Is There A Medical Doctor On Board?

”Is There a Medical Doctor on Board?”


My mom always said that if you put a steel pole in front of me I’d get conversational. I could talk to anyone, anywhere, at anytime, even when I was young. My mom didn’t worry about kidnappers because she said they’d bring me back soon enough after hearing me talk.

So it’s no surprise that when a tall gangly man sat in the airplane row with me, I promptly leaned over and said, “Are you sure you’re supposed to be sitting in this row?”

“Yes,” he said, a little hesitantly. His tone polite but his eyes displaying more than a little curiosity. “They assigned this seat when I checked in.”

Hours ago, when I checked in at the ATA ticket counter in Chicago’s Midway airport, she told me I’d be the only one in the row. Guess not. I settled back in my comfortable seat and thought that my perfect airplane ride, the one where I sit in a primo row by the cockpit with no one to disturb me had disappear with a late check in. Of course I had no idea how important it would be for that gangly guy to sit in that seat, at that time and on that plane for me and every other passenger including him.

Night flights are the best. I’d rather look at the Jeffersonian engineered map of neatly squared parcels of land through the haze of darkness than any other time. There’s more mystery to the land and the sky. You burst through a cloud and you may see a star or the light of a highway. It’s beautiful and unnerving simultaneously. The flights are also more peaceful. Most passengers, like me, sleep. An earthquake couldn’t wake me up on an airplane flight. I can sleep day or night, early or late it doesn’t matter. It’s not so much that I’m tired; it’s more of a defense mechanism. I’m a control freak and the flight I can’t control. I have to put my life into the hands of others and hope that God has mercy on us all. So my brain and mind shuts down and my body follows.

After talking to my row mate, so as to assure him I wasn’t a total bitch, I began reading my National Geographic and thinking about why my ex-boyfriend won’t return my phone calls. I don’t want to get back together with him; in fact I don’t know what made me go out with him in the first place. It’s just the principle that I call him and he doesn’t call me back. That’s idiotic. I don’t understand it. So I rage against it. In my anger I fall into an uneasy sleep.

“The Captain,” begins to speak on the loud speaker. Blah, blah, storm in Iowa, turbulence possible, blah, blah, blah, rough going but it’s nothing we can’t handle. The tiny televisions plop down from the ceiling and the safety videos come on. I look up and think about the movie “Fight Club.” Where Brad Pitt and Ed Norton are on the plane and Brad makes fun of the cartoon images they show during the safety video. As if something were to happen we’d all have that calm look on our faces.

I remember thinking if something happens on this plane what would I really be doing? Would I really be smiling and putting on my life jacket being careful not to inflate inside the plane as the soothing safety voice suggests. Would our flight attendants be calm in directing traffic and getting all the passengers safely off the plane? Would I as a Christian be really ready to meet my maker, the creator and be fine with leaving this old world behind?

My chest begins to hurt. My breath becomes shallow. It’s not a heart attack. Just my usual panic attacks. I have slight ones when I think about death. The uncertainty of it freaks me out. I’m not afraid to die. I’m just afraid what would happen if I didn’t live. How would I control my world then?

I swallow deep breaths and calm my mind. I fall into an uneasy sleep. People say life is fleeting. But it’s really death that’s momentary. In an instant you’re here. Then you’re not. I think it’s what you think right before that moment, while you’re here, that’s the measure of a man or woman. Those thoughts are your most precious. They’re the last ones you have in this lifetime and they’re they ones than count. If I was going to die what would I think about? It turned out to be an appropriate question for my journey on flight 375, non-stop Chicago to Denver.

I heard the rattling of carts and the flight attendants handing out pretzels like Halloween candy. My slumber was too heavy to care. I briefly looked out the window. Nothingness. My mind began to whirl. What the heck keeps this plane in the air? I wondered. I immediately shut it down. I sneak a peek over at gangly guy. He’s knocked out. I could kick him and he’d probably just turn his head and sleep some more. Not that I’m the violent type or anything. Maybe that’s why Brian won’t call me back. He thinks I’m too tough.

