Little Squirrels Can Climb Tall Trees (20 page)

Turning to me, he whispered, “This is bigger than the last one.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s a big one. Boeing 777. Seats several hundred people and can fly long distances without stopping. Consider how far we’re going in this next leg—more than eight hours in the air. We’ve got to go all the way across the rest of the United States and then all the way over the Pacific to Hawaii, which is another five hours. Long ways, babe. Long ways.”

We got settled into our seats, which were up in the front on the left side of the plane. Our bags stowed, we sat and were immediately greeted by an ultraperky, obviously gay flight attendant who asked us what we would like to drink. It was too early for alcohol so we both opted for juice.

When the guy had stepped away to get our drinks, I leaned over and whispered to Kyle, “He likes you,” referring to the flight attendant.

“What’s not to like? I’m an awesome man.”

“That’s my guy!”

“No. Your
awesome
guy.”

Since the plane was larger and was full, it took longer to get everyone on board and get their stuff stowed away. But finally everyone and everything was settled and the main cabin door was closed. Kyle was so excited as the plane started to push back that he was practically bouncing up and down in his seat.

“Don’t hurt yourself there, big guy,” I jokingly cautioned with a huge dollop of delight in my voice.

“Hush. This is absolutely amazing. I don’t know how they’re ever gonna get something this huge off the ground and then keep it in the air for more than eight hours with all these people on board. I mean, have you seen the size of this thing?” he said, gesturing roughly at the cabin around us.

“Have no fear. Planes do this every day. Hundreds of times every hour.”

“
They
might do it, but I’ve never done it, so hush up and let me watch.”

Whether due to the early hour or the fact that it was a Saturday or some other reason entirely, the taxi to the runway was extremely efficient. In minutes the plane was sitting at the end of the runway in position, ready to roll. And roll it did. When the engines spooled up, we felt ourselves pushed back into our seats as the giant machine started racing down the runway. In well under a minute, we were off the ground and into the air.

“Holy sweet Jesus!” he practically shouted. “Did you see that?”

“See what, babe?”

“How freaking fast that was! That was amazing! And look how high we are already! Wow! This is un-fucking-believable.”

Over the years I had flown so many hundreds of thousands of miles that flight was just a giant chore to me. But once again that morning, as I held my boyfriend’s hand, I was seeing everything that my partner was observing. I was so delighted that I was able to be part of this experience. It was like everything old was new again, and it was glorious.

As on our first flight, one of the flight attendants noticed Kyle was excited about something. She cautiously looked to make sure there was nothing she needed to worry about in the eight hours ahead. I explained, “First time,” which once again got a knowing smile from the woman.

People around us settled in for the long flight ahead, but Kyle kept his eyes glued to the ground below. I was starting to feel a little slighted until I figured out,
Oh, right, he’s hoping to see his former home
. Quietly, I rose from my seat and approached the bubbly gay flight attendant with a simple request. He was only too happy to help. After I had returned to my seat, he picked up the intercom phone and spoke with the pilot.

After about twenty minutes, we heard a voice on the public address system. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to add my greetings to those you’ve already received as you came aboard this morning. Weather forecasts are looking good, so for now the Fasten Seat Belt sign is off. Our flying time today is eight hours and thirty minutes since we’ve got a bit of a headwind. I understand that we have a passenger who wants to know when we’re over Oklahoma. Our route today doesn’t take us over Oklahoma, but in about thirty minutes, if you look out the windows on the left side of the airplane, way, way off in the distance, you’ll see what you’re looking for.”

Kyle looked at me. “You didn’t!”

“Moi?” I said, feigning innocence.

“Innocence doesn’t work with you, babe,” Kyle said with a smile.

“Hey, I was innocent—once—a long time ago.”

“In a galaxy far, far away?”

“Bite me, bitch. And look out the window.”

Kyle kept his eyes glued to the ground that passed beneath us en route to Hawaii. When we passed as close to Oklahoma as our route would take us, we couldn’t see his house or his farm or anything else he recognized. Nonetheless, I enjoyed watching the delight on Kyle’s face at seeing everything from a new perspective.

