Flight to Nowhere

           “We’re almost ready to take off,” my pilot said with a smile. His old, lanky body turned from me and limped back to his cabin. He told me before we left his office it was an old war injury that he got saving the woman he loved in Columbia. I gave him a confused look and pointed at the picture of his wife. She didn’t look Colombian to me. 

“Not her. She was later. I’m talking of my first real love,” he grabbed the picture off his desk and stared at her with a hint of regret. “She was worth it,” he said as he placed the photo back on his desk and looked out his window into the waning sunlight. I knew he was finished so I made my way to the plane to wait.

           He looked so proud, walking with his limp. His limp from saving the woman he loved. I had so many questions about his mystery woman. Maybe it would have given me answers to my own dilemmas. I gazed out the oval window and remembered why I was on this airplane in the first place. I imagined I saw him running through the trees and onto the tarmac to stop me. I knew it wasn’t true. I was alone and that was it. She was out of his life but he didn’t want me to take her place.

The airfield was empty except for my private jet. The trees swayed peacefully with the wind as the plane’s engines started. We started rolling and I imagined my life in Miami breaking away from me. I was no more in Miami. I no longer mattered. No one knew where I was and no one was going to stop me.

As we took off and rose above the clouds, the air somehow felt fresher. I could breathe again. I settled back into my seat and hit play on my I-Pod. I wasn’t listening to the music but it was better than the silence. I couldn’t be left to think anymore. I thought enough.

The beautiful sky turned purple as I got to my 3^rd song. It was a love song and probably not what I needed to be listening to. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes and I closed them to prevent them from actually falling. After I got myself under control, I felt the plane suddenly jerk forward. I opened my eyes and took off my headphones to see what was going on. I looked around and realized I couldn’t hear the engines. I slowly sat up and waited for the pilot to come over the speaker to let me know what had happened. I waited, but nothing. Silence inside and out. I unbuckled my seatbelt and walked towards the cabin. Before I got six steps away from my seat the plane tilted forward and was making a rapid fall from the sky. I fell forward into the row of seats in front of me. I grabbed on and froze with terror. The cabin door flung open and I saw the pilot, slumped over the steering of the plane, trying to look back at me. He lifted his hand and motioned for me to come to him.

“Please, Michelle. I can’t move,” he screamed over the screech of the wind as we fell. I was still frozen, hanging on to the row of seats in front of me. I knew I couldn’t leave him there so I stood up as best I could and slowly clawed my way to him.

“I can’t feel my hands and feet. I went numb,” he tried to explain as I unbuckled his seat belt and got him up. He was not a light man despite his lanky figure. I had to drag him out of the cockpit and into where I had been sitting. I grabbed onto the seats with one hand and held onto the pilot with the other and dragged us both into the bathroom. Before I closed the door, I took one last gaze at the purple sky and saw clouds rushing past the windows. Green began to be visible and I knew that we were close to hitting the ground. I closed the door and sat next to the pilot. I held onto him and closed my eyes as we smashed into the ground.

Through closed eyes, I could see I was running away from life, my life, and I was now being punished. I was deeply afraid of opening my eyes. I didn’t want to see the destruction that I had caused. I knew I had to check on the pilot to see if he was still alive. With my eyes still closed I put out my hand to touch him and he wasn’t there. I felt around and found the sink, the toilet, and the door. He wasn’t near any of them. Were there even any walls around me? I used both hands to search around, still afraid to see what surrounded me. But I needed to see where we were and if I had any chance of making it to…where was I going? I didn’t even know. I knew I had to eventually see to get out but I was content to sit there for a minute in total darkness.

I heard rustling outside. Maybe the pilot got his feeling back and walked out. I opened my eyes and made my way through the mangled metal of the airplane and the topsy-turvy of airplane seats towards the rustling sound. We crashed into a clearing with high trees all around. There were no paths that looked traveled that I could see in the limited light. Where there weren’t any trees, tall bushes filled the space. The only strong light came from six small fires in quarter-sized patches of grass around the wreckage. I saw the pilot laying on his back near one of the fires in front of the plane’s nose and I made my way closer to him. I could see that he was missing a leg and an arm and was bleeding quite a bit from his head. I kneeled next to him and saw that he was still breathing. I couldn’t say anything.

