A Chick in the Cockpit (16 page)

This malfunction is not on any checklist.

16
Rapid Decompression Checklist

1.
Checklist – NO! There is no time for checklists

2.
Oxygen mask – don before you do anything

3.
At flight level 400, you have 15 seconds of useful consciousness

4.
Speed brakes – deploy and dive for hell

5.
Rapid descent - don't stop until you reach breathable altitude

Passengers have heard the flight attendants give their safety briefing so many times, most tune them out. Since you probably know the safety briefing, do you remember that comment where the flight attendant says you should put your own oxygen mask on first and then your child's? It doesn't matter that the flight attendant says this because in actual emergencies, mothers still put their child's mask on first before they put their own mask on. Fathers, on the other hand, always seem to remember to put their own mask on first. Let's just blame instinct here, okay?

Mothers don't instinctually think of themselves first, it goes against our natural reflexes to take care of everyone else first. However, you must remember that you put your child in danger if you're worthless. If you pass out due to lack of oxygen, then your child will sit there and watch you wither away from brain damage due to the lack of oxygen. You need to stay strong, and taking care of yourself is a priority.

Most decompressions are slow leaks like the one that slowly killed the crew and passengers, including Payne Stewart, on a Lear Jet in 1999. The crew didn't recognize their own hypoxia symptoms (lack of oxygen) which caused them to slowly pass out. You'd think if you started seeing your copilot and passengers fall asleep, you'd wonder why, but no one will ever know what went on in the cockpit. Maybe they got hypoxia and passed out at exactly the same rate? The aircraft eventually ran out of fuel and crashed in a field near Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Rarely is there an actual rapid decompression (instant and complete loss of cabin pressure), but pilots train for it constantly. If it's an explosive decompression at high altitude, even the best trained pilots are still going to die and you can forget about the passengers living after that. Corporate aircraft fly at higher altitudes and at 41,000 feet, you have about twenty seconds of useful consciousness before you pass out, and given the health of most Americans, it might be even less than that.

In a rapid decompression, the outside pressure disappears so all the pressure inside the aircraft wants to go out (okay, folks, don't panic. We're talking about an enormous gaping hole, like an entire cargo door ripping off. It's never happened at that altitude before and this won't happen from something small, like a puncture from a bullet or even a window blowing out). Putting on your oxygen mask will make no difference because you need the pressure to get the oxygen into your body. You'll have an enormous fart and then pass out. The flight attendants won't mention that during their pre-flight briefing. The whole ordeal is rather unlikely, but some things in life are even beyond unlikely and yet, they still happen.

While I was handcuffed with my hands behind my back, I kept squirming to try and find a comfortable position to sit in the back of the SUV squad car on the way to Golden, Colorado's jail. We were idling at a stoplight as a daycare school bus full of raucous kids pulled up next to us. I could feel the stares of all those pure innocent children peering into the backseat to get a look at the perp. I've often been on that side of the view and have always wondered how someone ended up in the back of a police car. I felt my face tingle with the flush of shame, and to this day, that moment still haunts me. I was once innocent like they were, but that person no longer existed. I turned my head away from them and put the side of my face against the back of the seat so the children could not see my face. I gently closed my eyes and silently cried. I was drowning in my ocean of confusion, pity, and growing dismay. All those years of always doing the right thing didn't matter. I had worked so hard my whole life to be a good girl. I had always operated within a circle of acceptable behavior, never brushing anywhere near the edge of the law, and in the end it just didn't matter. All it took was for one person to rise above by stepping on others, and a life of focus blurred away. I can blur the memory in and out of my reality. When I focus, I can remember it all too clearly:

I am checked in and handed over to the Jefferson County Inmate system. I am told I will be placed in the violent offender category, which requires a special colored jumpsuit and different procedures. I am told to strip naked, right now, in front of the two female guards. I pull off my clothes and take off my nursing bra. The two nursing pads I had inserted inside my bra to absorb leaky breast milk are stuck to my breasts. I peel them off and both breasts start dripping. Just the slightest touch and off they go. To add to the humiliation, there is a reflective surface on the near wall in which to see yourself in case you have a moment of vanity. It's not a glass mirror, it's something like steel shined to an unblemished finish so you can see yourself perfectly. My cesarean incision is still bright red and it makes a smiley face as I see the combination of my engorged red nipples and scar looking back at me.

The guard is brisk, efficient, and bored. She's seen it all. I have nothing to compare this to except for what I see on television, so I ask this character if I can make a phone call. She just snickers, shakes her head while speaking to herself, and simply says, “Nope.”

The guard notices I have dried blood in thin riverbeds down the back of my head, neck, and arms, and my back is now revealing angry bruises where it was slammed against the wall. After letting me get dressed into my violent orange jumpsuit, the guard tells me she is sending someone in to take care of it. I watch her as I wait and wonder what she sees here in a day. None of the guards wear makeup. Why would they? There is no one that comes before them who needs to be impressed. They all wear their hair pulled back into severe pony tails. Simple and efficient.

I see a woman walk in with a First Aid box moving around in the corner and I assume she is a nurse. Not sure if she is, but a nurse is someone who is caring and can help. That's what I've been taught. I had to go to the nurse once in kindergarten when I threw up my pink frosted Valentine's Day cookie. She was so nice and called my mom, and I got to go home.

The nurse lady walks in with a plastic box of healing supplies, but everything still hurts. “Please. I didn't do anything to be here. My husband hurt me and then lied to the police. He set me up and I didn't know it until it was too late. He's got my daughter and I'm afraid he's going to run away with her. I have to do something. Please. Can I call someone so they can check on her?” I walked to the edge of hysteria once I started talking, but the story sounded so absurd, I could hardly believe it myself. Just saying those words out loud loosened my grip on reality. A pilot fights to stay in the air until the moment metal meets earth, but I feel like I am locked out of the cockpit, knowing that the airplane is going to crash. There is something I can do, but I can't get there.

