Epic Journey, Part 2

The flight to Reykjavík was uneventful and the crew announced at the beginning of the flight that our flight to Baltimore would be held for us. Things were looking up. Then the plane flew in over the interior of Iceland, a forbidding place that my non-rugged self will otherwise never get a chance to see, which afforded me some spectacular views of a raging snowstorm (in JULY!) and huge fissures in the lava fields with great boiling clouds of steam spewing out. I was thrilled beyond belief.

Now, when I flew over back in June, there was no passport control between Iceland and Sweden. So I didn’t expect to have to go through passport control between Germany and Iceland, either, since Germany is also an EU country. That was a wrong assumption. We were herded though the passport control (where I witnessed a woman in a violent screaming fit in Icelandic with one of the passport control officers, who seemed unconcerned with her rage. No one else—except the other passengers—seemed concerned either. Can you imagine the police reaction to a similar scene in an American airport?) and into a different part of the airport just in time to board. No fuss about any of it, except for the little voice in my head going, “You’re still 2 ½ hours behind schedule. You won’t even get to Baltimore until a half-hour after your flight takes off. You’re going to miss that flight to Pittsburgh...”

I was seated in the window seat about 10 rows from the back of the plane, next to an elderly married couple from Canada. They were both dressed up: he was wearing a tie, she had on a suit with a skirt, pantyhose, and high heels. It was like something from another era, when flying was still so special that you got dressed up for the occasion. They were very nice and we chatted a bit about this and that before take-off. They’d been in Paris visiting the wife’s family. She had a lovely accent and occasionally slipped into French when she addressed me.

Not long after take-off, the crew made an announcement that favorable conditions might allow them to make up a large amount of the time that we’d been delayed and that they would try their best to get us to Baltimore as close to the scheduled time as possible. Woo Hoo! I’m gonna make that flight after all, as long as I get a little luck at baggage claim and customs! Meals were served, and let me digress for a moment to praise Icelandair for their food service.

On the flight over, the meal was a chicken breast and veggies with some sauce on a bed of wild rice. It looked great, but I didn’t want to die from dinner, so I was going to make a meal from the cheese crackers, beef jerky, bagels, and pop tarts I’d packed for just this contingency. I handed my meal back to the flight attendant so that I wouldn’t accidentally get rice in my other food, and she was very concerned that there was something wrong with the meal. I explained that it was fine, but that I was allergic to it. She took it away and I figured that was the end of it. Two or three minutes later, she reappeared, smiling from ear to ear and presented me with a special tray of lasagna that normally comes in the kiddie meals. I was so shocked and impressed that she’d gone out of her way to dig out a meal for me that I could eat. Compare that to my last Trans-Atlantic flight with Air Canada, when the meal was chicken and wild rice served with rye bread rolls and a walnut brownie. I asked for a different meal if possible or at least a couple extra snacks and the flight attendant jumped down my throat about how I shouldn’t ask for special accommodation unless I made prior arrangements. (Which is a whole separate rant. Not only will the airlines not provide nutritional information about the meals served or allow you to order a meal that doesn’t include certain allergens, but even if you choose “Diabetic Meal” or “Kosher Meal” or “Vegan Meal” or whatever, they won’t guarantee that your special meal will be there. Many of them also won’t warm up something that you bring along on the plane “for safety reasons”. And there’s nowhere for you to keep cold food cold on a flight And it’s not like you can go to a different shop in the food court and get something if you can’t eat the meal that they’re serving. WE DON’T ALL HAVE A CHOICE IN OUR DIETARY RESTRICTIONS!!) Anyway, I cowered in my seat and ate the candy bars I brought along for a treat, figuring I’d hold out for the breakfast and then get something on my arrival in Frankfurt (where I had a two or three hour layover before flying on to Munich. God, I miss Munich). Imagine the sinking sensation in my heart when Air Canada served me a breakfast tray with three rye bread rolls, butter, jam, and coffee. No, there wasn’t anything available besides that (I asked again, despite my fear of getting yelled at by the same stewardess). And Frankfurt Airport didn’t have *any* restaurants or shops in the gate area (at least back then). And then I didn’t get a chance to buy something in Munich since I only had about 10 minutes to catch my train to Kempten. By the time I got there, I was so hungry that I felt like I was going to pass out. How did I get on this subject??

