I'll Fly Away
Chapter 11: Oh, Fix Me
Raleigh, North Carolina
March, 2005
It's an interesting experience, having your health care paid for.
I felt sort of like I had in college, when I had that incredulous sense of you mean I can learn as much as I want?
In this case it was therapy. Occupational therapy, physical therapy, cognitive and memory therapy, trying to retrain my broken brain and uncoordinated body to some semblance of normal function.
"Normal" being a relative term.
Some things couldn't be fixed. My short-term memory was shot all to hell, and the neurologist told me frankly it would probably never get much better. The only solution was to adapt: write everything down, organize my life around a predictable routine, avoid unfamiliar places and situations.
Give up my work.
Good Measure had always depended on that unrecorded, undocumented, sometimes even unspoken web of relationships, hints, understandings, and pieced-together bits of seemingly unrelated information. It was as far beyond me now as opera singing or neurosurgery. I would never, ever be able to do again what I had done so well for the past nine years.
Everyone was unanimous that I couldn't afford to take another hit in the head. That meant no more martial arts. Ever. And nothing that might put me at risk of a bad fall: no rock climbing, motorcycle or horseback riding. Bicycling was a grey area; it depended on where I'd be riding, how much traffic, and so on and so forth.
My balance was so bad I couldn't walk across the room without a cane. The word on that was much more reassuring; my PT said it was much too early to predict how much equilibrium I'd recover; it might well be that I'd get it all back. She said the same about my reflexes and coordination. When I finally got up the nerve to ask whether it was possible I'd fly a plane again, she frowned and flipped through my chart. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it. Her expression lightened.
"I can give you a firm 'maybe' on that," she said. "There's nothing in here that would rule it out. Let's see what happens."
The permanent memory loss was, thankfully, limited to the time immediately before the injury and two weeks following it, more or less. I remembered seeing Clint come into the shack; I didn't remember what happened next, or how I left there. I remembered waking up in the hospital—the hospitals—multiple times, but my recall for what happened there was extremely vague.
The pain was not that much worse than I'd experienced before, at various times. The headaches were pretty bad, and my neck hurt a lot, but I could cope. I had episodes of vertigo, and I tended to see double when I was tired. I slept poorly at night, with frequent, incoherent nightmares, but since I was able to nap between therapy sessions it wasn't that big a deal.
The emotional effects were...complicated.
I was moody, irritable, easily startled and easily confused. Occasionally something ordinary would happen, like someone coming up behind me without my noticing, and my heart would start pounding and I'd break out in a sweat. My tolerance for noise, clutter and visual distraction was very low. It took me days, many days, to learn the names of the therapists I worked with, and even then if they covered up their nametags I'd get the wrong name about half the time. I had trouble following conversations with more than two people. I was depressed most of the time, but it was hard to tell how much of that was brain injury and how much was a perfectly rational reaction to having my life's work kicked out from under me.
But at least for now I had a job. Get well. Or as well as I could get, between now and the time the money gave out, or the time the therapists decided to discharge me. So: therapy. Three to four hours a day, and they encouraged me to walk or ride a stationary bike as much as I could between sessions, to build up my endurance.
I dropped into bed exhausted, not only at night but at mid-morning and mid-afternoon too. They had me on a handful of assorted pills, once or twice a day. I could never remember what any of them were or what they were for. I was too tired to care.
The other patients, probably all ex- or current military, diplomatic or intelligence agents, didn't speak to me much, beyond "good morning" and "salmon croquettes again?". The therapists only gave orders, asked about symptoms, and cheered my efforts.
I missed my friends. But they'd hardly be allowed in here to see me. Clint had gotten me in here, no doubt pulling all kinds of mysterious strings, and I'd probably disappeared into an information black hole.
I'd reckoned without Tricia.
I looked up from my institutional plastic tray of institutional plastic lunch and there she was.
"This seat taken?" she asked. I burst into tears and hugged her.
"How did you get in here?" I asked.
She smiled. "Camino se hace caminando, chica," she said. "I still have friends from the old days. And your buddy with the little notebook, he dropped me some intel." She looked significantly at the bracelet on my wrist, and smiled at me.
