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1. Emergency
Bella
"Last call for all passengers traveling on flight 0856 to Santa Cruz de la Sierra."
"Dad, I'm gonna have to hang up." I told my father quickly, as I hurried toward my gate, fumbling with the zipper of my bag in an attempt to open it to get to my damn boarding pass.
He mumbled a quick goodbye, but I could once again hear a strain in his voice that I had come familiar with over the past few weeks. Ever since I had booked this flight, my father had let me know that he didn't approve of this little trip.
What was I supposed to do, though? I wanted to see my mother and well, that crazy, erratic woman had decided to move to Bolivia of all places. She wanted to 'get in touch' with her inner spirit and apparently the only place to do that was in South America, close to nature and away from technology. Yeah, crazy, I know, but that's my mother.
Honestly, I don't think my dad was really bothered about me visiting my mother because even after being divorced for so long, he still loved her dearly. It's more the environment I would be in that was making him restless. A bunch of Buddhistic hippies, he had called the people my mother was currently surrounding herself with, and he was afraid that they would go all voodoo on his precious baby girl. Not under my watch!
I smiled at the memory of my father's mumbling that he would have to call my mother with a warning to send me back to Forks in the exact state as I had arrived in Bolivia. I don't know if he actually did it, but I really wanted to have witnessed that conversation. I made a mental note to subtly ask my mother about it later.
After glancing at my ticket and checking my seat number once more, I pushed my carry-on bag into the storage compartment above my seat, cursing a little under my breath because my seat was in the front of the plane - I hated front seats.
Surprisingly, there were hardly any passengers on the flight, even for this particularly small plane. All in all maybe seven people. Then again, I was going to Bolivia of all places.
I couldn't hide my smile as I slid into my seat. Not many passengers would mean a relatively quiet flight. Thank fucking god! Still, I couldn't wait for the next nine and a half hours to be over, no matter how peaceful the flight may be.
I threw one last look outside my window and saw the afternoon sun shining brightly, temporarily blinding me. Nonetheless, I was gratefully soaking up the rays of sunshine that I was still able to. By the time I would arrive in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, it would be pitch black again. Arriving somewhere at night wasn't something I was really fond of, but flights to Bolivia were hard to come by, so it wasn't like I had had a lot of options.
"Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the flight crew, welcome aboard flight-" As the steward, a twenty something guy with spiky blond hair, started going over the necessary instructions, I quickly put in my earphones of my iPod to tune out his annoying voice. I had already heard the emergency procedures a thousand times. Enough so that I'm sure I could mouth every word along with the way too skinny, annoying looking steward.
A few minutes later, we took off and as per usual, I couldn't stop myself from looking out of my little window as New York city became smaller and smaller beneath me. It was truly magical.
When we hit the cloud blanket and I could no longer stare out the window at the beauty below, I picked up my bruised and battered copy of Wuthering Heights and leafed to the place I had left off last time. It didn't take me very long to get lost in the love story of Heathcliff and Catherine. I was so engrossed that darkness had fallen upon us, before I realized and there was only an hour and a half before we would be landing.
I stretched my legs and arms, feeling them protest against the lack of movement from the past few hours. Fucking airplanes hardly leave you room to sit in a comfortable position.
I threw a glance around the small plane and noticed that almost everyone had fallen asleep. It was already well past midnight and I could feel myself getting tired as well. Since I had nothing else to do, I decided to try and catch up on some sleep. Even though it would be still be night time when I arrived, I knew that wouldn't stop my mother from pestering me with questions. I figured I would need all the energy I could get.
As I turned my body in my seat, I silently thanked myself for choosing my nicest looking sweat pants, over my favorite pair of jeans. At least now I was somewhat comfortable and with some luck, I might actually sleep the rest of the flight.
But just as I was about to close my eyes, the plane started shaking lightly, waking everyone up and making me moody. Of course something would disturb my attempt to catch some sleep!
Some yelps and screams resonated through the airplane, but as usual the steward was quick to assure everyone that everything was just fine and that we had probably just had some unexpected turbulence. Nothing I wasn't used to - yet.
It was over as soon as it had started, making me roll my eyes at the woman on the opposite side of the plane, who was still looking as if she had seen a ghost. Or still seeing one.
However, a few minutes after I had closed my eyes, the shaking started again, but this time, it was with a force I had never experienced before. I sat up straighter in my seat, allowing the seatbelt to do its job the best it could. I mean, I had heard horror stories about people dying from hitting their head against the roof of the plane because they weren't wearing their seat belts properly. Ain't gonna happen to me!
