On A Run (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Hannah tightly gripped the steering wheel with both hands; glancing often down at the speedometer to be sure she maintained the speed limit. The mountainous roads between Breckenridge and Denver were too curvy to put the car on cruise control. And then once she was in the city, the traffic would be too heavy for it. She wished she had thought about rush hour traffic and given herself more time, though she would still likely arrive at the airport nearly a full two hours before her flight left. Still, she hated being late for anything.

A little jolt reminded Hannah of something she had learned when she lived in Denver long ago, what seemed like a lifetime ago. She had a game she used to play. If she felt she was going to be late, she would think to herself, “that is ok, it doesn’t matter if I’m late” and make herself relax. It seemed at this announcement that suddenly lights would turn green when she would need them to and she would say cheerfully, “thank you!” as she passed through. Or, if the light would turn red, she would say to herself, “I must need the time to relax a little before I get there.” Hannah learned that regardless if she got green lights or red lights, she would always make it to wherever she was going in about the same amount of time. And, after she had begun to play this game, she found that she was, in fact, rarely ever late for anything, even if she thought she hadn’t left enough time to get there. Or that if she was late by the scheduled time, she would find that so was the other party, or that the meeting hadn’t started yet.

Hannah thought back to this time and smiled sadly. It was a time when she was much less fearful about the world. She tried to practice her old habit now as the number of tail lights in front of her increased. Her grip on her steering wheel loosened until a car flew around from behind her and then pulled directly in front of her.

“Nice,” she said to the anonymous driver, “you just got one car ahead, but still have about a thousand in front of you. What are you going to do, pass them all?”

She thought about that poor person’s blood pressure and sent them a silent prayer that they didn’t have a heart attack before they were forty. Then she sent one to herself.

As predicted, Hannah arrived at the airport a full two hours before her plane took off.  She pulled into the short term parking lot, watching the signs and trying desperately to remember which level was closest to the terminals. Hannah hadn’t been to DIA since before 911. She had studied online about the changes she should expect. They may request her to take off her shoes, so she wore a pair that she could easily slip on and off, as well as being sure to wear her newest pair of socks. She knew that she couldn’t have any liquids over three ounces, though all travel sized contact cleansers were four ounces, so this posed a bit of a problem. She was hoping they wouldn’t be that thorough in checking, and so packed it anyway. She knew that all liquids must be in a plastic bag, though she didn’t quite understand why, so her carry on suitcase had a number of well-organized plastic baggies lining the top of her clothes with the various types of personal toiletries she would need.

Hannah sat in her car after she parked, willing herself to get out. The ignition was off, but she couldn’t seem to convince her hands to let go of the steering wheel and open the door. Once she managed this, she had as much difficulty forcing her legs to turn and get her out of the car. Finally, she sat with her legs out of the car but her bottom planted firmly on the car seat.  The minutes ticked by. At this rate, she would be late for her plane. Hannah thought about calling Sheila’s cell phone to have her come meet her in the parking garage, but there was no signal under the concrete ceiling. So with every ounce of energy and self-determination that she could muster, Hannah stood up and methodically collected her luggage, shut and locked the door, and headed for her destiny.

Once inside, however, Hannah froze. The changes from the last time she had boarded an airplane were immediately obvious. Hannah remembered going through security lines before, but nothing like this. There was a sea of people in a holding area on the level below where she stood. Hannah could barely see where the line began and where it ended. Somewhere toward the middle of the mass of people, she saw a line of security guard looking personnel stopping passengers and checking what she assumed were their I.D.s. Then those people went to another holding area filled with buckets and conveyors. Hannah thought she was going to throw up. She glanced at her cell phone again. Still no signal and now she had wasted twenty minutes of time just to get to this point. Holding down her stomach, she managed to join the parade of people getting on the escalator that descended to the security checkpoint.

Hannah kept her eyes on the lady’s shoe heels in front of her as she shuffled along with her fellow travelers toward what she was now thinking of as the interrogation station. There were trash bins everywhere and people were gulping down the last of their water bottles or coffees or sodas and throwing the containers out. On one table toward the front she noticed smaller sized baggies than the ones that she had so meticulously filled at home. Hannah grabbed a few and put them in her pocket in case she needed more for her trip home. The heavy set man behind her kept bumping into her rolling carry-on, causing her to nearly stumble as it jolted her backwards. Finally, it was her turn to face the security guard, the lady’s heels went to another line as, thankfully, so did the man behind her.

Hannah handed her driver’s license and boarding pass to the security guard who seriously contemplated whether she was the person in the picture or not. Hannah supposed she might not look like the same person at all. She had had that photo taken for her driver’s license just over ten years ago, before her entire life had changed forever. She supposed she probably looked much older now, older than the ten years should have allowed. The guard finally seemed satisfied that it was her; he stamped his red stamp of approval onto her boarding pass, returned her license, and she was on her way.

Hannah struggled to maneuver her carry-on through the check point stand. Once hauling it through, she turned and faced the next step of the gauntlet. There were probably twenty lines in front of her of various lengths. However, people were crisscrossing in multiple different directions to get in seemingly random lines. The line directly across from Hannah appeared the shortest, so Hannah stepped into it behind a family of four with a stroller.

Hannah watched in fascination as the parents in front of her expertly handled multiple buckets of belongings as well as keeping their two children contained. However, when it was her turn, she had no idea what to do. She tried to follow what the people in front of her had done. She lifted her small suitcase onto the rollers and then placed her purse and laptop bag in one bucket. This wasn’t so different from before, she thought. She then pushed her belongings up the rolling ramp and towards the conveyor belt. Feeling more confident, she began to walk toward the metal detector when she heard a sharp bark.
“The lap top needs to be removed from its bag and placed on top of it and you need to push your bins into the x-ray machine.”