Oh, Creator of the Universe, I prayed as I hugged her some more, bless Clint Barton and keep him all the days of his life. Forgive his sins, pay his debts, steer his arrows to their targets and get him a date with anyone he wants. Amen.
Tricia and I went back to my room and shut the door and talked and talked. She told me in detail what had happened the night I'd gotten hurt. She told me how our captors had panicked when I was struck unconscious; they'd fled in the only car, and she and Zahra and Elizabeth had carried me into the main house and kept me warm until help came a few hours later. She told me how the police had whisked us all off to the hospital in Nurota, then how I'd been airlifted to Tashkent and the rest of the team had been deported when some local imams had raised a fuss.
I took notes so I wouldn't keep asking the same questions; but God, it was hard, hard to write things down. The last time I'd done that it had cost me my family. This time? I knew so many secrets it was hard to think of anything I knew that wasn't a secret, anyone I knew who I might not accidentally betray by letting one fact, one name, slip out.
I took notes anyway. I had to.
Tricia also told me that Clint had found her—thanks, no doubt, to his "resources"—and let her know I was okay, and that he was getting me out, and then later he had let her know where I'd ended up.
She promised to visit me every day. She promised to bring me some decent food. And she kissed me goodbye. On the lips.
I was pretty sure she'd never done that before.
I was pretty sure I would have remembered.
Savannah, Georgia
August, 2005
After I was discharged I took a bus home to Savannah.
In my pocket was a check from the estate of James Barton, for ten thousand dollars. So now I knew why Clint had disappeared from Frankfurt. And I knew how I'd be able to pay bills for at least a few months.
Jackson met me at the bus station and gave me a long, fierce hug. When he backed up he looked me over like a wall hanging he was about to bid on.
"How are you?" he asked. "Really?"
"Really and truly, I'm okay. Physically," I said. "I'm still trying to get my head around...retiring."
"If there's anything any of us can do, you know all you have to do is say the word," he said.
"Thanks," I said. "Could you run me by the credit union, and then by Enterprise? I need to rent a car."
"Sure," he said. "Do you have a place to stay?"
"I'm in funds," I said, "so I have a room at the Hilton for a week. I can extend that if I need more time to find an apartment. Thanks, by the way, for keeping up the payments on the storage unit. I'll pay you back."
"Don't worry about it. You planning to stay in town?"
"Yeah, I think so. Probably."
Once I had my check deposited and my car rented, I checked into the hotel and collapsed for an hour. And then I looked up Stavros.
Greg was still working for him, and gave me a polite nod as I passed him. Stavros was much less polite and much more welcoming.
"What the hell happened to you? You look like crap."
"You should see the other three guys," I grinned. "How are you, Stavros?"
"How am I ever? Business sucks. What you doing here?"
"I came to learn to fly. Again."
His eyebrows went way up. "What the hell you talking about?"
"I got hit in the head. My brains got scrambled. It was two months before I could walk without a cane. My memory's still not good. Stuff I already know isn't so bad. Learning new stuff? Remembering what I came in the room for or what I need at the grocery store? Pffft, gone. I need to learn to fly again. I was hoping you'd take me back as a student. Oddly enough, I have plenty of money, so name your price."
"Greg can teach you. Standard rates. Ten percent off, friend of the management."
"I don't want Greg. I want you. How much?"
He scowled. "Why me?"
"I told you. I have money. I can afford the best."
"Where'd you get the money?"
"Insurance settlement."
He scowled some more. "I don't teach much any more," he said.
"Good. Then you'll have plenty of time for me and my stupid mistakes. Please, Stavros."
He heaved a much-put-upon sigh. "Okay. Seventy-five bucks a lesson."
I shook my head. "Ninety-five," I said. "This is going to be harder than you think."
He shrugged. "Okay. Where you want to start?"
"At the beginning. Ground school. And also: do you need a hand with maintenance? I have money for now, but eventually I'm going to need a job."
Stavros snorted. "I'm getting too old crawl around under things. Sure, okay. But let Greg do his own planes. He's touchy."
February, 2007
Someone had been keeping tabs on me, because the day after I got my recert as a commercial pilot, I got two text messages.
From Tricia:
Way to go, chica!
Coming down to SVH
next week. Can I stay
yr place?