“I’m pretty cold Michelle. Do you have a blanket?” he asked me. He was shivering violently and looking at me through one eye. The other eye wasn’t there. I shook my head and stared at his injuries.

“Is it as bad as it feels?” he asked. He was still staring at me.

“No,” I said. The only word I was able to get out. He couldn’t see them so it didn’t matter what I answered. This was my fault. Now he couldn’t get home to his wife. He was going to die alone with the person that caused this in the first place. I couldn’t allow him to stare at me any longer so I got up and walked back to the mangled plane. There had to be something somewhere that could get me rescued. I mean us. He was going to survive. I couldn’t live with the thought of killing this man because of my fear and insecurities. I had to get us out of here.

The first thing I had to find was a blanket for the pilot and a blanket for myself. It was already starting to get cold and the wind was picking up. I found two yellow safety blankets in a package next to what could have been the exit door. They weren’t very thick but hopefully, they would keep us warm. I ripped the package open and took both blankets back to where the pilot was. I opened one and spread it over him, careful not to put out the fire. He looked up at me and gave me a weak smile. I was surprised that he could still smile at me after what I had done to him.

“Thank you, Michelle. This feels so much better,” he said but I could still see him shivering and the blanket was now turning orange with his blood. He was not going to make it through the night. I sat next to him and tried to wrap my blanket around myself. An excruciating amount of pain shot through my arm to my shoulder. I gave a small scream and the pilot looked at me.

“Are you okay dear?” he asked almost breathlessly.

“Yes just a sharp pain in my aim,” I said softly. I didn’t look at him. I stared at the ground as I gritted my teeth and hurriedly wrapped the blanket around my shoulders.

“You may have broken it,” he said coughing. I could see the blood dribbling down his chin. I didn’t want him to see me crying so I held it together.

“I’m fine. I’m sorry I don’t know your name,” I said ashamed. How could I kill a man and not know his name?

“It’s Jim. James if you want to be formal but Jim is perfectly fine,” he said trying to smile this time but his mouth wouldn’t form it.

“Well I am perfectly fine Jim and you will be too,” I tried to say reassuringly. I don’t think I was very convincing.

           “You know Michelle, I don’t think so this time,” he said and he slowly shook his head. I could do nothing but stare at him and the destruction that I caused, stare at the impending death that I caused.

           “I can now think of my Carolina in peace,” he said with a slight laugh. “I could never do it at home with my wife but now I am free to dream of the life I could have had with her.”

           “So you met her in the war huh?” I asked trying to keep him talking. If he kept talking that meant he would stay alive longer, right? I needed that to be true.

           “Yes it was 1966 and I was in Colombia on a secret mission with the army,” he took a few deep breaths before continuing. “If I tell you what the mission was, I will have to kill you,” he said trying to wink with the eye that wasn’t there. I gave him a half-smile. He was trying to make me feel better when I should be trying to make him feel better. That made me feel worse.

           “Anyway, I met her while we were in a village somewhere near Bogota. She was washing clothes in a river that ran in the middle of the village. She was so beautiful with her long chocolate hair flowing in the humid wind. Her body was so small but she was plump in all the right places if you know what I mean. Her tan linen dress reached all the way down to the dirt and she was always barefoot. Her almond eyes shone the first time I laid eyes on her. Her teeth were as white as you could imagine. Almost like clouds. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life,” he said looking into the dark, starless sky.

           “How did you save her and get your limp?” I asked. I was deeply entranced in the love story now. If only I could create my own.

