Up In The Air – One Last Time

Evans looked at him, maybe a little anger in her expression, maybe not. He couldn't tell, and anyway, he regretted saying it as soon as it was out his mouth, so he looked back down at his sandwich. He was about to take another bite when he decided against it, wrapped the pasty tasting muck up in a napkin and tossed it in the bin.

They drifted through the night in monotonous precision: St John, St Pierre, Gander and Thule, then Shannon and Cardiff as the sun came up, followed by a straight-in approach to Heathrow. They pulled into Terminal Five just before zero eight hundred and shut down the engines as the Jetway pulled up to the First Class doorway.

"Would you do the 'Meet and Greet' this morning?" he asked while he ran through the shutdown checklist. "I don't much feel like smiling this morning."

"Yeah, sure. You alright?"

"Oh, you know, Denise, I've been better, but that's another story for another day."

"Yeah, okay Paul. I'll be back up in a minute." She unbolted the cockpit door and walked over to the little spiral stairway and disappeared down into the main cabin, wondering as she went just what the Hell was wrong with Overton.

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He was back in her oncologist's office, back inside Klimt's hall of mirrors, watching the little physician flip through the latest blood panels and MRI reports.

The physician leaned back, sighed.

"Well, it's metastasized. To her lungs, and liver too."

"Which means what?" Paul Overton remembered asking. "I mean, what do we do next."

"I think this will be her last chemo, Mr Overton. It's just not working, and it could be doing her more harm than good at this point."

"Okay. So what's next?"

The physician shook his head. "I'm sorry, Paul. Palliative measures would be my recommendation, from here on. There's just not much else..."

"Bullshit! There's gotta be something..."

"Paul, feel free to get a second opinion. Really. I won't be offended."

"Offended? I don't give a crap if you're offended or not, doctor. I just want options. What could we try next?"

"Paul, her white counts are down in the weeds. Chemo will kill her before the cancer can at this point. The cancer's spread is so advanced any form of radiation treatment would simply kill her, too. We can't take out her lungs, or her liver, or she'll die on the table." The physician held up his hands in defeat. "Paul, you've just got to understand this, and try to accept this is where we are. She fought the good fight, but it's over now. Let me keep her comfortable, at least. Don't make her suffer."

He'd simply left the room, bolted away in a fog of despair, walked past the ward where Peggy was taking her last round of chemo, and out into the rain.

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Overton sat in the stillness, looking out over the instrument panel at raindrops that fell like tears on the curved glass -- before running away. "Just like me," he said aloud, though he had no idea he'd spoken aloud.

"Just like you - what?" he heard Evans say, then he heard the cockpit door closing.

"What?"

"You said, 'Just like me.'

"Oh."

"You've been down all night, Paul. What's up?"

He shook his head and undid his harness while the seat whirred backwards, then he stuffed his charts and his iPad in his flight-bag and clasped it shut. He stood, stretched and yawned. "No, no talk for me today, kiddo. Anyway, there's been too much talk already," he said -- almost in a whisper, and just as a sigh might drift away on a breeze, he added: "Besides, I'm all talked out."

"Oh? Really?"

"Really."

"You staying out here, at the Hilton? With the rest of us?"

"No. Think I'm going into the city. A few things I need to do."

"Oh? Mind if I tag along? I've never really spent much time there. Could you maybe show me around?" Evans felt there was something really wrong with Overton today; she had a bad feeling about him as she watched his eyes. There were dark circles under his eyes this morning, and his skin looked sallow and pasty, but there was something in his voice that seemed unreal. Like he had made a decision, and was now walking too close to the edge. She liked him, always had. Everyone did, she knew. He was more a father figure to most of the girls, not the kind to fool around, and she simply respected him in the way pilots respect really good aviators.

"No, you go on with the others. I won't be much fun. Or why don't you just go in and take a tour?" He brushed by her rapidly and squeezed through the cockpit door and made for the stairway, but stopped short when he saw Kate Middleton, one of the senior flight attendants, talking with a woman still in her seat. There was something odd about her face, too. He put his case down on a seat and walked back to the women.

"Everything alright here, Patsy?" he said as he looked closely at the face of the woman in the seat.

"Uh, no Captain. Miss Carpenter feels light-headed and . . ."

