In my experience, everyone has one attribute that becomes the caricature of their identity. Jay Leno is the guy with the chin. Meryl Steep is the actress that does accents. Julia Roberts has her smile. Brad Pitt is tattooed on Angelina Jolie.
The same is true among the common folk. My husband and I are bad with names, so our friends become the one who likes to argue, the one with the funny laugh, the one who keeps kosher, and the one from Texas. Much to my dismay, I have long been the girl who plays the piano.
My husband is the ‘oral and maxillofacial surgeon.’ Whew. If you’ll pardon the pun, what a mouthful! Most people do not really grasp what this is, other than someone who went to dental school and then did many years of surgical residency. To say he is a dentist is technically correct; he did graduate with honors from dental school. He is also a multi-faceted surgical specialist who can treat a variety of conditions from the mundane to the grossly abnormal. There is something about Tom that compels people to seek favors and advice; he treats family members and complete strangers with an equal dose of his signature calm.
Tom is a handy guy to have around. He is someone who I would happily allow to eclipse the king’s horses and men should I need to have my face surgically put back together again. There was the one night that I was trying out a new set of chef’s knives and cut off the fleshy tip of my finger, catching some of the nail bed in the process. I thought I would bleed out right there in my kitchen. He drove to the drugstore and returned in a flash with an assortment of random products, including something with the same bonding agents as surgical glue. Much like a medical MacGyver, he stopped the bleeding and patched me up. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but I avoided a trip to the emergency room and the certainty of stitches. It was only a year ago, yet when I look at my fingers—which are quite dear to me—I honestly cannot tell which one it was.
It was no surprise, then, that Tom rang the call button when the captain asked if there was a doctor on board the flight. We had just concluded a magical trip to Istanbul. The 767 had cleared Turkish air space, and we were settling into our cushy business class seats with hot scented towels and mimosas for the long flight home. There was a one or two minute hesitation as my husband deferred to any internist or other “sick people doctor” who might answer the captain’s plea, thinking it was unlikely that someone on board had developed an emergency facial malformation. I could see a guy across the aisle—obviously a physician—looking cagily at Tom. These doctor guys can smell their own kind. Once he picked up Tom’s scent, he sat back in his seat silently. Coward!
Tom was greeted by thankful flight attendants who quickly escorted him to the rear of the aircraft. There, a very old woman who spoke only Turkish was vacillating on the brink of consciousness. Apparently she had not been well and was being brought to America by a niece, perhaps to receive medical attention—it was unclear. The old woman got up to use the rest room and passed out cold. Once horizontal she regained consciousness, only to lose it again when they sat her upright. Even propped in her seat she was touch and go.
While my husband was assessing the situation, I watched with interest as the online mapping display on my seat’s video screen showed the progress of our flight northwestward over Europe. He was gone for what was approaching an hour, and we were beginning to cross the English Channel. I looked at my neighbors, who had suddenly taken an inexplicable interest in me, and declared to no one in particular, “They are going to put this plane down!” “What?” “Why?” they all said. It was simply really. The patient in the rear of the plane was obviously sick enough to command Tom’s assistance for a long while. The airplane was coming close to clearing land before heading out over the Atlantic. There was no way they could risk taking a sick passenger past the coast line. Sure enough, the captain broke in to announce that we were making an emergency landing at Shannon Airport in Ireland.
Our plane was met by an impressive emergency response team. Unfortunately, they did not possess any sort of gadget for transporting a living person down a long airplane aisle. The poor woman had to walk herself, a process that required being vertical which, of course, caused repeated trips in and out of a conscious state. Tom and the niece ended up gently dragging and pushing until their ward was conveyed from the last row safely to the waiting paramedics. I averted my eyes to avoid witnessing how they inevitably got her down the long metal staircase to the waiting ambulance on the tarmac.
Once the medical crisis was averted, the plane had to be re-slated, as it was now a flight originating in Ireland. We waited about two hours to receive new flight plans and a new flight number while the maintenance crew refueled and replenished the plane. Normally, when a plane lands on schedule, it has consumed most of its calculated volume of fuel in flight. Because we landed the plane prematurely, it had been necessary to dump fuel to avoid “landing heavy” at Shannon. The airline accomplished this orderly transition with nary a hiccup.
And now Tom, who only moments before was the hero who saved the woman on the plane to the applause and appreciation of its passengers, became the goat who ruined everyone’s lives. The people on the plane went crazy! Although this was a humanitarian mission to seek emergency attention for an ailing—perhaps dying—woman, through most of the passengers’ eyes, this was a personal inconvenience that not only added to the duration of a long flight, it threatened their already tenuous connections at JFK Airport. The call buttons began ringing one after another. Passengers were demanding everything from personal assurances, to new reservations, to complete refunds. The flight attendants were at their wits’ ends. As the decision maker who created this predicament, Tom endured the stares and glares of the passengers around us, knowing that he had made the right call not only for the old woman, but also for the comfort of the passengers on the plane. “What are you going to do?” I asked. “I think I’ll have a Bloody Mary,” he replied. It would never occur to Tom to be rattled by what people think.
The captain broke in, trying to calm the madding crowd. “Please understand,” he implored, “we would do the same for any one of you in a similar situation. We put the health and welfare of our passengers above all else.” It was little comfort to the single-minded guests. “You have to do the right thing,” my husband said. His voice was a bit louder than usual, hoping to be heard, but it was still bathed in calm.
Arriving at JFK Airport, I feared a riot would break out. Passengers were up and out of their seats even before the seatbelt light was extinguished, each one clamoring to beat his neighbor to the front of the immigration line. Tom sat calmly and made no effort to get up; we let people rush past us to exit the plane. Baggage claim, as usual, was the ultimate equalizer; out-of-breath passengers stood awaiting their fate in a familiar game of carousel roulette. We approached just as our bags appeared down the chute. In the end, our flight from Ireland arrived two-and-a-half hours later than it was originally scheduled to arrive from Istanbul. Our connecting flight to Boston was at least five hours late with no sign of aircraft or a firm departure time. Tom smiled. “See, no reason to rush,” he said.
Tomorrow's blog: A Holiday for All of Us
Tomorrow's blog: A Holiday for All of Us
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