. The doorway to the ward was obscured by a blue cubicle curtain, drawn for privacy’s sake, which cast a dim shadow on half of the room. The back wall was lined with hospital beds and there was a body dressed in striped pajamas crumpled on each one.

        She was visiting St. John's Hospital and Health Center, though, due to its frequent appearances in medical shows, she liked to think of it as the “Marcus Welby Hospital.” It was a nickname that was given by her best friend, who was a patient at St. John's. In fact, her best friend was lying in bed beside the visitor in Ward 7.

        The visitor was waiting for the patient to say something. The visitor’s mind was a blank. She could think of nothing to say, even after two months of delaying her first visit.

        "Amy, tell me things I won't mind forgetting," said the woman in bed.

        “Did you know that insects fly through rain, missing every drop, never getting wet?” said Amy. 

        The items on the patient’s nightstand formed a bleak still life. There were three pills in a pleated cup, a glass of water, a TV remote and a telephone that cost sixty-five cents a minute for calls.

        “Did you know that no one in America owned a tape recorder before Bing Crosby did?” said Amy.

        She stopped. From a ceiling mount, a security camera was trained on Amy like a bank robber. It was transmitting the signal down the hall to the nurses in Intensive Care.

        "Go on, girl," said the patient.

        “Did you know that Tammy Wynette had changed her tune? Really. Now she sings ‘Stand by Your Friends’? Paul Anka did it too,” said Amy. “Does ‘You're Having Our Baby.’ He got sick of all the letters."

        "What else?" said the woman in bed. "Have you got something else?" 

        “Oh, yes. I’ll always have something else for you, Dorothy,” said Amy. And she might have affirmed the remark by holding her friend’s hand. But anxiety instead employed her hands in untangling imaginary knots in her hair. 

        "Did you know that when they taught the first chimp to talk, it lied?” said Amy. “When they asked her who did it on the desk, she signed back the name of the janitor. And when they pressed her, she said she was sorry, that it was really the project director."

        "Oh, that's good," said Dorothy. "A parable." 

        "There's more about the chimp," said Amy. "But it will break your heart."

        "No, thanks," said Dorothy, scratching at her mask.

        The masks gave the two women the appearance of a pair of roguish outlaws. Amy probed the front of her respirator, feeling her warm breath escape. She noted with admiration the carefree manner in which Dorothy wore her mask. She tied only the top strap and let the bottom strap hang limply about her neck like a loosened tie.

        For company, the sunlight cast a silhouette of the patient in the neighboring bed onto the blue curtain. The patient suffered from chronic coughing fits. Every time he inhaled his lungs rattled like greasy paper bags.

        Beyond the curtain, there was the sound of a nurse walking lightly down the hall. She did not enter the room with any sort of gravity, did not hang her head lowly under the weight of the situation. And, as she came in, Amy could have sworn she could hear the nurse humming a tune under her breath.

        “Good afternoon, Dorothy,” said the nurse, grabbing the clipboard from the front of the bed.

        “Afternoon, Nurse Kent. I’d like you to meet the Best Friend,” Dorothy said, gesturing to Amy, whose eyes darted to the window.

        “And where are you coming from?” asked Nurse Kent, checking the IV.

        “Santa Clarita,” said Amy.
       “Oh, that’s not too far.” 

        “I was telling her we used to drink Canada Dry ginger ale and pretend we were in Canada," said Dorothy.

        "You could be sisters," said Nurse Kent flatly.

        Only twenty-two miles had been separating the seeming sisters, only a twenty-eight-minute drive. And, on the morning of Amy’s visit, the traffic was unusually light and the sky was free of clouds. 

        She was startled and embarrassed by the ease and brevity of her drive.

        Nurse Kent shook out Dorothy’s summer-weight blanket, exposing the patient’s disfigured leg.

        Amy’s stomach urged her to turn away once she got close enough to be sickened. She resisted and stayed put, but she did not dare to look any closer.

The nurse's footsteps and faint humming receded down the hall.

        Dorothy beckoned to Amy who drew dangerously near. "I thought of something," whispered Dorothy. "I thought of it last night. I think there is a real and present need here.”

        Amy nodded uncertainly.

