13 hours- first draft

00:00

It was not an explosion. One minute they were in the air, the next in the water. The details will never be clear to Lisa. She remembers her mother helping her with her seatbelt and getting upset. Lisa was 13 and hated it when her mother treated her like a baby. Her mother smiled at her and said, “You’ll always be my baby.” The plane took off and Lisa looked out the window watching the airfield, then the towns, then the beach, and then the water. It glistened in the sun light.

Then things just went wrong. An oxygen mask hit Lisa in the head. She looked up at her mom who smiled that smile that she used when Lisa’s dog died. Lisa realized that past her mom she could see sky. Was that right? Should see be able to see clouds?

Suddenly everything was wet. Lisa’s dark blond hair was floating up around her face. Lisa felt like one of those diving rings her parents threw into the pool in the back yard, sinking to the bottom of the pool. She and her brother and sister would race to be the first one to get it and bring it back to the surface. Only, there was nothing exciting or fun about this.

The tension across her lap disappeared. There were hands pulling her out of her seat and pushing her up. Lisa started swimming. It was not a thought but a response. An automatic reaction to things her brain had not yet begun to understand.

 00:15

      Lisa’s head broke the surface of the water. Her hair covered her eyes and ocean water splashed into her mouth. She looked around and nothing seemed right. She yelled for help. She called for her mother. She screamed. She started to swim but realized that she had no idea which way to go. Surrounded by debris from the aircraft Lisa noticed something that looked like a seat from the airplane. She remembered the flight attendant saying something about them being a floatation device. She grabbed it and looked around for something else to hang onto.

    She just floated.

00:45

      A large piece of the airframe floated by her. It was big enough for Lisa to crawl on, so she did. She laid her head on the seat. The waves provided a gentle rocking motion and Lisa started to drift off to sleep. She felt a strange sensation of safety, like a being a baby rocked to sleep in her mother’s arms.

01:45

Lisa rolled carefully onto her back so she could watch the clouds go by. When she was just a kid, 3 maybe 4, her older brother used to tell her stories of the things he saw in the clouds. There were dragons that he would slay for her, evil wizards to defeat. Sometimes Mickey Mouse would stop by to see her. But most of the time it was some evil that only her big brother could stop. A tree limb could be a sword or a machine gun. He was always there to rescue her. Something in the clouds caught Lisa’s eye. It was a plane. It circled around the area a few times. Maybe it saw her. She sat up straight and waved her arms wildly. She could not tell if they saw her. They circled the area a couple of times and left.

03:26

      Lisa did not know what time it was but was sure it was past dinnertime. Her stomach was growling. She had not had anything to eat since the flight attendant gave her some peanuts at the beginning of the flight. The sun was going down fast. Lisa thought it would be funny if the sun sizzled as it went down. It would sound like the hamburgers daddy grills in the summer.

      Daddy would spend all day getting things ready. He would run to the store and get a big bag of charcoal and lighter fluid, hamburger and hotdogs, soda and chips. He would go outside, arrange the charcoals in little pyramids, and soak them with lighter fluid. He would tell mom how much better charcoal made food taste better than gas grills. Yes, they were quick but charcoal was much, much better. Mom would turn to the kids and wink. Daddy gave the same speech every time he grilled. Sometimes mom would help him give the speech, sometimes she would argue with him, just to get him wound up. The kids would all giggle as mom aggravated dad.

      Dad put the match to the charcoal and it burst into flames. Dad threw his arms up and looked at the sky yelled, “I have created fire. HAHAHA!” Then he would make caveman noises that would have the kids rolling on the ground laughing.

04:00

There were more stars out here than Lisa had seen in her whole life. Lisa tried to count them but there were just too many. She recognized some of the constellations like Orion and the Big Dipper. She learned about them in school in 6^th grade. She knew that stars twinkled but planets do not. That she learned from her dad. The stars looked like lightning bugs. Lisa thought she would need a very big jar to put them in. Lisa remembered a time she and her little sister went out to catch lightning bugs. Lisa showed her sister how to grab them without smashing them in your fist and that the top of the jar had to have holes punched in it so the bugs could breathe. When her sister was little, she wanted to shake the jar to make them glow. Lisa explained that was not nice. How would she like it if Lisa shook her world up like that? After a few minutes, Lisa let the lightning bugs go. Lisa’s sister cried, she had wanted to take them up to her room and keep them as pets. She promised Lisa that she would take good care of them. Lisa explained that the lightning bugs were not just for them, but for everyone.

10:13

      The moon was starting to sink into the ocean. The air was starting to warm up slowly, But the air in her lungs was still cold, making it hard to breath. During a soccer game when she was 10, Lisa ran up on the girl who had control of the ball. Just as she got close enough to make a play the girl gave it the hardest kick she could. The ball hit Lisa in the stomach, knocking the air out of her. All the girls sat down in place as the coaches and the referee ran up to her. She stood up and walked to the side of the field, replaced in the game by a teammate. Her mother walked around the field to sit with her on the blanket the team was using instead of a bench.

      Lisa laid her head in her moms lap. She wanted to go home. She was tired and crabby and her tummy hurt.

      “Lisa, you can’t go home the game is not over. You are part of a team, and even if you do not go back out and play, your team still needs you. You cannot just leave because you are not having fun. Let’s finish out this game and see how you feel.” Her mom kissed forehead and headed back to the parent’s side of the field.

      After a few minutes, Lisa went up to the coach and asked to go back in. She did not score a goal but she finished the game. As the family walked to the car Lisa’s mom leaned over and whispered, “I’m proud of you.”

