Page 2 of Fly with Me

Music. Nature. Potted plants. Mid-century modern art deco designs. Velvet tufted everything.

The plane shuddered.

She gasped, drawing more exasperated looks from the totally calm and normal people in the seats around her. Yeah, they’d probably be telling all their friends about the psycho in their row. Sandpaper lined her throat. She fumbled for her water. Water would be good.

Unless the plane landed in it.

Piranhas. Sharks.

A revving noise hit her ears even through the headphones. The plane accelerated, flattening Olive to her seat. She held her breath as if she were jumping off a diving board. A bounce. A lifting sensation. Her eyes opened. Her head whipped around. There was no more shaking. No shudder of the wheels beneath her. Smooth. They were in the air. A small thunk made her latch on to the armrest again.

A gnarled hand lifted her right headphone off her ear, and a gravelly voice from the aisle seat beside her spoke. “That’s the landing gear going away, dearie.” A woman in her nineties if she was a day smirked—actually smirked—at her and patted her arm placatingly.

“Oh, okay.”

“Everything’s going to be fine.” She pointed. “Watch the flight attendants. As long as they’re calm, you should be calm. You’re not going to get sick, are you?”

“Why would I get sick?”

“I can deal with reciting horrific accident statistics better than the stench of panic vomit.” With that she pulled down her eye mask and was snoring in seconds.

Olive cradled her face. This wasn’t the most humiliating experience of her life. Not by a long shot. Jake used to call her proof that Murphy’s Law existed. With her, whatever could go wrong usually did, especially if it involved making a complete ass out of herself. But generally, she could laugh about it.

Not today.

Nevertheless, she dutifully watched the flight attendants. They were calmly chatting. Several more minutes of smooth flying passed before one of the flight attendants shot out of their seat.

“Oh my god.” Olive pulled her headphones down around her neck. Shouts from the front echoed in her ears. Wasn’t there that thing a few years back when a woman got pulled out of a plane after debris hit her window? Olive tightened her seat belt. “I’m not going to die today.”

The goateed man on the other side of her sighed loudly. Very loudly. It was almost a groan.

Several flight attendants spoke into a walkie-talkie while others fumbled through cabinets. Olive wanted to wake the nonagenarian beside her to beg for reassurance. But even Olive wasn’t quite that pathetic yet, despite the sound coming from her mouth, which might have been a whimper.

A musical and calming female voice came over the PA system speakers. “This is your cocaptain speaking. I need to know if we have any doctors on board. We have a passenger experiencing a medical emergency.”

No one moved. No one raised their hands.

Olive wasn’t a doctor, so she let her shoulders slump, hoping someone with less panic coursing through their veins could help. The flight attendants repeated the request for doctors.

Another minute passed. The same voice overhead. “Do we have any medical professionals on board this flight?”

Motherfucking Murphy’s Law.

Olive raised her hand, and her voice squeaked when she found it. “I’m a nurse.”

Chapter 2

With the permission of the bouffant blonde, Olive leaped out of her seat into the aisle. Her headphones almost strangled her, as they’d somehow gotten hooked in an armrest. She pulled them off. She could do this. She was an ER nurse with ten years of experience. She could absolutely do this. The plane lurched, and Olive grabbed hold of the seats, her muscles locking up until she saw the man on the ground.

Oh shit.

They’d gotten him out of his seat and onto the floor in a small vestibule at the front of the plane. He was in his forties or fifties. Gray peppered the hair on either side of his utterly pale face. Unconscious.

Some essential gear in Olive’s brain clicked into place. She rushed to the man’s side. “What happened?”

The head flight attendant, a tall man not much older than she was, handed her a stethoscope. “The people in the seat next to him saw him clutch his chest and then slump over. We don’t know anything else. Is he having a heart attack? The captain’s working on getting us diverted.”

“What supplies do we have?” Olive asked. Another flight attendant opened a black vinyl bag. She searched through it. “Can you find out what he was doing right before he slumped over?”