        “You know," Dorothy said, "like for someone to do it for you when you can't do it yourself. You call them up whenever you want—like when push comes to shove."

        Down the corridor, an orderly mopped the floor with such delight and satisfaction that he might have been painting an invisible mural on the white vinyl flooring. And his broad strokes sent streaks of hospital disinfectant through the sickly air. The patient next door wheezed again.

        "I can't remember," said Dorothy. "What does Kübler-Ross say comes after Denial?" 

        Amy kept her guesses to herself, her eyes examining the floor.

        "The only thing is," said Dorothy, "where's Resurrection? God knows, I want to do it by the book. But she left out Resurrection."

        Dorothy laughed and Amy lifted her eyes. Amy clung to the sound of her laughter the way one dangling above a ravine holds fast to a thrown rope.

        "Tell me," said Dorothy, "about that chimp with the talking hands. What do they do when the thing ends and the chimp says, ‘I don't want to go back to the zoo'?"

        Amy did not answer. 

        "Okay—then tell me another animal story. I like animal stories. But not a sick one—I don't want to know about all the seeing-eye dogs going blind."

        Amy grimaced as though from sipping rancid milk and shook off the disagreeable aftertaste.

        "How about the hearing-ear dogs?" said Amy, warming up again. "They're not going deaf, but they are getting very judgmental. For instance, there's this golden retriever in New Jersey, he wakes up the deaf mother and drags her into the daughter's room because the kid has got a flashlight and is reading under the covers."

        "Oh, you're killing me," Dorothy said. "Yes, you're definitely killing me." 

        "They say the smart dog obeys, but the smarter dog knows when to disobey."

        The glass of water on the nightstand refracted light from the window onto the walls and sunbeams danced before them.

        Dorothy daydreamed. The subject of intelligence had rekindled a host of comforting thoughts within her. The thoughts orbited invariably around the misty vision of a man dressed in white. They begged incessantly to be shared. And with clasped hands, Dorothy described the man aloud in a fairy-tale fashion.

        He was exceedingly smart, enormously successful and blindingly handsome. His name was Dr. Alan Campbell, the Chief Resident Orthopedic Surgeon of St. John's Hospital and Health Center.

        And as Amy attended to Dorothy’s adulations, into the room bounded the handsome doctor himself. He was six foot, three inches tall, and he boomed with importance, accomplishments and the joy of living. Of all the staff members at St. John's, Dr. Campbell was the only one who said good morning before checking his patient’s vitals.

        While conducting the check-up, the doctor kneeled on a stool to keep Dorothy at eye level. He warmed the stethoscope before applying it gently to her skin. And they flirted a great deal more, perhaps, than was prudent for medical procedure.

        While Dorothy greeted his talk with indulgent smiles, Amy stared at her friend with a mixture of awe and incredulity.

        Dr. Campbell possessed a habit that, in experts, regularly unnerved Amy: he constantly spoke of when and not if. It unnerved Amy tremendously once the dreadful ultimate when became the obligatory subject of conversation.

        “Maybe a year,” said Dr. Campbell heavily. The doctor's spurious prognosis was in reality little more than flattery.

        Dr. Campbell pulled up his stool to her bed and turned to Amy.

        “We're going to need to take her in for another procedure,” said the doctor. 

        “How long will it be?” Amy asked.

        “It’ll take about an hour or so.” And he deployed one of his standard phrases for times of urgent persuasion: “Every minute counts.”

        Amy turned gray and briefly closed her eyes. “I’ll wait outside by the beach,” she said, turning uneasily to her friend. Dorothy grinned approvingly.

        "Bring me something back," said Dorothy. "Anything from the beach, or the gift shop. Taste is no object."

        Before Amy could nod in reluctant agreement, Dr. Campbell drew the curtain so that Amy was thrown in a hazy blue twilight.

        "Wait!" cried Dorothy.

        Amy peeked through the curtain like a child behind a sofa watching her parents argue.

        "Anything," said Dorothy, "except a magazine subscription."

        The doctor turned away and rolled his eyes as Dorothy laughed. Amy started to leave but paused, resting her hand on the door handle. She lingered there for a minute until the laughter subsided.

