Second Chance - 04 - Broken Wings

  Tears filled her eyes, rolled down her cheeks. “But I can’t,” she whispered aloud.

  The bitter memory of yesterday’s ordeal came back to her, harassing her like a plaguing spirit that only she could set free. She had tried to feign control, had tried to pretend—for her captain’s sake—that she was fine and ready to fly. She had tried desperately not to let him know that her confidence in herself was deflating like a balloon flying on its own air until the moment it ran out and hit the ground.

  Maybe if it hadn’t been raining, like the night of the crash, or if she hadn’t thought about it so much before boarding, building on her dread, she could have coped. Silence had precluded all the usual cockpit conversation as Erin had watched the jet in front of her taxi down the runway and launch into flight. Her mouth had gone dry. Her muscles had become rigid. Tears had gathered in the crescents of her lashes. Unexplored options flitted through her mind like images of doors through which she could still escape. She could have asked Jack to fly this leg of the trip, since the two would alternate for the length of the flight. But what if she couldn’t manage to take over when her turn came? If she panicked, Jack would be forced to fly for too long, and his fatigue and her nerves would make for a hazardous combination.

  “Southeast 34 taxi into position and hold. Be ready for an immediate.”

  The controller’s words had constricted her chest and rendered her trembling hands useless. She had riveted her eyes on another aircraft—an L-1011—descending toward the runway. She’d jumped slightly when the airplane touched down.

  “Erin? You okay?”

  Trying to breathe, she had assured Jack she was fine and forced herself to taxi into position, but already perspiration was gathering on her temples. She had sat rigidly, contemplating the runway waiting for her to conquer it, as she listened to Operations’ calm orders to other aircraft. She’d watched the order of the smooth takeoffs, the precision of the uneventful landings, and for a moment, she’d started to believe in herself again. She was a good pilot. Her record was spotless. There was no reason she couldn’t make herself fly again.

  But then the order came that brought life down to a choice. “Southeast 34 cleared for takeoff.”

  Erin had closed her eyes and struggled to answer, but the words wouldn’t come. It wasn’t too late, she’d told herself. It wouldn’t be too late until she was airborne.

  “I can’t do it, Jack…I can’t.”

  “It’s okay, Erin.”

  Calmly, without judgment, Jack had taken over the plane and radioed back to the tower that they needed to have a wing checked and would have to pull out of the lineup. But Erin knew that everyone who’d heard the transmission was shaking their heads, aware that Erin was bailing out again.

  How could she go through that again? How?

  The tears came harder now, bits of her soul mingled in each one. She’d pull herself together, she told herself. She’d make herself do it. She was too strong to let this defeat her. Too strong.

  Sleep came on cat’s feet, sneaking up on her, dragging her under. In her dream she relived the night of the crash over and over, and this time she was in the cockpit, next to Mick, where she should have been. Flying the plane, going down, down, down…But in her fear, no scream escaped her…only the mute, rustling sound of a bird’s broken wings…

  It was late morning when Erin awoke, feeling physically more rested than she had since the crash, but mentally as fatigued as she had at any other time. She was reading the paper and nibbling on a cold piece of toast when Lois bolted through the door.

  “I’m home.”

  Erin’s eyes brightened instantly. “Lois! I didn’t expect you this early.”

  Lois set down her bags and regarded her friend seriously. “I came as soon as we landed. Wanted to make sure you weren’t hiding under those covers.”

  Erin dropped her toast on her plate. “No, I actually crawled out to feed myself,” she teased. She stood up and gave Lois a hug. “I’m glad you’re back. I can use a mother hen to lash me with an occasional lecture.”

  “Pep talk,” Lois corrected, returning the embrace. “Not lecture, pep talk.”

  “Whatever,” Erin said, pulling back. “So how’d it go? Did you have a nice trip?”

  “Nice?” Lois asked, her you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look answering the question. “Let me tell you how ‘nice’ it was. We had a pregnant woman on the way to Atlanta who went into labor during flight. Her contractions were three minutes apart when we landed.”