The nurse lady stops what she is doing and gives an exasperated sigh. She sets down her supplies and puts her hands on both of my shoulders and turns me around so she can look me in the eye, “Honey. You're screwed. I see this every day. Don't you get it? The cops hate domestic calls. It's their most dangerous call outs. People are crazy when it comes to love and hate. People don't care who they kill when they're all fired up with emotions. The cops know who done it, but if they arrest the
woman
, that's the last time they get those kind of calls at that house. The woman will put up with all the hitting and abuse after that. She knows she's got a record now and if they get a call at that house again, they ain't gonna believe her. You're in the system now, and you've gotta put your head down and just go with the system. Do what the guards say. Do what the judge says. Get the hell out of here and then get the hell out of where you're at, and don't look back. I mean it. Otherwise, it might be your husband who I see here next because he killed you.

“It's a twisted world, honey. It's not about right and fair, it's about survival. I should know, I see it in action here every day. The system isn't about punishing the wrongdoer; it's about making it so miserable for everyone in the system that no one wants to use it again.”

I hold my breath while taking this in. I blink. I blink again and let that settle into my psyche and open my eyes to the world. Stomach acid begins pouring into my system and I feel the blood drain from my face. This woman holding my shoulders is so smart, how could I be so dumb?

The nurse lady finishes cleaning my superficial wounds. There isn't much she can do about the lump on my head except put a bag of ice on it. She covers the bloody trail of cuts and bruises around my wrists. I look like I've attempted suicide. She tells me I just have to deal with the rest of the bruises with time. She doesn't say anything about the internal damage done to my soul.

The next stop is a holding room with a television. There's a movie playing, and I have to go to the bathroom so badly my gut aches. There's a toilet in the middle of the room that's full of shit and backed up to the surface. Someone tried to cover it up with neat layers of toilet paper, but the evidence shows through.

There are people constantly coming and going in this room. I sit here for two movies—maybe four hours and see about twenty different people. No one speaks to me. No one speaks to each other. Women only in this room, but twenty feet to my right is the holding room for the men, which means they all walk by my room.

From my vantage point, I see every single person getting their mug shot taken. I've already had mine taken—I don't look good in orange. The reason mug shots are consistently scary looking is that they ask you a long list of questions and at some point during this question and answer session, they take your picture. I look drugged as they take my picture in mid-blink. If I saw my mug shot on the news, I'd say she was guilty just by looking at her.

I finally get moved to the violent offender section of the jail where I'm informed that since I was transferred right after dinner, there will be no food on this day. I couldn't eat if they paid me. The benefit of being a violent offender is that you are kept insolation. As soon as the jail door is slammed shut, I pee in the glory of isolation for what seems more than a bladder could ever hold.

It's already dark outside. I know this because there's a horizontal window about four inches high and about two feet long. I've seen these windows from the outside and always thought it was an unusual architectural choice, but in actuality, windows further the punishment. I look out on the world and feel I'm no longer any part of it. Evening rush hour is at its peak and there is a trail of red brake lights leading into Golden. I can see from my fish tank an ocean of normal people going home to normal families, with normal spouses, and normal frustrations of life. Normal is not something I've ever wished for, but now desire with all my heart.

It's the end of December and Colorado is in the middle of the coldest week of the year. The outside air temp is below zero and since no one has to worry about the quality of the accommodations, the temperature inside my cell is about fifty degrees, if I give it the benefit of doubt. There are no bars on the door like the movies. Since I am a violent offender, my jail door it is a solid wall with a slot that opens for food to come in. This also means there is no direct heat, and the only reason my cell is warmer than the outside is because there is heat at the guard's station in the center of the jail...

There is no bed. There is a concrete wall with a concrete ledge that bulges out and is meant to be slept on. There is a half inch plastic mattress similar to a camping mattress you put your sleeping bag on. To cover up, I reach for the one thin wool blanket I was issued. No pillow. The concrete wicks the cold air from the outside and carries its punishment into the cell with me. My shirt is soaked from hours of breast milk dripping on it, and the wetness has now traveled to my pants and underwear. My breasts ache and I am soaked to the bone. The cold burrows into my core. I am laying in the fetal position with the blanket over my head trying to hold some warmth, but I am so far beyond cold that I can't relax my muscles to fall asleep.

The added annoyance is that they never turn the lights off. The flickering of cheap lights guarantees that no one here gets REM sleep. I lay there shivering in the fluorescent glow for the next eight hours; sleep is out of the realm of possibility. I have nothing to do but replay the last eight hours of my life and realize that the one man who I thought was my future has just taken away everything I was and would be. I am now nothing. I, Erika, no longer exist.

By morning, I am sitting on the concrete ledge, rocking like an insane patient. I'm so cold and emotionally exhausted that I now understand how a mind can slip into madness. We all unknowingly walk so close to the line.

Sometime after the sun pokes over the horizon, I hear the slot in the door open and a bowl of unflavored oatmeal, a syrupy orange flavored drink, and a book are silently pushed into my hell. Oh, thank God, a book. A book. I don't care what the book is; I just know those pages will take me out of here.

I have not been able to call anyone or talk to anyone. I'm also realizing that no one has even read me my rights. When are they supposed to do that? They are just words, but words put in a certain order create society's law. There are our words of law versus our reality. The reality is that there are words that can put innocent people in jail. Words are power. Lies are power. Sometimes the truth gets lost in all those words.

I push the food away, but grab the book. It is a small paperback and I read it cover to cover. It's mindless and unmemorable, but it's a chance to move my brain off the task of absorbing what has happened and is still happening, and what's next.