The shaking died down a little but it never really went away, making my earlier broody mood become slightly worried. Sure I had experienced some turbulence before, but this was something entirely different.
I took a deep breath, willing myself to calm down, but the crackling sound of the intercom instantly made my heart speed up again in a bad way.
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking," a silky voice sounded through the entire plane. It instantly soothed me. Unfortunately, that only lasted a second because I swear I could hear a panicked undertone to his words. "We have hit an especially large air pocket and are trying to fly past it and continue our journey safely. There might be some more shaking, so please do not leave your seat and keep your seatbelts on until we give you a signal. We're sorry for the inconvenience."
And with that the voice was gone, but I could still hear the clicking of switches and pressing of buttons resonating throughout the plane. It was as if they had forgotten to switch off the intercom. It didn't bother me, as it at least gave me something to focus on, instead of freaking out about the goddamned 'air pocket' or whatever. It seemed like every other passenger was fixed on it, as well. Staring at the little speaker in the front of the airplane as if their lives depended on it.
I forced my eyes to close again as I tried to ignore the constant jolting, but my body was entirely too tense to calm down. A feeling in the pit of my stomach was yelling at me, demanding my attention, but I was too scared to allow myself to think about it any further.
The steward was trying to calm everyone down when arguing voices came over the intercom. Shouting, yelling and even some strong language was being thrown around. It was obvious that the pilot was having an argument with his co-pilot and the ground station. We could hear them snarling at each other, but the intercom crackled too much for us to understand what they were talking about. I wasn't decided yet whether that was a good or a bad thing. One way, I wanted to know what was going on, but I was too afraid that maybe - I wasn't going to like what they were saying.
Another series of jolts seemed to emphasized the latter. Not good.
At some point, my head started hurting, indicating that we were either going up at an alarming rate or going down. I just hoped that whatever way it was, it was in order to avoid the obstruction in the air and not because things had gone seriously wrong.
It wasn't until the shouting and yelling stopped that the fear gripped me. No more sounds came through the intercom and if it wasn't for the harsh breathing I could still hear, I might have thought that they had simply figured out that the intercom was still on. That wasn't the case, however, because it was still on. No more instructions were given, no more buttons or clicking sounds were heard—it was dead quiet. My heart, on the other hand, was going crazy in my chest, as if it was trying to beat its way out of it.
"We're going to crash," were the last whispered, anxiety-filled words that I heard resonate throughout the plane, seconds before the passengers began screaming and trying to get out of their seats. I, on the other hand, sat frozen in place as the information slowly seeped into my brain. Word per word. Letter per letter. We were going to crash. The plane was going down, taking all of us down with it. Mercilessly.
After hearing those particularly horrifying words, the steward rushed to the opposite side of the small plane, trying with all his might to ignore the woman that was begging him to help her, to save her.
He frantically started rifling through the cabinet at the far end of the airplane, pulling out a few yellow bundles and tossing them towards the panicking people that were surrounding him.
"Those are parachutes," he said, trying to remain as calm as possible, but his eyes and voice were full of fear as well. Yeah, that didn't exactly calm me down. "Put them on as quickly as possible. We'll have to jump."
Everyone quickly strapped the parachute to their back and listened to the brief instructions on how to open them and how to land properly. It was hard to hear him over the wailing woman in the back, but somehow he got everyone to put one on.
"Open the front doors," the steward yelled towards the cockpit, after he was done explaining how to operate the parachute.
Instead of the doors opening, the intercom crackled again, and after a brief silence five words were spoken. "It's too late to jump."
And in that exact moment, with those words, my mind went entirely blank. Every sound, every shout and every other instruction around me faded away and it was only me, and my own thoughts. I stumbled back into my seat and instinctively put on my seat belt again.
For a brief second I wondered, would this be the moment where the story of my life would start to play out in front of me - showing all of the good moments, all the smiles and laughter, but nothing came. There was nothing except my mind screaming at me that this was it. That this was the end - my end. I could feel the force with which the plane was descending and it was as if my body was already counting down the seconds until it would hit the ground. Until we wouldall hit the ground. There was no escaping it, so in an act of desperation - and maybe hope - I did the only thing that seemed to make any sense at the moment; I put my hands over my head and I prayed - for my life.
A/N: Yeah…. *awkward moment*
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Until next time,
Love, Ellen