  Erin followed Lois into the den, watching her kick off her shoes and collapse on the sofa. “At least you didn’t have to deliver it.”

  “No, but I wasn’t so sure about that for a while there. Good heavens, could you imagine?”

  Erin laughed aloud, forgetting how seldom she’d done that lately.

  “That’s not all. We had to go into a two-hour holding pattern over Atlanta because the traffic was so bad. We literally had to go back to Mobile to fuel up just to keep holding. I’ve got a whopping headache, and I’m wrung out.”

  Erin went back into the kitchen and poured her roommate a glass of tea. “Go change clothes and relax. Have you slept?”

  “I can use a couple more hours,” Lois said. “But I can’t.” Lois threw her wrist over her eyes and moaned dramatically. “I have to go back to the airport. So do you.”

  “Me? Why?” The apprehension in Erin’s voice forced Lois to look up at her.

  “It seems that the takeover is complete. We no longer work for Southeast. We’re Trans Western employees now, but I don’t know if they’re going to change our name. Rumor has it that a lot of changes are about to take place—big ones. They’ve called a meeting of all pilots who are in town at one o’clock, so they can break the news to us.”

  The thought of being in a room full of her peers, all of them cognizant of her state of mind, sent a new rush of panic roiling through Erin’s stomach. “But I’m on leave of absence. I—”

  “Redlo said to tell you to be there. It was an order, Erin. And you’re going if I have to take you at gunpoint.”

  “But you could tell me what they say. I don’t have to—”

  “You do have to, Erin. You’re still one of our pilots. I won’t let you miss this. There are going to be some cuts, I’ve heard. I don’t know if that means the number of pilots, the routes, or what. You at least have to act like you’re interested, so they won’t cut you.”

  Erin set the glass of tea on the coffee table and tried not to be so transparent. It was a meeting. Just a meeting. No one was going to pressure her into flying. No one was going to throw stones. “All right,” she said. “I’ll go. You don’t have to get so excited.”

  Lois smiled and reached for the glass. “I’ll go change and try to forget holding patterns and birthing mothers, and work myself into my submissive mode. I have a feeling we’re all going to be that way a lot for a while.”

  Submission wasn’t the word for what Trans Western seemed to want from them. Blood seemed more accurate. The pilots seethed as the new owner, Collin Zarkoff, a tyrant whose expression told them either his shoes were too tight or he had a strong aversion to the human race, stood before them outlining the changes about to be made. He announced twelve percent cuts in pay for all flight attendants and machinists; twenty-five percent cuts for all pilots; longer working hours; fewer sick days; cuts in time off and sleep time between flights, barely keeping the minimums the FAA demanded. And, he added, “his people” would be doing careful studies on each of the Southeast pilots, to determine if their records indicated any of them could be cut and replaced with Trans Western employees.

  The cons of the merger made the pros seem minimal, though there were a few. Trans Western’s motive for the takeover was to include more of the East Coast in their flight routes. Southeast, in turn, would have more western routes. And Trans Western had bigger and better airplanes to offer, so pilots like Erin, who’d expected never to go farther than a 727 as long as they stayed
with Southeast, now would have the opportunity to fly L-1011s and 747s some day. But those benefits didn’t override the sacrifices demanded.

  Before the wave of protests could rise high enough to reach Zarkoff, the owner warned the president of the pilots’ union that he should advise his members to take what he offered or lose their jobs. He wasn’t in the mood for union games, he said. He had an airline to run—one which, he pointed out, was losing money hand over fist, and he had to cut back to survive.

  It didn’t take long for the president to call a union meeting, and Erin felt herself getting caught up in the spirit of her coworkers. No one seemed to be interested in her aborted flight, or her panic, or her refusal to fly again. This was too immediate, too personal.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Ray Carter, the president, began, “this is war. If that man thinks he can cut our salary by one-fourth, he’s nuts!”

