Claire - Anatomy of a Plane Crash
Title: Anatomy of a Plane Crash
Rating: PG-13
Summary: a companion piece to my 100th fanfiction Dedicated To The One I Love. This is an excerpt from the book that Claire writes within that fanfiction “Anatomy of a Plane Crash” and basically documents Claire’s crash-back.
Disclaimer: Still not mine. Will never be mine. Will forever covet.
~*~
I’ve never been a big fan of flying - the farthest I’d ever gone was up to the Gold Coast when I was nine on the one holiday that my mum managed to afford.
Flying at eight months pregnant though? That was like all of my worst nightmares come to life. I was uncomfortable enough as a skinny little nine year old - what was it going to be like with a huge belly out in front of me?
I tried my best to wheedle my way into business class with no success and then I absolutely lost it over a cup of coffee in the departure lounge. I was just really jumpy that day, all worked up for no reason you know? And the baby kept on squirming around and making me feel all funny - I had to run to the loo at least five times before I even got onboard.
My mood was pretty fragile by the time we boarded. The fact that I had to get on at the same time as everyone else made me pretty upset too. Couldn’t they see how pregnant I was? I wasn’t exactly all that mobile and with everybody blocking the aisles it took forever to get to my seat.
By the time I managed to sit down, all I really wanted was to have a well deserved nap but I stayed awake to dutifully watch the safety demonstrations (buckling one of those belts underneath your stomach is surprisingly hard when you can’t see what you’re doing) and then I read the in-flight magazine from cover to cover while we took off to distract me from the uncomfortable pressure on my ears and on my stomach.
As soon as the seat belt sign was switched off I had to run to the loo - the coffee I’d drunk had gone straight through me. By the time I got back they were serving juice and water and stuff. I took a water knowing that I needed to keep my fluid levels up, even if I was only going to end up in one of those horrible little cubicles again.
I had an aisle seat and the guy who was sitting next to me (he was older and had helped me get my bag into the overhead compartment) started trying to talk to me. He asked me all about the baby and why I was taking such a long flight when I was so far pregnant. I ended up chickening out and telling him that I had a headache and that I really needed to sleep it off.
Pretty much straight away, he turns around and starts complaining to the guy sitting next to him about who knows what. I really was quite tired so I loosened the seat belt a bit and tried to get comfortable.
I woke up again when they served lunch. They only had a choice between grilled chicken or lemon fish. I thought I’d try the fish because I’d been having bad reactions to chicken lately - some stupid pregnancy thing. Bad idea. Working in a fish and chips shop had finally taken its toll on me - I’d barely swallowed the first mouthful before I was running for the toilets and I was still feeling pretty shaky when I got back. The guy next to me kept asking me if I was okay. I think I was quite rude to him then, but at least he shut up and let me go back to sleep. I felt all sick and shivery, like I was going to vomit again.
I dozed then for a while, and soon enough I lost all track of time. I tell you what though, I woke up very suddenly when the turbulence hit. The whole plane shuddered, like it’d been hit by a giant with a cricket bat or something. My hands automatically grabbed onto the arm rests and I held onto them for grim death until the shudders stopped.
That first jolt sent one hell of a shiver down my spine. My whole body shook with it, shuddering in fear. The guy next to me seemed unperturbed however.
“What a bump!” he said, seeming pretty excited. “I’ve always loved turbulence - it’s a bit like Mother Nature’s way of letting us know that these things aren’t meant to be in the air eh?”
I gripped the arm rests even tighter, feeling even sicker with fear as the seat belt light above us dinged and a moment later there was an announcement over the intercom advising us all to put our belts on for the duration of the turbulence. I tightened mine with trembling fingers, trying to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach. Something wasn’t right.
“Do you know what causes turbulence?” the man next to me was still babbling away. I shook my head, breathing shallowly through my mouth.
“Leave the poor girl alone Arzt,” the younger man next to him chided. “She doesn’t want to know.”
“Sure she does,” Arzt said confidently, turning to me.
And in the second it took for him to meet my gaze, all hell broke loose.
The initial jolt saw Arzt’s friend fly out of his seat like a rocket and hit his head hard on the ceiling. When he fell back down, he fell sideways onto both our laps and for a moment I thought he’d been knocked unconscious. Then Arzt pushed his friend, rolling him over. His legs fell onto the floor but his head was still in my lap. I almost went to touch him, to protect him from any further damage being done to him while he was in this state but then I looked into his eyes and I realised that he was staring at me - staring, but not seeing.
He was dead.
It was then that I started screaming.
While this was happening, the plane was losing altitude so fast that I was certain we were about to hit the ground at any moment. I could feel the drop in the air pressure affecting us inside. I struggled to stay conscious, to breathe. My screams choked off into gasping, sobbing breaths and then the oxygen masks fell from the ceiling. I was so shocked at their appearance that I fumbled all over the place, nearly dropping it in my haste to get it on right.
And suddenly there was a hand on mine, gripping so tightly that I couldn’t even feel my fingers anymore. I turned and met Arzt’s terrified eyes over the yellow mouth piece thing for one horrifying moment and then the plane gave another particularly violent jolt, pulling my hand out of his grasp.
The plane was shaking uncontrollably now, my oxygen mask was slipping off my nose and I’m pretty sure I was screaming again. I remember hugging my arms tight over my baby, the piercing sound of metal tearing and then…nothing. When I finally opened my eyes again I was lying on my side in the sand, the world was full of fire and I was having such severe contractions that it felt like someone was carving into my stomach with a knife.
The pain of them was incredible - I was absolutely terrified that I was going to go into labour right then and there. I panicked even more when I realised that my knickers were wet. For one terrifying, horrifying moment I thought that my waters had broken. Later I would realise that the true, far more embarrassing reason, was that I had wet myself as the plane went down.
Being very scared and very pregnant and having a very full bladder are not very good things to combine.
This was how I was welcomed into my own personal hell, disguised beguilingly as a tropical island.
And this is where my story really starts.