Everyone on the beach was either tranquilized, numb, or asleep. Teenage girls rubbed coconut oil on each other's hard-to-reach places. They smelled like macaroons. They pried open compacts like clamshells. Mirrors caught the sun and threw a spray of white rays across the glazed shoulders of beachgoers. The girls arranged their wet hair with silk flowers the way they learned in Seventeen. They posed.

        A formation of lowriders, equipped with six-packs, pulled over to watch. The passengers became vocal when the girls checked their tan lines. When the beer was gone, so were they—flexing their cars on up the boulevard.

        Above the youthful display were the twin wrought-iron terraces, painted flamingo pink, of the Palm Royale. It was once said that someone died there every time the sheets were changed. And indeed, there was an ambulance in the driveway that afternoon. An audience of residents lined the balconies, rocked slowly and were silent.

        The ocean the beachgoers stared at was dangerous and not just because of the undertow. One could almost see the slapping tails of sand sharks keeping their cruising bodies alive.

        If Dorothy looked, she could have beheld the scene, at least partially, from her window. She would have been the first to say how little it takes to make something all wrong.

When Amy returned to Ward 7, the curtain had been removed. She stopped in the doorway and stared as if she saw her open coffin in the middle of the room. 

        The next-door bed was empty.

        Every minute counts.

        "You missed Gussie," Dorothy said. 

        Gussie was the three-hundred-pound narcoleptic maid of Dorothy’s parents. Since her attacks often came at the ironing board, all the pillowcases in her family were bordered with black scorch.

        "It's a hard trip for her," said Amy, sitting down gingerly on the second bed. "How is she?"

        "Well, she didn't fall asleep if that's what you mean. Gussie's great—you know what she said? She said, ‘Darlin', stop this worriation. Just keep prayin', down on your knees'—me, who can't even get out of bed." Dorothy shrugged disconsolately. "What am I missing down there?" 

        "It's earthquake weather," said Amy.

        "The best thing to do about earthquakes," said Dorothy, "is not to live in California." 

        "That's useful," said Amy. "You sound like Reverend Ike—‘The best thing to do for the poor is not to be one of them.'"

        Amy recalled when Dorothy once flew with her to New York to see the reverend in person. Dorothy ate macadamia nuts while Amy watched the wings bounce. The wingtips of an airplane, Dorothy knew, could bend thirty feet up and thirty feet down without coming off. She trusted the laws of aerodynamics. But Amy’s mind stampeded.

        And secretly, Amy wished Dorothy to be just as afraid as her.
       “Why aren’t you afraid?” she asked, her hands gripping the armrests.

        “I don’t know. I’m just not,” said Dorothy.

        And now, as Amy saw the red slowly drain from Dorothy's puffy cheeks, she refused to tell her not to fear. In her mind, she was right to be afraid.

        "You know," sighed Dorothy, "I feel like hell. I'm about to stop having fun."

        "The ancients have a saying," said Amy. "'There are times when the wolves are silent; there are times when the moon howls.'"

        "What's that? Navajo?"

        "Palm Royale lobby graffiti," said Amy. "I bought a paper there. I'll read you something."

        Amy flipped to the page with the trivia column. "Did you know the more shrimp flamingos eat, the pinker their feathers get?" said Amy. She held the paper up to get stronger sunlight on it.

        "Did you know that Eskimos need refrigerators? Do you know why Eskimos need refrigerators? Did you know that Eskimos need refrigerators because how else would they keep their food from freezing?"

        On the nightstand, bubbles clung to the walls of the glass, too weak to climb out.

        Amy turned to page three—a UPI filler piece datelined Mexico City, September 3. 

“MAN ROBS BANK WITH CHICKEN,” she read aloud. “There was a man who bought a barbecued chicken at a stand down the block from a bank. When he passed the bank, the idea struck him. He walked in and approached a teller. He pointed the brown paper bag at her and she handed over the day's receipts. It was the distinct smell of barbecue sauce that eventually led to his capture.”

        “That story made me hungry,” said Dorothy.

        So Amy went down to the cafeteria, and after she returned, the two of them cranked the adjustable beds all the way up for optimal TV-viewing. Amy had closed the blinds to keep light off the screen. They littered the sheets with Good Humor wrappers and picked toasted almonds out of the gauze. A large pile of popsicle sticks accumulated on the nightstand.