           “Ah, it was terrible Michelle. We fell in love with each other. We were head over heels in love but of course, it was forbidden. I was already engaged to my Miriam back in the U.S. and she was engaged to the village warrior by her father. There was no way we could be together. But we were found out. Her fiancé saw her sneaking out one night to meet me at my camp and he followed her. When he saw that she was meeting with an American man he lost it. He came flying at me from the woods with his machete. I dodged it of course and she stood in front of me before he could lunge at me again. She spoke beautiful Spanish to him but he wasn’t hearing any of it. He motioned for her to move aside but she wouldn’t so he raised his machete-like he was going to kill her first and then me. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t see her die so I pushed her out of the way right as he was coming down with his blow. He hit me right in my left hip. It was severe pain and I fell to the ground. He dragged her away by her hair and the next thing I remember I was in the medical tent with my leg wrapped.” He told me.

He had almost died for his love and here I was running away from mine. Why couldn’t I fight for who I wanted? Why did I have to run away?  

“What happened to her?” I asked. Did she run away too?

“I never heard from her the rest of the time I was there. I left for the U.S. a few days after the incident,” he said and he turned his head towards the fire. I saw the red and orange dance around the hole where his eye used to be. The blanket was completely blood-soaked now and I knew there weren’t any more around. I had to sit there and watch this man, a man that had taken a machete whack for the woman he loved, bleed to death in front of my eyes. What was I supposed to do? I had no kind of training in keeping someone alive.

“Did you ever love Miriam?” I asked. I needed to keep him talking but I also wanted to know.

“At one point I did Michelle. But after I met Carolina, Miriam became irrelevant to me. It was like I could no longer lay my eyes on her and feel the love I felt before,” he said still gazing into the fire.

“Why did you marry her then?” I asked. “Why marry someone you didn’t love? Why not go back and fight for Carolina or find someone who could take Carolina’s place?”

“I couldn’t break Miriam’s heart like that. When I made it home, I could see the love she had for me in her eyes. She didn’t want to let me go when we hugged. How could I do that to the woman that loved me?” he said. He avoided my other questions. The questions I most needed answers to.

“Did you tell her about how you got your injury?” I asked. If he didn’t want to break her heart, then how was he going to explain that he took a cut to the hip for another woman?

“I told her the truth somewhat,” he said and coughed up more blood. “I told her that I saved a native woman from her abusive fiancé,” he said and he tried to lift the arm that wasn’t there. He moved the jagged piece that was left. When he realized he wasn’t lifting his arm he tried to look down.

“Where is my arm Michelle?” he asked with panic in his voice.

“It’s okay Jim. Just calm down,” I knew I had to keep him calm because his head started bleeding faster. “Keep telling me about Miriam and Carolina,” I said. His breathing started getting deeper and his breaths were shorter.

“I am too tired Michelle,” he said with his smile. “Maybe I can continue later?” I nodded and let him close his eyes. Maybe that wasn’t a good idea but he needed rest, right? He was bleeding so much.

I did this to him. I did this because I was afraid to face the love of my life. Jim was brave and I was a coward. Now the coward gets to live while the brave has to suffer and die. How was that fair? I watched as Jim breathed slower and slower. I knew eventually he was going to stop. I couldn’t be around for that. I didn’t have the right to watch him die. I got up, careful not to use my broken arm, and took my blanket off. I spread it across Jim and watched it become orange just like the first one. He opened his eye then.

“Where are you going Michelle?” he asked shivering as violently as he ever was that night.

“I’m going to find us help. There has to be someone that lives around here or a road somewhere,” I said, hopefully reassuringly. I could see through the fire that he never stopped smiling up at me.

           “That’s a great idea, Michelle, you go do that. I’m just going to rest here a while and maybe I can join you when I don’t feel so tired,” he said as he closed his eye again.

           “Okay, Jim. I will walk slowly for you,” I said as I walked towards the trees. I took one last look behind me, knowing he wasn’t ever going to get up and I wasn’t ever going to come back. I didn’t know where I was going. Away from Jim. Away from Him. Away from me. How far could I go until I arrived nowhere?