Anyway, they served our meals and drinks and the in-flight movie started, so the cabin lights dimmed. I wanted to sleep, but it was just not happening. So I watched Along Came Polly (cute enough to watch once, but I wouldn’t rent it to watch again) and ate my (very yummy) roasted chicken and crunchy veggies and fresh bread and a totally sinful chocolate mousse, and everything was good. Then the movie stopped in the middle of a sentence. The lights in the cabin came on suddenly, and a flight attendant, voice high and quivering in anxiety, called over the PA system “If there is a doctor on board, please contact the flight crew immediately!!”

The plane was immediately filled with the buzzing of frantic whispers:
“A doctor? What’s going on?” “Did they call a doctor?” “Is someone dead?”

We were over the Atlantic Ocean—no land in sight. Seconds later, a grim-faced man hurried down the aisle behind a member of the flight crew. Apparently a doctor was, in fact, on board. They stopped two rows behind me across the aisle. Things started to happen: the doctor starts to do things while leaning over the seats in the row in front of the patient (who I couldn’t see from my angle) with wildly flailing arms. Members of the crew held flashlights so that they shone onto the patient. Other members of the flight crew ran up and down the aisle of the plane, bringing blankets, bottles of water, and eventually an AED (!). Meanwhile, the plane continued to buzz with fearful excitement. A few very inconsiderate and stupid parents let their children run down the aisle to try and get a look at the goings-on, but they were sent sulking back up the aisle by other passengers with more common sense. The pilot began changing course toward Nova Scotia, preparing for the possibility of an emergency landing. At that announcement, the muttering in the cabin reached a fever pitch. I am very happy to report that most people were simultaneously bemoaning the certainty of missing their own connection AND acknowledging that the needs of a sick and possibly dying person trump that inconvenience. I didn’t hear anyone expressing anger at the diversion. It was a nice recharge for my belief in the basic goodness of humanity.

Maybe 20 or 25 minutes of this went by and the doctor must have needed more room to work than he could gain by leaning over the seatback of the seat in front of the patient, or perhaps he just tired of the gawking children and wanted to give the patient some measure of privacy, or perhaps he was contemplating some more invasive procedure and did not want to incite panic among the passengers. Whatever the reason, he rounded up six very large men from the surrounding seats and they lifted the patient—who turned out to be a man—out of the seat and carried him into the galley at the back of the plane. The doctor pulled the curtains behind him. A few minutes later the crew dimmed the cabin lights again and the movie came back on. The buzzing in the cabin slowly died out. I looked out the window and there was still no land in sight, just black-green water as far as the eye could see.

I must say that I just don’t understand how people could just go back to watching the movie and drinking their coffees. Knowing that there was a man less than 50 feet from me, possibly dying or already dead was sobering and upsetting. Knowing that there was no way that we could possibly reach land (and more advanced medical care than even the best doctor could provide with the materials available on board an airplane) was even more upsetting. We hear so much about the Golden Hour and the need for quick medical care in acute medical situations, and yet there are situations in our everyday lives where you might be out of reach of that care. How strange that the decision to board a flight might mean dying from what otherwise might be an easily treated ailment.

Perhaps 45 minutes or so after the original call for a doctor, the flight crew announced that the man had stabilized and that we would be landing in Baltimore as planned. Knowing that the situation was not nearly as dire as it had been was a relief, but a glance at my watch showed that the chances of getting to Baltimore in time to catch my flight were growing slim. But what can you do? If a man suffers a heart attack (the going theory at the time, probably fueled by the AED) over the Atlantic Ocean, it’s not too much to ask that the other passengers accept a delay in their travel plans in order to save the man’s life.