He bent down to look into the woman's eyes; they seemed bent, unfocused. "Ma'am, have you had any pain in your arms or legs tonight?"

The woman nodded, tried to speak, then a little stream of drool ran from the corner of her mouth.

"Okay, Kate, I think it's a DVT. Recline her seat and get an oxygen bottle hooked up." Overton dashed back to the cockpit, almost knocking Evans off her feet as he passed, then he flipped on a radio while he reached for his headset. He checked the frequency, then called: "London ground, United Two Three Heavy with a medical emergency!"

"United Two Three, go ahead."

"Two Three, we have a woman up on the second level going into stroke, probable deep vein thrombosis."

"Understood, two three. Emergency Services notified."

Overton had already tossed the headset back onto his seat and was out the door before the transmission ended. He got back to the woman in her seat just as Kate returned with oxygen, and he put the mask on the woman's face and adjusted the flow, then pushed her seat further down. Her First Class seat was a full recliner, then he raised her legs with some pillows while he looked at the woman's eyes: one pupil was a pinpoint, the other full and round, and her skin was waxy now, with a sheen of perspiration forming on her brow, yet he could see frantic confusion in the woman's eyes.

"Get me a cool washrag, would you, Kate?" He brushed stray hair from the woman's forehead, then knelt down beside the woman and patted her head gently. "It's alright Ma'am. Paramedics will be here in a moment."

She saw him, looked at him, tried to smile...

"Here you are, Captain," he heard Evans say, and he turned and took the rag from her, then folded it and put the cool cloth on the woman's forehead. A few moments later they heard footsteps running up the spiral stairway, and uniformed men came in and pushed him aside. One of the medics swabbed the woman's arm and inserted a needle into a vein, then hooked up a bottle and set the drip rate.

"Captain? We'll need to take her out the doorway on this level."

"Right. Denise, would you go disarm the slide? Patsy, Kate, give 'em a hand, would you?"

Warm, wet air flooded the compartment moments later when the doorway opened, and Overton could hear a truck moving into position below, then a ramp ascending to their level. More people pushed there way into the cabin, shoving Overton further back into the upper deck, back where the ceiling arced over and down, confining them in the cave-like space. Overton watched as a medic pushed another needle into the woman's arm and hooked another vial of clear fluid to it; the man adjusted the flow and began talking on a radio. Soon the medics were lifting the woman onto a gurney and rolling her toward the open doorway.

"Good work, Paul," he heard Evans say from the far end of the upper deck.

"Oh, just all part of the service, Ma'am."

"Gee, Paul, when I grow up I want to be just like you." She grinned when he turned and scowled.

"Oh, go blow it out your nose!" But he laughed. It came as a shock to everyone up there, but he laughed. The first time he'd laughed in weeks, maybe months, and it felt good. An amazing kind of good. He continued looking at Evans, at her frank warmth, that easy West Texas Smile, and suddenly he knew she was a friend. And friends are rare in this life, he told himself.

There was activity everywhere now, and a covey of flight attendants began clearing away the dressings and wrappers left behind by the paramedics.

"Cripes, I don't know about you, but I'm starved," Evans said.

"I'm going into Mayfair, the Fleming, on Half Moon Street. Good pub down the way for breakfast."

"You want some company?" Evans said.

"Probably not a bad idea," he said, looking at her. He was unaware of how quietly he spoke.

To Evans his need was like a cry, involuntary, still almost silent, but now quite unmistakable.

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She wanted, she said, to pass at home. At home with all her things. He porcelain figurines, her photographs, her garden. Her house. And she wanted to be in her bed.

There wasn't much else to say, or do.

The oncologist had sent hospice workers from an agency, and they'd taken care of everything. A nurse came, checked in with them both, ran through a checklist of things she'd do for Peggy, then she'd asked Paul to help her with some things in her car.

"Did Dr Mason give you a time frame?" the nurse had asked.

"No, not really."

"Oh." The woman looked away, angry that physicians increasingly left it to hospice workers to deal with this most terrible part of the process.

"And? What does that mean."

"Mr Overton, we're looking at a few days. Dr Mason doesn't think she'll make it to the weekend."

"What?!"

"God, I hate this."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, but your physician really should be the one..."