Why is it that men say they want a strong independent woman and when they get one they act like babes in the womb? They act like our independence squeezes them and makes them feel inadequate as men. I thought Brian, while not the perfect man for me; was certainly in the right direction. He was the first manager that I dated. He made more money than me. And in his 37 years on earth he had lived more than four lifetimes, surviving rare diseases, the removal of a lung, the loss of his wife and kids and more than a half a million dollars. He had lost all that including his lease on life – doctors had given him just months to live – and returned to become general manager of a car dealership again. If there anyone who was strong it was Brian. But at this stage he was also extraordinarily weak.

Suffocating under the philosophy that he makes or breaks his life, Brian lived in constant fear that he would lose it all again. That in one moment he could lose his job, his money and everything he worked for like he did previously. I tried to tell him that all his prized possessions – life, money, family, happiness – were not his to lose or gain. They were gifts from our creator. They only thing we could control was what we did with those gifts, not whether we received them or not. But he wouldn’t listen. Brian was the master of his fate, God was an afterthought. But for me it was the opposite. In a way, Brian envied my look upon life. Because it took most of the anxiety out of it. That philosophy of God is in control is probably what saved my life on flight 375.

The bumps in the air were small. The plane dipped up and down slightly like a red and white bobber on the string of a fishing pole. It was just mild turbulence. There was nothing to be alarmed about. But I sleepily looked out the window. About 20 minutes later the 737 went from a straight line to flying on its side. Swinging like a hammock the plane swung to the left and then back to the right. I was fully awake now. I looked out the window. My heart began beating fast. My stomach dropped to my knees. Something is very wrong.

“Is that land,” I thought, as I saw the orange phosphorus of street lights. “Weren’t we just at 30,000 feet? What the hell is going on?”

The voice on the loud speaker was slightly screeching. Not panicky but not calm either. “This is Diane Webb….” then silence.

Moments later there was another voice. This one was foreign. Australian maybe, I thought. Not British, but something like that.

“Is there a medical doctor on board this plane?” he asked, strangely calm. “If there is a medical doctor on board please come to the front of the plane.”

I began looking around, is there a passenger hurt, I thought. The flip-flop of the plane and the medical doctor comment were just beginning to gel in my mind. There was nothing wrong with a passenger. There had to be something wrong with the pilot.

I looked out the window again. We were dropping like a stone to the earth. The land was coming up faster and faster and our plane was eagerly trying to meet its gaze. What the hell was going on?

My mind flashed back to Aaron’s story. Aaron, a danger-seeker from Colorado, had embarked on a trip out to the Utah desert to do some bitchin’ climbing. Ever the thrill seeker he told no one of his plan took food and water for a day and headed out. He came back with one hand. He had cut his right wrist off after it was stuck for six days between a boulder and his climbing rock. I began thinking about the words he wrote in his memoir. How calm his mind had been. How in the 30 seconds between life and death what you think can aid or impede your survival. In his mind he went through the various scenarios and one of those was cutting off his hand. What balls? I remember thinking what would I do? How would I react? This seemed that moment.

The flight attendants were still calm. But I knew there was something wrong. A nurse, more like an CNA I suspect and an EMT who let his certification lapse were congregating around the cockpit.

“Once again, if there is an M.D on board please come to the front of the plane,” the foreigner said again.

“What does he want?” I thought. “As if the there were a doctor on board who is just sitting back in his seat going, “Oh, I’ll let the other doctor handle this one, I’m going back to sleep.”

By this time the plane was awake. Gangly guy, his name of Aaron I would find out later, looked up dreamingly staring out the window. I look at him.

“We’re landing.”

“What, why?”

“I don’t know. But see that, those are not stars, those are street lights.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your first officer speaking,” the voice was calm, youthful but there was not a tinge of uncertainty. The voice was steel. “We are going to divert the plane. We’re going to have land in Lincoln Nebraska, the Captain had a heart attack and he needs immediate medical attention. When we know more we will tell you. I’m sorry for this inconvenience but we will get you home.”

Throughout the choruses of gasps, surprised screams and loud breaths, I shut my mind down and began to pray.

I prayed for “The Captain,” complete healing that the angels would cover him and take their heart in their hands and heal him. I prayed for that brave first officer that God would guide his hands and give him the strength to land this plane. I prayed for the passengers that in this time there would be no anxiety. And I prayed that God would have mercy on my soul. I thought nothing of myself and I didn’t not panic. There was no sign of panic attack. I was as calm as a jaybird.