When Kyle tore himself away from the view out the window, the flight attendants had served breakfast to everyone else in the cabin. I watched as the smell of the food finally caught Kyle’s attention. “I smell food,” he said.

“Yeah, babe. We all ate while you were watching the ground go past outside.”

Kyle got a disappointed look on his face at the thought that he had missed breakfast. I couldn’t stand to see my guy looking upset, so I pushed the flight attendant call button and told them that my boyfriend was ready to eat breakfast. Kyle was surprised and delighted to find that they were willing to bring him something even though everyone else had already finished. Flying was still a new experience for him, including flying first class, where good food could appear at any time you wanted on long-haul flights.

Kyle ate, I read, we talked together a bit about the islands and some of the things that we could do while there. I’d made some plans but had deliberately kept some time unscheduled for us to add things that we encountered by chance along the way. At one point I slept a bit, but Kyle was too excited—even though nothing different than the last several hours was happening. The view out the window by that point was simply clouds and water. He had been excited to see California for the first time and couldn’t believe how dry and brown it looked. He had always pictured California as a lush, green tropical paradise, so he was surprised to find that it looked more like a desert than a tropical paradise. There were pockets of green, but the dominant color was brown.

When he asked about what he was seeing, my answer was simple. “A lot of California is desert. It goes through big cycles of drought and deluge, but even in wet times, there are times of the year when it never rains. A lot of the water for irrigation in the Central Valley comes from the Colorado River. So much water is siphoned off the River that by the time it reaches the Pacific, it’s just a little trickle. Without that water, California couldn’t survive.”

“So you’re saying it’s all artificial, in a way?”

“Yes, to some degree.”

“Huh. Didn’t expect that. Don’t tell me Hawaii is a desert too.”

“No. Hawaii is definitely not a desert, although there are places on the islands where it looks like you’re in a desert. Parts of Maui are bone dry, the southern coast and inside the volcano crater especially. Same with the Big Island.”

With nothing but clouds and water outside the window, Kyle and I pulled out our books. It wasn’t long after that that a flight attendant made an unexpected announcement. “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. I’m sorry to disturb you, but if there is anyone with any medical training on board, please identify yourself to a flight attendant. Thank you.”

Kyle immediately unbuckled his seat belt and rose to get the attention of the nearest flight attendant. Not knowing what was happening, I did the same and followed my boyfriend. I heard him tell the attendant, “I’m an emergency physician.”

“We have a man in the back who might be having a heart attack.”

“Take me there,” he ordered, so she led us back dozens of rows toward the back of the plane. There was no mistaking which person was in trouble when we reached the back of the plane. Kyle identified himself to the man and his wife as he reached down, took the man’s hand, and checked his pulse. He repeated the move with the arteries in the man’s neck.

He unbuttoned the man’s shirt and used the cheap stethoscope the airline carried to listen to the man’s heart from several angles. Rising, he quietly spoke to a flight attendant, asking if there was someplace they could lay the man down flat, and also if they had an automatic defibrillator device onboard. There was no ideal place onboard a crowded plane, so Kyle and I lifted the man out of his seat, moved him back a few rows, and placed him on the floor near the restrooms.

The flight attendant produced the defibrillator device. Kyle opened the man’s shirt all the way and placed the various patches on the man’s chest as directed by the device. Its patches in place, the device started analyzing the data it was collecting. By this point the man had lost consciousness and was unresponsive when Kyle tried to ask him some questions.

“What’s this thing?” I asked.

“An AED, or automated external defibrillator. It’s a portable electronic device that automatically diagnoses a potentially life-threatening irregular heartbeat. It’s able to treat them by applying a controlled electrical shock, which hopefully stops the arrhythmia and allows the heart to reestablish a steady, productive rhythm.”

“Cool.”