"Well, he's obviously got other things on his mind." Or is a lazy, spineless son of a bitch, he said to himself. "You shouldn't be the one...no, no, so tell me, what's the drill?"

"They started her on morphine, a light dose, at the clinic today. It'll be wearing off soon. I need to get that going now. It'll be a steady drip. Tomorrow would be a good day for friends and family to drop by."

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Overton and the crew made their way out of the aircraft just as the cleaning crew moved aboard, they walked past the packed Customs queue to the Crew passage, then on to Operations. When he was done, Evans walked with him down to the basement level, and there he bought tickets for the Heathrow Express from a little wall dispenser, then they hurried off to make the next train. They ran the last few steps as a conductor ushered on the few stragglers running up to the carriages, and they piled into a First Class carriage and dumped their bags on a rack just as the doors closed and the train pulled smoothly from the station.

Overton was, after so many years, quite oblivious to the stares his uniform garnered wherever he went in public with it on, but Evans was still consciously all too aware of them. She met the frank stares and covert glances with an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach; 'weren't women supposed to be flight attendants?' the uneasy eyes asked accusingly. They were certainly not supposed to be pilots. She'd heard of flights where men had walked off planes when informed a woman was up front, and it hurt. It hurt because she was proud of her accomplishments, proud because she knew she would soon make Captain. And it hurt because the attention felt stigmatic, often painfully so.

The train eased from the station and moved silently to the next terminal; a few more boarded here, then the train pulled quietly away again and left the airport. Now they moved off towards London, bursting out into daylight a few minutes later as the train accelerated to an almost unbelievable speed. The industrial landscape gave way to suburbs; within a few minutes the train clattered through switches and slowed as it approached Paddington Station. He looked around the train; it was so neat, so orderly, so completely foreign. Something like this would fall flat on its face back home; it was simply too efficient for America, and ignored the dictates of modern American urban planning that if you couldn't pull your car to the 'drive-thru' any effort to address developmental shortcomings was almost certainly doomed to fail.

Overton led her off the train and through the morning rush to an escalator; he bought two more passes for the Underground with practiced ease and marched off through another maze-like series of stairways and escalators, and soon boarded yet another train. Standing among the late morning rush of commuters, Evans felt even more eyes on her than usual, and to hide from them she looked up at advertisements for musicals and low-cost airfares that lined the ceiling. This train jerked into motion and she caught herself on Overton's sleeve, and she felt him reach for her shoulder and steady her. She flexed her knees and steadied herself, smiled at Overton while she tried to hide her embarrassment. What felt an eternity later, they got off and made their way up into the light, and Paul led them off down a crowded sidewalk to Half Moon Street; there he turned away from the park to their left and walked a few more paces up the street to a hotel, and there he ducked inside. Evans followed, suddenly aware she was following him into a hotel -- and now quite uncertain what to do next.

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She lay in the fading light of evening, and it seemed as if her body was caving in on itself. In just a few days her skin had grown waxy and sallow, her eyes had fallen inward, and her breathing was now shallow and raspy.

The hospice nurse adjusted the morphine and went back to the kitchen, and Overton stood by a window in their bedroom, listening to her sleep. He wondered how many more nights he would hear her breathing, and how many more mornings might he wake to see her still there by his side? The nurse returned a minute later with a sandwich, asked him to eat something, and he set it down on their dresser, left it there like an unfair accusation.

The sun fell behind winter's bare trees, and he saw snowflakes falling.

"Paul," he heard her say, "come lay with me."

They talked a while, talked of other days, other times, and he held her hand.

"Oh, Paul," she said at last, and he wiped tears from her eyes before he kissed her one last time.

__________________________________

"You want me to see if they have another room free?" Overton asked when Evans came up behind him.

"I doubt I could afford it, Paul. I'll probably just head back out to the Hilton later on."

"Okay. Why don't you go settle in over there," he said, pointing to some chairs in the lobby. "This won't take long."

She walked over and picked up a Sunday Times; they had until Tuesday afternoon free, and she wondered if there were any plays or musicals worth seeing. She looked around, saw the concierge desk and walked over. She asked about shows and tickets and picked up a brochure for a tour bus that circulated around the most popular sights all day, then walked to the front desk, and Overton, and heard him arranging to leave their bags with the Bell Captain.

"Room's not ready yet. Hungry?"