        To their nostalgic delight, the movie they watched starred men they used to be infatuated with when they were younger. Dorothy was in love with the tough cop out to catch a dangerous pickpocket who went after cocktail waitresses. Amy was in love with the pickpocket.

        "This is a good movie," said Dorothy when snipers shot them both down.

        Once the movie was over, a Filipino nurse tiptoed into the room. After asking the patient a few questions on her condition, she gave Dorothy an injection of sedatives. The nurse removed the popsicle sticks from the nightstand and departed. Perhaps the injection’s effect was by some means transmissible, for, in less than five minutes, both of the women were sound asleep.

        Amy dreamed Dorothy was a decorator, come to furnish her house. She worked in secret, singing to herself as she went. And when she was finished to her satisfaction, she guided Amy proudly to the door. "How do you like it?" Dorothy asked, easing her inside.

        Inside, every beam and sill and shelf and knob was draped in colorful bunting with streamers of pastel crepe looped around bright mirrors.

"I have to go home," murmured Amy after she was awakened by the acrid scent of antiseptics.

        “What?” said Dorothy, her eyes clouded with fatigue. “You mean to my house in the Canyon?”

        “No, home home,” said Amy, twisting her hands. She hoped to wring obligation from them. The Best Friend was supposed to offer something. She could not even offer to come back.

        Amy turned to the window, saw her convertible waiting in the parking lot and felt a strange exhilaration. She imagined speeding down the Pacific Coast Highway, feeling the whip of salty sea air that smelled of crabs. She could make a pit stop in Malibu for a sangria, at some place where the music was sexy and loud, where they'd serve papaya and shrimp and watermelon ice. And after dinner, the night would shimmer with lust, buzz with heat and dance with life.

        Without a word, Dorothy yanked off her mask and threw it on the floor. She rose, kicking at the blankets as they dragged at her feet, and moved unsteadily to the door. She loathed having to pause for breath and balance. Then, without so much as a backward glance, she slammed out of her isolation into the hallway. Amy stood stock-still, watching the door swing slowly in and out.

        Down the corridor, a voice shouted Dorothy’s name in alarm, and orderlies quickly ran to her aid. Dr. Campbell was paged over the intercom. When Amy opened the door, the nurses at the nearest station were talking briskly. She looked around with flushed cheeks. Dorothy was gone.

        "Where is she?" asked Amy feebly. The nurses nodded gravely to the door of the supply closet.

        Amy peered in apprehensively. Two nurses talking in low voices were kneeling beside Dorothy, who was on the floor gasping for air. One of them held a mask over her nose and mouth. The other nurse rubbed her back in slow circles. The nurses glanced up to see if the doctor had arrived. They returned promptly to their work.

        "There, there, honey," they cooed.

        And Amy slunk away, wandered through long halls of half-closed doors. She passed more wards full of crumpled bodies. Some wore the lead aprons of surgical drapes. She went down the stairs, out the front door and past the palm trees. Then she ran just to feel her feet hit the pavement.

        She hauled herself into the front seat of her car and sat motionless, panting. The windows fogged from her breath. And for an indeterminable period of time, Amy watched a clear plastic cup she had left on the dashboard. She noticed the water inside appeared to be trembling. But the car was not on. The earth was utterly still.

        Amy slumped against the window and closed her eyes. She remembered little. Her memory was swaddled in cheesecloth, and the meaningless details were all that seeped through. And the more she combed her memory, the more puzzled she became as to why retrospect should be a more effective lens than perception.

        Gradually, she reviewed the elements that would figure in the retelling of the story. 

        Perhaps she would say she stayed the night. Who would be there to say otherwise?

        Amy thought of the story of the chimp with the talking hands.

        In the course of that experiment, the chimp bore a child. And her trainers were thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign to her newborn.

        Baby, drink milk.

        Baby, play ball. 

        And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body. Her wrinkled hands moved with animal grace, forming, again and again, the words: Baby, come hug, Baby, come hug.

        On the morning Dorothy was moved to the cemetery, Amy enrolled in a "Fear of Flying" class.

        "What is your worst fear?" the instructor asked.

        She said, "that I will finish this course and still be afraid."