“The introduction of these things and their widespread adoption has meant that people who have heart problems can get help a lot faster and more accurately than ever before. Anyone can figure out how they work—the machine guides you each step of the way, and there aren’t that many steps involved.”

Lowering my voice slightly, I said, “You really are an awesome man, Kyle.”

“I knew that. You just now figuring it out?”

I simply smiled at my partner, proud of him in this situation and proud of how far he had progressed in his personal self-image and sense of self-worth.

Our conversation was interrupted when the machine started beeping loudly and ordered everyone to stand clear of the patient and the device. The only time I had ever seen an electrical shock applied to a person’s heart had been on TV drama shows, so I expected to see the man on the floor flop around like a fish out of water, but Kyle assured me that that only happened on TV and in the movies. In reality the process was much less exciting.

The machine announced that a sinus rhythm had been restored and that it was once again safe to approach the patient. It also instructed someone to call 911 and to get the person to an emergency room immediately.

Kyle looked up at the array of flight attendants who were gathered around the unexpected event unfolding before their eyes. They were all trained in the usage of the AED but were delighted to have a doctor onboard who could handle that plus a lot more.

“How far to the nearest ER?”

“A couple of hours at least,” one answered. She picked up the intercom and called the cockpit to get a more accurate estimate of how long it would take to get to the closest medical facility that could handle this type of an emergency.

She hung up and reported that we were approximately 101 minutes from the closest medical facility. We had passed the halfway point over the ocean and had no choice but to proceed to Hawaii. The pilot and Kyle conferred by phone and decided that the medical facilities in Honolulu were probably better suited to handle this case. The pilot notified air traffic control that we had an in-flight medical emergency and needed to come directly into Honolulu as quickly as possible and that we needed an ambulance waiting.

In the meantime, though, we had nearly two hours to watch over the sick man. Kyle asked if there were seats anywhere that were empty so we could lay the man down on them and get him out of the way of the bathrooms. Unfortunately the flight was completely full, so there were no empty seats.

“The seats up in first recline, don’t they?” he asked suddenly, remembering something he had heard me say earlier.

“Yes, but they’re full too.”

“Let’s put him in my seat, 1A. That’ll get him at the front for quick exit when we finally get on the ground.”

The flight attendants produced a chair-like device. The key thing was that we could get it down the cramped aisle of the coach cabin. Kyle and I got the man up off the floor and onto the chair. A flight attendant carried the AED, and another flight attendant got on the PA system and asked everyone to clear the aisle—the incident had attracted a fair amount of attention. People throughout the plane were straining to get a glimpse of what was happening. People surprisingly obeyed, and a pathway cleared through the aisle.

It wasn’t easy by any means, since the guy was not a lightweight, but working together, Kyle and I were able to slowly carry him in the chair-like device up the aisle of the airplane toward the front. Of course, with absolutely impeccable timing, the plane hit a patch of rough air when we were about halfway to the front. The seat belt sign came on, but Kyle and I had no choice but to keep moving forward.

Our job got easier when we reached the business-class cabin, where the aisle was a bit wider. By the time we reached first, our arms were aching from the strain and our own hearts were racing. We recruited some help to move the man onto the seat since I don’t think either of us had any strength left in our arms at that point in time.

A flight attendant worked the controls and fully reclined the seat. They fastened a seatbelt on the man and covered him with a blanket. The final step was putting an oxygen mask on the unconscious man.

Kyle grabbed his stethoscope once again—somehow it hadn’t fallen off while we had been moving the man—and listened to his heart and his breathing once again. He asked for pillows, blankets, anything he could get to raise the man’s feet some more; almost immediately the things appeared, and he got them arranged as he wanted.

“Do you have any meds of any sort on board?” Kyle asked.

“We’re a long-haul flight, so we’ve got a full medical kit.” He didn’t even have to ask; she simply moved to grab the kit and open it for him.

Kyle had been totally focused on diagnosing and caring for his patient to that point. Suddenly he looked up and asked, “Where’s his wife?”