Aaron was fully awake now. He was staring into the cockpit and giving me up dates. The flight attendants had The Captain’s shirt off. The Captain was conscious. He was moving is right arm. Another guy walked up to the front. He was trained as a first responder. Which I didn’t believe for a minute since he looked like Jesus on drugs. Thick beard that was simultaneously scraggly, baggy pants, sandals and a strange confused look in his eye.

“No that’s alright sir. We’re fine,” the youngest flight attendant said ushering Meth Jesus back to his seat.

We were dropping fast. I could see the town of Lincoln now. I saw the University of Nebraska football stadium. It was lit up like Michigan Avenue on Christmas.

All seemed to return to a state of calm. We weren’t normal but the plane wasn’t flying sideways anymore either. There was a smattering of applause and we landed somewhat crookedly but safely on the ground. We waited.

And them the seam of serenity was ripped open. The Captain’s heart stopped beating. The young flight attended so calm before was suddenly on the ground.

“I need help up here. Please somebody come and help me,” the foreigner’s voice was no longer calm.

I pushed Aaron on his shoulder. “Get up,” I yelled. I didn’t need to. Aaron was already out of his seat. His six-foot-four frame barely missing the plane’s roof.

Another guy jumped up and things were set in motion. They dragged The Captain out of the cockpit and set him head first facing the back of the plane. His shirt was off and his legs were up in the air. His face was a shade of white that I had never seen. It was more grey than white. I quickly began to pray again.

“You, you, move,” a flight attendant yelled, freeing up the front row. A child stood in the aisle bewildered and I’m sure more than a little scared. He sat in a middle seat across from me.

Aaron held the Captain’s leg in one arm and a flight attendant in another. One of the flight attendants, I can only assume it was Diane Webb, had been smacked in the back with a cart during the pilot’s episode. She could barely stand. They plopped her into the front row. But she had no time to rest. Soon she was on her hands and knees pulling the difibulator out of its case.

“I don’t know how to put it on!” someone yelled.

“No, it doesn’t go this way, do it like that.”

“His pulse is weakening. It’s weakening badly.”

“Help me get his legs up. C’mon, help me get his legs up.”

“Hold this like this and put it there. Yeah, that’s it.”

“Okay, Okay, he’s breathing again.”

They weren’t breaths. They were tiny spasms of torture. Each time The Captain opened his mouth he let out a raspy gush of wind that seemed to tear through his entire body. It wasn’t the sound of death. It was the sound of death defeated.

Back in the distances the mesmerizing blue, red and white lights of EMT’s were coming.

There was a pause. How do you get a caravan of emergency vehicles across a live runway? Very carefully. As they were crossing to us a plane landed slicing through their path like a knife.

Finally they were on board.

“Pulse is 96.”

“Get that thing off of him, it won’t hook up to ours anyway. We’ll deal with him when we get him on the bus.”

The bus was an ambulance. Two EMT’s carried the pilot off the plane and they were gone.

Aaron came back to his seat. I looked at him. Strength. I thought. Strength. I was glad he sat in the row next me. He was calm and strong. He didn’t panic and neither did I. Most of the passengers on the plane lived through that night without ever knowing or seeing how close we came to death. They didn’t see the first officer struggling to land the plane by himself. They didn’t hear the Captain on the floor straining to get life inside him. They see the panicked looks of the flight attendants as they tried to fit the difibulator on to their leader. They missed it all. I didn’t. I’d like to think that I witnessed all that to prove that when it comes down to the wire I am strong. That strength doesn’t come through control, it comes though precise thoughts, from a certain calmness. That I don’t have to be in control to show that strength and that it’s fine and completely OK to depend on others.

Three hours later I was on my way back to Denver. A leer jet from ATA’s headquarters had flow in a back up pilot and mechanic and we were on our way.

Thankfully, the pilot was stable at the hospital. A Pizza Hut in Lincoln Nebraska had stayed late and cooked us all a midnight snack. The first officer, Clayton bought the pizza’s for us.

People still grumbled about being late. They wanted free tickets and the like. I leaned back against my seat and smiled. I had had my 30 seconds. It was fleeting. But I had my 30 seconds and my thoughts were singular and clear. I was ready to meet my creator but just not yet. Let him take me another day. That night it wasn’t meant to be. I was in control by giving it up. I controlled my thoughts and actions. And that was control enough for me.