  The crowd roared approval, but Erin and Lois were cautiously quiet.

  “Over the past five years, I’ve willingly taken pay cuts that amounted to forty percent of what I was making,” someone shouted. “Now he wants to cut out another fourth of that? What am I supposed to do? Sell my house? Stop eating?”

  Most of the members voiced agreement.

  “What about those longer work hours?” a pilot from across the room demanded. “In the wake of a major crash at this airline, he wants to put the pilots under more stress?”

  Erin couldn’t sit quietly for that. She sprang up, raising her voice above the others. “Wait a minute! That crash had nothing to do with pilot stress, and until the investigation is over, I think comments like that should be avoided.”

  The pilots grew quiet, the reminder of Erin’s association with Mick settling their anger and making them consider their words before they spoke. Erin began to feel decidedly uncomfortable at the newfound quiet, and she sank slowly back into her seat.

  Sensitive to Erin’s discomfort, Lois took the opportunity to stand up and offer her views. “Look, I’m as upset as you guys, believe me. I have bills to pay, too, and I agree that we can’t tolerate his version of our working conditions. But we’ve got to face the reality of this industry, and the reality is that the airlines—all of them—are suffering. Without the takeover, Southeast was on the way to bankruptcy. If we want to keep our jobs, we have to play the game his way, at least to some extent.”

  The pilots began shouting disagreement or approval, but the president’s voice was singled out. “His way?” Ray Carter yelled. “I say we play our way. We can strike!”

  To Erin’s relief, half of the members shouted their rejection of the suggestion, but the other half gave equal decibels of support.

  “What about the air traffic controllers during the Reagan administration?” Lois shouted. “They all lost their jobs. What about the TWA flight attendants a few years ago? Forty-five hundred people are still out of work. And if any of you had done the least bit of research into this, you’d know that Zarkoff has taken over companies before. He likes it when the employees strike, because he can replace them immediately with people who are willing to take half of what he’s offering us.”

  “She’s right,” an ally piped up. “Zarkoff has a reputation for never backing down from his first offer. I know a guy who flies for Trans Western, and he said Zarkoff’s first offer is usually his best. If we dicker, we might wind up with less.”

  A new rise of shouting occurred, but Ray Carter banged his gavel. “We aren’t getting anywhere,” he said. “We need a committee to hash this out. I recommend a committee of twenty representatives chosen by the membership.”

  The members opened a round of applause, finally agreeing on something. The rest of the meeting was taken up by nominations for the committee and a secret-ballot vote.

  As the meeting broke up, Erin felt a sense of relief that she was no longer the source of whispering and gossip among them, though she couldn’t help worrying at the state of the pilots’ union and where their tempers would lead them.

  She was on her way back to her car when Frank, her boss and assistant chief pilot, intercepted her in the corridor. “Erin!” he called in a no-nonsense tone that told her he wasn’t having a good day. “My office.”

  “But I—”

  “Now!” he ordered and hurried back to the terminal.

  That familiar strangling feeling rose inside her as she followed him into his office, bracing herself for another lecture. He plopped into his chair, set his elbow on the armrest, and spread his fingers over his chin.

  “I’m worried, Erin. Real worried. About this takeover, the pay cuts, the stress it’ll put on my pilots, the threat of Trans Western cutting down my payroll…all of it. But I’m especially worried about you. You’re deliberately staying away, and I’m warning you, you’re going to get lost in the shuffle. And when you do, there won’t be a single thing I can do about it.”

  Erin shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Frank, we’ve been all through this.”

  “Not to my satisfaction, we haven’t. You were upset the other day. I let you off the hook so you could go home and pull yourself together. I’m not going to do that today.”

  “Frank!”

  Frank leaned forward, clasping his hands on his desk. “Erin, I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you honestly don’t ever want to fly again. That you don’t ever intend to.”

  Erin met his gray eyes, so crisp, so aware, and she knew he could see right through her. “It isn’t a question of wanting to, Frank. You know that.”