One of the security guards, a large African American woman, indicated the opening to where her luggage would be scanned. So Hannah went back to her bags, pulled her laptop out and put it on top, and then pushed until her bag and bucket were all the way onto the conveyor belt and into the machine. She then turned to go back to the metal detector, when yet another guard in front of her redirected her again.

“Ma’am, you need to remove your shoes,” He said impatiently, as though she should have known. The website had said she
may
be asked to remove her shoes, not that she had to automatically, but now that she looked around, she saw that no one in the area was wearing shoes. She headed back to the conveyor belt, but her bucket was already well into the machine by this time. Behind her the line of waiting passengers had grown longer. Hannah wondered if she should go and get another bucket, but then worried what might happen to her purse and her laptop on the other side if she wasn’t there to retrieve them. She finally slipped off her shoes and put them onto the conveyor belt without a bin.

Hannah then approached the metal detector one more time, holding her breath, awaiting what other regulations she had missed. The guard waved her through, and, remarkably, no alarm sounded. Hannah then navigated to the other side to gather her shoes, feeling quite uncomfortable walking around in only her socks. Once she got to the machine, she saw that her suitcase was still under the x-ray, now two security guards were peering intently at the screen at its contents.

“Do you have a lot of liquids in your bag?” The African-American woman, who told her to push her belongings in, said to her.

“Yes, but they are in baggies…” Hannah tried to explain.

As her suitcase rolled off the belt, the second guard moved it to another table and unceremoniously began digging through it, dumping Hannah’s meticulously packed baggies of various toiletries into a single bag, inspecting them as he did.

“The liquids need to fit in a single one quart size bag, and next time you need to have it out of your suitcase and in a bin.” At least this guard wasn’t barking at her, and he seemed somewhat sympathetic.

“I’m new at this…” Hannah continued, unnecessarily.

Meanwhile, Hannah was trying to keep an eye on the rest of her belongings. The first guard was again searching the image of Hannah’s purse under the x-ray machine. A third guard was called over to help with the inspection.

“Oh c’mon” Hannah heard someone grumble behind her.

Finally, the large woman guard found what she thought the problem was and produced from the recesses of Hannah’s purse a small metal nail file. The look she gave Hannah as she returned her purse and laptop to her told Hannah everything she needed to know about what the woman thought of people who didn’t understand the new flight rituals.

As Hannah was repacking her suitcase and putting on her shoes, she caught a glimpse at the line across from her. It seemed like she wasn’t the only person holding up progress, she thought. Hannah watched an Indian family who had been pulled aside to another security area.  The father was holding a little boy, who was crying, the mother was standing, looking irritated at best. Hannah couldn’t quite see what the guards were inspecting so closely until she realized that the little boy was still missing his shoes. She heard the woman exclaim in an accent-less English, “Just cut the shoes open if you have to.”

Hannah gathered her belongings, unable to stand the scene any longer. “What has this world come to?” she wondered, as she finally walked toward the escalator that would take her to her gate.

Hannah was gratefully seated at her gate. Amazingly, the entire process, car to gate, had taken less than an hour. She still had an hour before her flight and pulled out her laptop to try to work, but was too distracted by the people surrounding her and the fact that Sheila hadn’t arrived yet. Hannah kept checking the time, both on her phone and the laptop. Then she looked at her ticket to make sure she had the right time. She did. She looked once more at her cell phone to see the time, when suddenly it began to ring in her hand. She nearly dropped it before managing to flip it open to answer.

“Sheila?” no one else knew her phone number.

“Hannah, I am glad I got through to you.” Sheila sounded like she had just run a marathon. “Listen, I am not going to make it. The baby…..” there was a pause and some noises on the other end of the phone. Hannah could hear commotion in the background, as if Sheila was standing in a busy subway. “The baby thought it was time and I had to go to the hospital….”

Hannah cut her off, “Sheila I will be right there, where are you?”

Sheila had to laugh despite the seriousness of her situation. “Oh no, you don’t get out of going that easy. Look, I am sure they are just going to give me some medicine to stop the contractions and put me on bed rest, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still go to this convention. What….?” Sheila’s voice became muffled for a moment then she addressed Hannah again. “Look, the doctor doesn’t understand needy clients so I have to go. You are going to be fine. There will be a car and driver waiting for you at the airport to take you to the resort. They will have your itinerary at check in and they will take good care of you. I will be with you in spirit….. Whoa, ok, I really need to go now. You will be fine.” And she hung up.

Hannah looked up from her phone and around at her surroundings. There were hundreds of people looking perfectly natural waiting to get on an airplane to go someplace crowded and different. Hannah was not one of them and she wondered if her panic showed. Not that anyone was looking at her. She felt completely alone while surrounded by people in the huge terminal. The feeling overwhelmed her, the long slowly closing darkness of tunnel vision pushed from behind her eyes, her stomach tightened into a knot that threatened to become a spasm. A bitter taste crept into her mouth and she fought to keep the nausea at bay. Hannah found some strength in her legs and pushed up from her seat so she could go to the restroom to splash some water on her face. She stood still for a moment, willing her legs to stay solid under her, and was just about to test their ability for steady movement, when a young man, barely more than a boy it seemed, picked up a handset in front of where Hannah was standing and announced over the loudspeaker.

“Hello and welcome to Southwest Airlines Flight 621 en route to Los Angeles. In just a moment we will be lining up in numerical order to board the plane. At Southwest airlines we do not assign seats so once you are on the plane you may sit anywhere that you like. We will be boarding ‘A’ seats first followed by ‘B’ seats and so on. Before we board the ‘A’ seats we will be boarding our business select class. So if our business class passengers would like to come up first we will get you on the plane. Hope you have a great flight and thank you for flying Southwest Airlines.”