19F – Airport

Somewhere in this building there’s a pipe that sucks out all the atmosphere. It’s the opposite of warm. The stale air that seeps out of the air conditioning. The strange green hue to the lighting. The chairs that are never quite comfortable, no matter how you contort your body. The carpet that makes strange, swirling patterns if you stare at it too hard.

I feel sick.

Let’s be honest, nobody really likes to fly. When somebody asks, oh, did you have a good flight, they don’t think for a minute that you might have actually enjoyed yourself. It’s more a question of whether you made it through relatively unscathed. The best you can hope for is accidentally falling asleep, only to wake up on the other side, the throbbing in your neck a welcome trade-off.

Not that sleep is an option for me.

I catch myself watching the early flights go out, and I find the little finger on my left hand is quivering. Slightly. The sight of the large metal birds makes something heave in my chest, but I can’t stop looking at them. Each one hurls itself into the sky, and I can help but wonder how they stay in the air. Ok, obviously I know how it all works, but I also see everything that’s trying to bring them crashing to the ground. Gravity. Drag. Headwinds. Powerful forces. To anyone else, the planes look smooth, graceful, elegant. Perfect miracles of engineering. But I see a struggle. A desperate scramble to be airborne. Engines whining in protest, straining.

You can’t hear how desperate they are.

I watch them lurch upwards and all I can see is details – a small wobble of a wingtip here, a tilt there. No cause for alarm. Nothing that would get written up. But to my eyes, each one is an omen. A sign of impending disaster.

Don’t give me the road safety comparison. I know all about the statistics. I have, as they say, done my homework.

Before I know it, I’m walking down the corridor. Past the faint tang of burnt coffee that’s just everywhere. Through the strange, familiar tunnel of beige and grey. I feel the outside air, the fresh air, begin to wrap itself around me.

And then I’m at the door. This metal hatch that’s supposed to keep us from being sucked out into the sky. I start seeing stress fractures everywhere.

This never used to happen.

Before I know it, I’m in my seat. I look out the window, watch another plane taxiing down the runway, and a small pool of bile forms in the back of my throat. All the way through the pre-flight, I can hear my own heartbeat, feel the blood swirl through my head. Something feels too tight.

I look next to me, and Dave’s sitting there, waiting for word back from the tower, like I am. His face is calm, serene, utterly professional. How do I look? I don’t know. Nobody has said anything.

I grit my teeth and slowly suck in air. My lungs are screaming for more and more but I hold it. I have to hold it. My breath hisses like I’m sucking up steam.

I flick a switch and speak into the microphone, expecting my voice to catch, tremble. But the high-pitched chatter in my head comes out low, controlled, even. It’s not me. It must be someone else.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we apologise for the delay, just some traffic ahead of us. We should be underway shortly.”

I’m promising them something. The words don’t say it but I am. They believe me. Right now, someone is sitting back there, breathing out the bad air, comforted, relaxed, embracing the nothingness. Letting go of their fear.

I want to go back there. I want to give them some of mine.