That one got a quick OMG yes from me. Tricia had been in Bhutan since just after I'd gotten home. I'd missed her horribly.
And from "undisclosed number":
Congrats, when can you take
me up? I hear St. Thomas is
lovely this time of year, and
such a fun runway! Have
job offer for you. —R.H.
p.s. don't worry about replying,
I'm in your car.
"Don't you ever get tired of the spy shit?" I asked him a few minutes later.
"Nope. The money is excellent, the women are gorgeous, and they never make me wear a suit," he said, grinning up at me from the passenger seat, which he'd reclined nearly all the way back.
I sighed. "So much for James Bond," I said. "Pity. You'd look great in a tux. Daniel Craig, eat your heart out. So. Job offer?"
"How do you feel about Eastern Europe?" he asked, sitting up and readjusting the seat.
"Depends on where," I said, sitting down in the driver's seat. "Prague? Sure. Chechnya? Not so much."
"Budapest?"
"What's the job?"
"I'm meeting a friend over there. We're doing a little touristing in the area and for various boring reasons we don't want to use our usual transportation arrangements. Can you hang out in the general area and be ready to fly us out on a few hours' notice?"
I gave him a suspicious glare. "Is this likely to involve shooting?"
He smiled. "Not your part of it," he said.
I sighed. "Okay. I'll pack the deluxe first aid kit," I said.
"Aren't you going to ask how much it pays?" he asked.
"You've been generous so far," I said. "What am I going to be flying?"
He smiled again. "We'll get to that," he said. "Can you come down to Brunswick for a couple of weeks?"
"Not till week after next," I said. "I've got company coming."
"That works," he said. "I'll send you some tourist info, and week after next you can come down and get checked out on the plane."
Tricia's visit was a revelation.
I hadn't been with anyone since I'd been hurt; and before that I was in Uzbekistan for three years, surrounded by Muslim fundamentalists who were already suspicious of me as a Westerner, an unbeliever, and a woman, so no way was I going to start anything there. Before that, I dated a few people for a week or two, and a couple of times I'd gone out drinking and dancing and ended up spending a night with someone, but, well, let's just say it didn't bother me that I was hazy on their names and faces now.
But Tricia...dear God.
I'd known she was beautiful and smart and funny. I learned now that she was gentle and passionate and fiercely protective. And what I learned, most of all, was that having a partner you trust completely is one of the world's great aphrodisiacs.
I was nearly forty-three years old and I felt like I'd been put into an entirely new body.
It was like flying. It was like when I'd first learned to float in the ocean, when I'd finally been able to surrender to the waves, like being rocked in the lap of the planet herself. It was like being thrown in taekwondo by a really good partner, when I felt myself float lightly through the air and my body high-fived the mat in a perfect breakfall.
It was glorious. I cried all over Tricia the first few times. She got a little worried.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," I sobbed. "I'm better than fine. I'm fucking amazing. I'm...holy Jesus Christ, Tricia."
She laughed and hugged me.
I could have died in that goddamn desert and I never would have felt this, I thought. And I cried a little more.
Letting her go, heading down to Brunswick to meet Clint and get ready for Budapest, was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But Lord knows, I needed the money.
Budapest, Hungary
April, 2007
I had just ducked into the airport bathroom when the custodian followed me in. She was a tall young black woman, lovely and willowy. She bumped shoulders with me and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry, ma'am, how clumsy of me!"
"It's nothing," I replied, and it wasn't until she grinned at me that I realized she'd spoken in Igbo and I'd replied in the same language.
"I knew it was you," she said.
"I don't think I know you," I said cautiously.
"No ma'am," she said, "but I remember you well. My uncle owned a slaughterhouse in Port Harcourt. One day I saw you land your plane on the mayor's airstrip. Before that day I didn't know that women could fly airplanes. After that day I started getting ideas. And now I am here, studying engineering at BME."
"Congratulations," I said. "You must have worked very hard."
She nodded. "I did, ma'am, but I have also thought of you often. And now the Lord has given me a chance to do you a favor in turn."
"Oh?"