 13:00

      The sun comes up fast on the open ocean. Lisa’s skin was red from the sun and wind. Her hair was stiff with salt. She was so thirsty and hungry her stomach hurt. She was getting weaker and weaker. She was having trouble maintaining her balance on her makeshift raft.

Rescue

      Lisa heard the boat before she saw it coming out of the rising sun. Above the sound of the engine, she heard voices, “look over here,” they said. “Is that a body?” someone asked. Lisa raised her head to look at the boat. “She’s alive! Captain we’ve got a survivor!”

      Survivor? Were they talking about her? Lisa tried to raise her arm to wave at the boat but she was so tired and hungry, she could not raise her hand.

      There was a splash and a white ring tied to an orange rope floated just out of arms reach. Lisa really wanted to reach out and grab it like the voices from the boat were encouraging her to do. She was tired, and hungry, and thirsty. Moving was just too hard.

      There was a second splash and a set of arms pick up the ring and try to put over her. She did not have the energy to help him so he put her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist and hollered up for someone to lower the rope ladder.

      When it rolled down into the water, she finally understood. They were trying to take her home. She tightened her limbs around him and buried her face in his neck. He climbed the ladder.

      Once on board they wrapped her in a blanket, gave her a small glass of warm water and some crackers. She heard people talking on the radio giving information on locations and type of wreckage they found. Every few minutes someone would walk into the room asking her name. She could speak. Her mouth would not work, and even if it did, for some reason she could not remember her own name. The man who dove into the water to get her stayed with her. He shooed people away telling them she would talk when she was ready. It was the safest she had felt in 13 hours.

Land

      When the boat reached dock, there was a group well on its way to being a crowd. There were people with microphones trying to ask her questions. Other people were there, crying, wanting to know if she belonged to them. As the man laid her on the stretcher, she looked at him and said, “My name is Lisa.”

      He smiled at her and replied, “Hi Lisa. I’m Richard.” Then they slid the stretcher into the back of the ambulance and sped her to the hospital.

      The nurses at the hospital cut her clothes off and very gently washed the salt off her skin. They drew blood, x-rayed her from head to toe. They placed an IV in her left arm and a cast on her broken right arm. A psychologist went with her each step of the way. He did not ask many questions and let her talk as much or as little as she wanted.

      Finally, they put her in a room with a nice comfortable bed. The smell of the ocean was still in Lisa’s nose but now it was mingling with the smell of clean. A nurse walked in, picked up the phone, and handed to her. Lisa placed it to her ear and heard her father’s voice. He said he would be there soon. Lisa smiled and fell asleep.

Home

Lisa stayed in the hospital for two weeks. She was dehydrated and sun and wind burned. Her Left arm was broken and bruises covered her body. The airline flew Lisa’s dad to her as soon as they confirmed her identity. The hospital let him use the other bed in her room, even though it was against the rules to do so. People from the airline and from the government asked her questions about the crash. She did not have many answers for them and she felt bad about that. The psychologist who had been part of the team that met Lisa at the Emergency Room was a constant presence. Sometimes they talked just the two of them, sometime just with her and her dad. Sometimes he just sat in the big hospital room chair and listened. He let Lisa talk about whatever she needed to. He would try to steer the conversation toward the crash but he never forced it.

After the two weeks, the hospital released Lisa, but the doctors recommended that she not fly for one more week. Lisa thought that the psychologist made that suggestion. She went to his office, which looked more like a house, everyday. He had toys and books that he let her play with. Finally, he told Lisa and her father that she could go home and he helped them figure out how to go. Lisa did not want to fly again, but that was the fastest way to get home and she desperately wanted to be home. She decided to fly.

Most of Lisa’s bruises had faded and her arm was still a cast.  It took a lot of convincing to get Lisa on the plane. Her dad and the psychologist that had be talking too since that day all arrived at the airport 6 hours early so she could watch the airplanes take off and land. They talked about odds and probabilities. The psychologist said that it was ok to be scared but that fear must not make our decisions for us. Lisa listened to everything and understood. When the time came to actually bored the plane though she just could not do it. The airline was very understanding and held the plane, the other passengers all knew who she was so they did not mind the wait. She walked slowly down the gangway and stood at the threshold for 30 minutes, her dad’s big strong hand on her back his voice soft in her ear telling her everything would be ok and to take her time. She did not have to go today if she did not want to, though the psychologist reminded him that to let her back out now would only set the fear permanently, making it harder in the future.

Lisa sat in her seat on the aisle then she sat in her dad’s by the window. She sat in an empty seat at the front of the plane and one in the back that the nice old woman said she could try. Finally she went to back to original seat buckled herself in and told the pilot she was ready. The psychologist shook her hand then her fathers and left the plane. The next two hours blurred by. Lisa remembers only the sound the engines, her father’s voice in her ear calmly telling she was all right and they were almost home. When the plane finally landed everyone clapped for her. The old lady in the back came forward and hugged her. Lisa hugged her back and for the first time thought maybe, just maybe it would be ok.

Future

Lisa grew to have a happy normal life. She graduated high school and went on to college. She got married and had a good career. She had two children that she tucked in every night and told them she loves them always.

The events of that day still affect her daily life. In college, her roommate would have to wake Lisa because she was screaming and thrashing around as if she was swimming. She still has nightmares but they are far and few between now. Lisa will fly, but not if there is a reasonable alternative and never on the same plane as a friend or family member.