[stylist] The heart of it: chapter 2.

[Alan]

The Heart of It
By: Alan Wheeler

Chapter 2
The Other Breaking

Anna shot a horrified gaze at Michael when she felt him suddenly squeeze her
hand.  His face was twisted in pain.  She shoved the novel back into her
shoulder bag.  The freaking gunslinger could wait.  When Michael's head
lulled forward, Anna immediately smacked the call button over their heads.

Thankfully, a flight attendant was there within a millisecond.  It had
seemed that, until this very moment, the flight crew had been virtually
invisible.  With the exception of serving the drinks and snacks, the flight
crew were seen so infrequently as to leave the aisles of the plane a sort of
ghost town.

"can I help. you?" the tiny, perky flight attendant with blonde curls
started to ask, her voice trailing off when she saw the man slumped in his
seat.

"I..is there a doctor on board?" Anna asked, barely controlling her
quavering voice. "I think my husband may be having a heart attack."

"omigod!" the attendant said, gasping. Her eyes flitted nervously to the
front of the plane.

As the young lady stood there, nearly motionless except for the panicked
wandering of her eyes, Anna, she was going into shock watching her husband
on the verge of death, noticed the name tag of the flight attendant.  Kandi
Nightinggale.  She sure was no Florence, Anna thought.

At that moment Kandi Nightinggale broke from her stunned paralysis and
strode rapidly up the aisle.  She ducked into the galley.  This was not what
she had wanted from her first full flight as an attendant.  Anything but a
dying passenger.  Thankfully, Alice, the head attendant was there.

"Alice!" she whispered loudly. "I....We have a big problem. The guy in 1b
appears to be having a heart attack."
Alice's tall slender frame straightened suddenly at these words.  "Good god,
girl!  How long has it been?" Alice didn't mean to be rude, but she had seen
Kandi standing, frozen as time ticked away.  Alice knew that time was of the
essence, and a death on the flight would be hard to forget, would be
something that would weigh on Alice, as responsible a person as she was.

"I.I.I'm not sure...two minutes tops." Kandi blurted out, fighting tears.
"Okay," Alice said calmly, "I'll tell the pilot what's going on.  Make an
announcement over the PA system.  Find a doctor, pronto!"

The announcement was practically unnecessary when the man's wife could be
heard screaming "Someone get a doctor now, before I punch a hole in the
fuselage!"
Something in her voice convinced Kandi the woman wasn't kidding. She rushed
to the door of the galley, and looked down the aisle.  She thanked her
luckiest of lucky stars.  There was a man kneeling by their seats and
holding a black doctor's bag.  At that moment Kandi felt the plane make a
banking turn and heard the commanding voice of the pilot come over the
intercom. "Ladies and gentlemen, due to a medical emergency, we are
rerouting to Dallas-Fort Worth.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

***

Time moved irregularly for Anna now.  Some moments passing painfully slow,
and others moving like fast-forwarded videotape.  Before she could even seem
to begin to think straight, they were inside the terminal of the DFW
airport, and EMTs were gathered about Michael as if he were actually Brad
Pitt and they were a vulture-like paparazzi.  It couldn't be helped.  As
frustrating as sitting back and doing nothing was, Anna had to give them
room to do their jobs.  She could add nothing to their tasks except
interference.  She stared disbelievingly at Michael on the stretcher.  God,
the pain he must be in.  The absolute utter pain.  For a long, strange
moment she thought she was empathizing with his agony, hurting his hurt.
Her chest seemed to be on fire.  She tried to ignore it, tell herself it
would pass once he was in the care of a physician, but it seemed to only get
worse.  She was now becoming panicky.  It hurt far too much to be ghost
pains, phantom sympathy pains for Michael.  The pain was just too great.
She touched the shoulder of one of the EMTs and was about to speak, wanting
to say "I think I'm in trouble, too." but her knees buckled, and she
fainted.  She wouldn't know it for a while, but she was spared having her
head crash to the floor by the very EMT whose shoulder she had touched.

As this EMT lay her on a second stretcher, the sad irony occured to him.
This trip the couple had started together was ending with a kind of
togetherness no couple wanted: riding tandem to the hospital.