"I was mopping in one of the offices yesterday," she said, "and I had just caught sight of you leaving the hangar, when a man came up and asked the clerk on duty if you had filed a flight plan. The clerk said that was none of his business. And the man said, 500 euros says it is my business, and your business too. The clerk said, no, you hadn't filed a plan yet. And the man handed the clerk some money and said, here is half of the 500 and you get the other half when you call this number and tell me the flight plan when she files it." She grinned. "Neither of them thought I could understand Hungarian. Because I am Nigerian, and a woman, and a custodian, and so I am invisible. I learned that from your people in Good Measure, ma'am."
"My name is Jeannine Dupree," I said, "And you can call me Jeannine. And thank you very much for telling me this."
"My name is Goodness Etomi," she said. "And you are very welcome, Jeannine."
"May God bless you in your studies," I said.
"What will you do now?" she said.
I smiled. "I will file a flight plan," I said. "But it will not be the one I would have filed before."
"Is there anything else I can do to help you, Jeannine?" said Goodness.
"Yes. If you would be so kind. You can wait until about 5 p.m., and you can call the police tip line in Szolnok—I'll look up the number for you—and tell them you heard someone would be flying in tonight, shortly after midnight, with a shipment of drugs. Can you do that?"
She grinned. "I'd be happy to," she said.
"Thank you again," I said, and hugged her.
Once we'd parted ways, I texted Clint.
Crap. Have serious mech trouble.
On yr own for pickup. Phone failing.
Then I pulled out the SIM card and tossed the phone in the trash. The card went in a different trash can at the other end of the concourse.
Then I filed my flight plan: Budapest to Szolnok, to land at 12:23 a.m.
I was glad I'd brought the deluxe first aid kit.
There were two top stories in the next day's news:
Shootout Leaves Four Dead; Two Assailants Sought
Drug Tip Leads to Arrest of American Pilot
I hoped Clint and his friend would forgive me, both for abandoning them and for the damage the drug search did to their plane.
Tricia came to see me, lawyer in tow, a few days later. Since the search turned up absolutely nothing, not even a caffeine pill, the police grudgingly let me go without filing charges. They didn't offer to pay for the damage to the plane, alas. I told them someone would be along soon to get it out of impoundment.
Tricia was quiet until we were nearly all the way back to her hotel in Budapest.
"Interesting times," she said. "My girlfriend gets arrested on an anonymous tip after flying to a podunk city in the middle of the night with no passengers and no cargo. Meanwhile, there's some shooting going on in the capital, and word is that one of the shooters fits the description of the Black Widow."
"The who now?" I said.
"Black Widow, aka Chornaya Vdova, aka Natasha Romanov, and about a zillion other names. She used to be Russia's top assassin. She disappeared last year. Then she resurfaced in the U.S., only now she's working for an organization called SHIELD. One of our agents managed to recruit her."
"Sounds like a good time not to be in the capital," I said innocently. "So what's an ex-Russian assassin doing in Budapest?" I asked.
Tricia sighed. "A whole hell of a lot of people would like to know that," she said. "Some of them were involved in searching your plane. Or whoever's plane that was."
"It was a loaner. I haven't seen any assassins, Russian or otherwise," I said. Inside my pocket, I had my fingers crossed. "But can we go back to the first part of your story?"
"What part?"
"The part where you called me your girlfriend."
She smiled. "You got a problem with that?"
"Nope," I said.
We spent a lovely day and night getting reacquainted. At breakfast the next morning, Tricia's phone beeped. She glanced at it and scowled.
"It's for you," she said.
The text read:
Hi Jeannine. Interesting
mechanical trouble. Glad
you're OK but WTF?
"Mind if I answer this?" I asked Tricia.
"Be my guest," she said.
I typed:
What color shirt am I wearing?
The reply was immediate:
Blue/white stripe. Busted.
I sent back:
Stairs.
Then I erased the whole exchange and handed Tricia back her phone. "Excuse me a minute, darlin'," I said.
I waited in the stairwell. He came down the stairs quickly and almost silently, till he got to the landing I was on. I think I managed not to flinch. He gave me the same quick, assessing glance I was giving him. "Your friend OK?" I asked.
"Yep."
"Good," I said, and breathed a little easier. "I'm sorry I left y'all hanging. Someone bribed one of the airport staff to get my flight plan. Luckily, a friend tipped me off. I figured they were most likely after you. So I did my best to lead them in the wrong direction, and I ditched my phone to keep from leaving a trace back to you in case they grabbed me."