  “What is it a question of, then?”

  “Fear,” she said. Moisture welled in her throat.

  “Fear,” he repeated. “Do you know how normal that is after a crash? I’ll probably be a little scared the next time I fly, because of that crash. But Erin, fear can be a good thing. It makes us more careful. Keeps us alert. It doesn’t debilitate us for the rest of our lives. Do you really want to do that to yourself?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “What?” he asked, forcing her to say it louder, to hear it herself.

  “I said, no.”

  “And do you think Mick would have quit if it had been you in the crash? Would you have wanted him to?”

  She fought the tears welling in her eyes. “Of course not.”

  “Then fly, Erin. Give me one less thing to worry about. I swear to you, as soon as you’re airborne, it’ll all fall into place. You’ll feel a lot better, and you’ll get over that fear.”

  “And what if I don’t?”

  “You will. I know you, Erin. I’m willing to take that chance. This block you have against flying is your way of grieving over Mick, of doing some sort of penance for not going down with that plane.”

  Red heat warmed her cheeks. “Since when have you been practicing psychology?”

  “I’m not practicing it,” he admitted. “I’ve talked to the staff psychologist about you. That’s his theory.”

  Erin’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes caught fire. “You what? How could you do that?”

  “It’s my job, Erin. I care about my pilots. I put my rear end on the line for you with the chief. You said you’d go for counseling, but you haven’t.”

  “I haven’t had a chance! I’ve been busy. Nobody asked you to have someone psychoanalyze me secondhand. I resent that.”

  “Resent it all you want,” Frank said, leaning back in his chair. “But I think he was right, and I think you can fly if you have to. And you do have to. I don’t want you to lose your job. I don’t want you to throw it away. Can you try again for me, Erin? For the guy who won’t give up on you?”

  Erin stood up and raked her hand through her ruffled hair. Her mouth compressed as she paced across the room, but the turmoil inside her escalated. What choice did she have? Trans Western would see that she refused to fly when they read her file, and she would be the first to go. Frank was right. She didn’t want to throw away everything, but she wasn’t sure she could hold on to it with such terror in
side her. Still, she had to try. She stopped in front of his desk, focusing on a paperweight of a DC-9. She’d have to fly with a new captain, probably one who would see his assignment with her as some sort of punishment. No one would be as patient—as tolerant of her—as Jack had been two days ago. And Jack would certainly avoid her in the future. Still, she couldn’t help embracing the hope that was the only light in this miserable tunnel she’d dug for herself.

  “Can…can I fly with Jack? That is, if he’ll still have me after the last time?”

  Frank’s stern expression collapsed and softened. “He’s requested you for his next flight, Erin. Tomorrow to St. Louis. Can I schedule you?”

  She stared at him for a long moment, weighing one action against another, groping for the courage to say yes and mean it. When she didn’t find it, she went forward without it. “Schedule me,” she said without inflection, “but I can’t make any promises.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Frank said, and smiled for the first time that day.

  Chapter Eight

  Lois was already home when Erin got there, and Madeline, who had gotten back in while they were at the meeting, sat and watched as she wore a path in the rug pacing from one corner of the living room to the other. “You won’t believe this,” Lois said anxiously to Erin. “You just won’t believe this!”

  Erin dropped her purse and leaned over to give Madeline a welcome-home hug, then regarded her agitated friend, thankful to be distracted from her flying by whatever catastrophe Lois was experiencing now. “Believe what?”

  Lois stopped her pacing and punched her fists into her hips. “You know that committee of twenty the union voted on to hammer out grievances?”

  “What about it?”

  “They voted me on it,” Lois cried. “Me! Can you believe that?”

  Erin tried not to smile. “Actually, I can, since I voted for you.”

  Erin might as well have admitted to electing Lois for a suicide mission.

  “How could you?” Lois asked, astounded. “Erin, I can’t be on that committee with nineteen angry men who think a woman’s opinion means nothing unless it has to do with recipes or needlework! What were you thinking?”