"Actually, I am."

"Good. Follow me."

A doorman held the front door open and they walked out onto the sidewalk; a tepid sun was trying to break through low-scudding clouds that flew by seemingly just overhead, and they turned to the right and walked up the shallow incline and crossed the street at the first corner, then walked ahead a few more paces before ducking into another narrow doorway. Smells of frying bacon and eggs and sausage slammed into her, knocking all thought of anything else from her mind. She took a seat at a little table while Overton walked up to the bar; he came back a minute later and sat down.

"Hope you're not a vegetarian, because I just ordered the mother of all breakfasts, and some coffee and juice."

"Bless your heart. You read my mind."

He smiled, then looked around the low-ceilinged room like he was looking at old memories, memories that had once been good friends, and she could see the cares of the world settle on his shoulders again.

"You come here often? I mean, to that hotel?"

"No, not really. It's been a while, I guess. Peg and I used to come here."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Paul. I didn't mean to bring it up."

"Oh, I know Denise. Tomorrow's our anniversary. I just wanted to see the place again."

Overton's wife had passed away not long ago, she knew, and only now was he getting back to something like his old self. He'd been very much in love, or so other pilots had told her, even after thirty some odd years of marriage. They'd never had kids, Evans was told, and she'd wondered why -- but could guess. Whatever the reason, he was alone now, and 'alone' was a bad fit for Paul Overton. A child, a living part of Peggy remaining in this world, would have been a grand comfort to him. Now he often times reminded her of an old tree in autumn; the one true thing, the one person who above all else had defined his life had been stripped from him, and now he stood barren, exposed to winter's winds. Whatever was left of him had turned brittle and cold, and life had drifted away from his soul like a reddened leaf on a quiet brook, too soon lost among the wayward currents of fading memory.

Plates of orange-yolked eggs and bacon appeared, the plates heaped with baked beans and broiled tomatoes and mushrooms. Evans attacked her plate with unbridled hunger while Overton looked on in amazed silence as she wolfed down her breakfast. He picked at his food every now and then, mostly just looked at his coffee. He'd lost thirty pounds the past few months, though had never once in his life been considered overweight. Now his shirt collars were obscenely loose and his uniform hung on his spare frame like rags on a scarecrow, yet he hardly ever ate anymore.

He hardly seemed to care anymore.

"You not going to eat?"

"Not too hungry this morning, Denise."

"Paul?"

"Yes?"

"Eat your goddamned breakfast."

He looked at her and shrugged his shoulder, took a bite of egg and a long pull from his glass of juice. "It is good, isn't it?"

"Goddamned right it is. And you need it, too, amigo."

He ate, tentatively at first, but soon he ate and enjoyed it. All of it.

"Whoa there, Paul! Making up for lost time, aren't you?" She watched as he polished off his plate, and finished his juice.

"Man, that felt good."

"Yeah. Food's a good thing, Paul. Try to remember that from time to time, okay?"

He grinned, first at his empty plate, then at Evans. "We ought to go to the hotel, see if we can get out of these things. We can get 'em cleaned overnight, too." He walked up to the bar and paid while she gathered her stuff, then they walked back down the hill to the hotel. His room was ready, his bag delivered, so he took the key and they rode the lift up to the fourth floor and made for the room. He opened the door and walked in, looked around at the ghosts that met him there, then went to his bag and pulled out his toiletries.

"You want to shower?" he asked.

"No, go ahead."

He walked in and brushed his teeth, then threw on some jeans and a white polo shirt and slipped on a pair of Adidas Stan Smith tennis shoes. He ran a brush through his peppered blond hair and a razor across the stubble on his face, then stepped back into the room.

And stopped dead in his tracks.

"Shit! I thought you were going to shower!" Evans said. She stood bare-foot in the middle of the room, with only panties and a bra on, and she turned a bright crimson as Overton stood open-mouthed, gaping at her.

"Crap, I'm sorry Denise," he said as he retreated to the bathroom. He gathered himself in front of the mirror and looked at his reflection, but all he saw was her flat belly and smallish - though obviously quite beautiful - breasts, and perfect legs crowned by sexy white-lace panties. The sight had all but taken his breath away, and he shook inside at the thought of her standing out there, untouchable, indeed, almost unknowable.