"Why didn't you tell me what you were planning?"
"Because you'd have felt obligated to rescue my sorry ass, and I figured you had enough on your plate."
He didn't deny it, but shifted ground. "You could have gotten killed."
I shrugged. "Anonymous drug tip. Cops were there when I landed. Would have been pretty risky to shoot me. Sorry about the plane, though."
He shrugged in turn. "Cheaper to repair than me or my friend. Okay. I was going to buy your ticket home, but Tricia beat me to it."
I smiled. "She's quick that way."
"Take care, Jeannine."
"You too."
I got back to the table before Tricia had time to get annoyed with me. I signalled the waiter for a refill of my coffee.
"So, everything okay between you and the International Man of Mystery?" she asked.
"Honey, you know I don't give a damn about men," I said. "Let's talk about something more interesting. Damn, these Hungarians can sure make coffee."
"The strudel's pretty state-of-the-art too," she said. "Listen. I'm jealous."
"I told you—"
"Not like that. Of the help you've been getting. I haven't had a chance to do my part yet."
"Brought me a lawyer. Played the Get Out of Jail Free Card. Bought me a plane ticket. Or so I understand."
"That asshole. That was supposed to be a surprise."
I shrugged. "Well, thank you very much. I appreciate not being at the mercy of the intelligence community."
She grinned. "Who says you're not?"
"You're retired," I said.
"Nobody really retires from this business," she said. "For example, I feel I should definitely be keeping tabs on certain suspicious characters. Clearly the most efficient way to do that is to stay close to you." She took my hand, interlacing her fingers with mine. I smiled, admiring the dark/light, yin/yang effect, and kissed the back of her wrist.
She sighed. "God, that feels good. Three goddamn years in fucking Uzbekistan pretending not to have the hots for you. It's good to be in a civilized country."
I looked at her, startled. "You could have said something."
"In-country? Not a good idea, chica. You know the walls have ears."
"Yeah. Some of them are ours. But no, I meant after."
"When you were in the hospital with TBI? Uh-uh, sweetheart. I wasn't about to make a pass at you when you were that messed up. Not fair."
"Well, I'm all here now. Or as all here as I'm going to get. Take your best shot," I grinned.
"Marry me," she said.
"Jesus," I said, then ran out of words. After a while I said, "Okay, that was a pretty good shot."
"And?"
I hesitated. Her face fell. She gently released my hand. "Oh," she said.
"No, wait," I said, and grabbed her hand back. "Tricia. Wait. Please. Does this have to be yes/no, right this minute? Because I'm scared, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested."
"How about, move in with me?" she said cautiously.
"That could work," I said. "Where did you have in mind?"
"Fairbanks," she said. "It's where I grew up."
"Wow," I said. "Cold."
"Ever been there?"
"Nope. Actually the furthest north I've ever been in the U.S. was Raleigh. And I was pretty much stuck indoors the whole time."
"You're kidding. Never been to New York? Boston? Seattle? San Francisco?"
"Nope, nope, nope and nope. I'm a hick."
"We'll have to work on that," she said.
"Actually, first I have to work on making a living," I said ruefully. "Much as I love you, I don't want to be your kept woman. And my last job kind of fell through."
"Yes, well, as it happens, that goes back to what I was saying about being jealous. It's my turn to support your recovery," said Tricia.
"Oh?"
"Yeah. One of the interesting facts about Fairbanks is that there's a hell of a lot of work for small-craft pilots. And one of the interesting facts about this particular point in time is that I know one who's getting ready to retire. And I also have a little nest egg that might cover the down payment on his airstrip, hangar and two planes."
"Oh Jesus," I said, and for a moment I couldn't breathe.
"Jeannine? You okay?"
I was crying but I didn't care. "I'm okay. I'm—I'd just—I'd given up on ever owning my own plane. It just kept not happening."
"Well, now it can," she said, and kissed me. "And that's whether you want to move in with me or not, chica. Because I love you, but also I owe you. We all do. And the others said if you felt weird about taking money from me, they'd cover it. Not just Elizabeth and Zahra, but everybody."
"Oh hell," I said. "Sounds like I'm outnumbered."