Джордан Шор - The Search

“Sorry, I didn’t…”

Susan didn’t know how to finish the sentence, so she just smiled and hoped Craig would accept her apology, and forgive her clumsy remark. Susan’s headache had gotten even worse. She felt as though her brain was pounding on the inside of her skull, almost as if her skull weren’t big enough to accommodate her brain.

“Can a person drink too much water?” she asked Craig, and hoped for a sign of forgiveness.

“I only drink herbal tea.”

“But isn’t that the same thing?”

“Water is so plain and boring.”

That didn’t answer Susan’s question, but she saw an opportunity to patch things up with Craig. “Herbal tea sounds good. I’ll try that.”

Her last potential customer didn’t seem to want anything and completely ignored her every inquiry. Susan wasn’t sure whether the man understood English. She’d noticed him writing in a foreign language on his laptop. She couldn’t understand any of the letters, and to add to her confusion, the sentences the man wrote went from right to left.

The herbal tea didn’t stop Susan’s brain from trying to escape her skull, and neither did two aspirin. To add to her discomfort, her ears kept popping, and she had to help several passengers who were enduring the same problem. As Susan told the elderly woman seated by the window to inhale, close her mouth, clamp her nose and exhale, she noticed the raindrops on the window. The plane had obviously descended below the clouds and had started to initiate landing. But the seatbelt light wasn’t on. The pain in Susan’s chest was back, and she felt that something was horribly wrong.

Suddenly, Susan’s weight shifted. It went from approximately one hundred and seventy pounds to zero. She was weightless. Gravity had all at once ceased to exist; she felt as if she was floating around in space.

Her mind identified the perception of her body and produced a pleasant memory for her to enjoy: They were at the top of the rollercoaster, and just as the car was about to plummet, he’d grabbed her hand and together they’d embraced the emotional ride with cheers of joy. This time, however, no cheers of joy awaited at the end of the rollercoaster ride. But as Susan plunged into eternal darkness, she could actually feel his presence. As if he were right there, holding her hand. And just before the picture went black, she could actually smell him.

The scent of her only child.

Friday night

His body was numb from the crash. He felt paralyzed. But the terrible situation didn’t make a difference to him. He was determined to remain in his seat. He didn’t want to live anymore, and he’d rather die sooner than later.

But as the cold water rose above his neck, he started to panic, and he was overpowered by the urge to live. Every fiber in his body told him he had to live.

Only life mattered.

He knew he had to move quickly. He coughed up water from his lungs while he desperately tried to unfasten his seat belt. His body was still numb from the crash, and his lungs felt as if they were on fire. He finally broke free, reached the ceiling, coughed up more water, and gasped for air in the remaining shallow air pocket. Then he half-swam, half-groped his way through the interior of the air cabin, and discovered the cabin door was already open.

The plane had stopped sinking, and the swim to the water surface wasn’t far. He reached the surface just as he ran out of air. His vision went black. Nothing could be seen but darkness and the pitch-black night. The heavy rain collided with the water surface, causing the water to splash into his eyes. He closed his eyes and tried to listen instead.

Then he heard her name.

And just then, he believed he was dead. He thought he’d died in the crash, and this was the afterlife. He thought God shouted her name to remind him of his betrayal. As if God had taken her side, and left him in the darkness as a punishment for his crime.

But then he heard her name again.

And just then, he realized a man was shouting her name.

He knew he was alive, and God was nowhere to be found.

Friday night

The chocolate had lost most of its impact on his taste buds. The spike in his blood sugar made him nauseous, and so did the increased blood pressure from all the salt in the potato chips. But he was determined to finish this week’s quota of unhealthy calories, since next Friday was a week away.

Tom Hanks was just about to land an airplane on the Hudson River, but the sound of a phone ringing interrupted the heroic landing. He paused the movie just as the plane was about to make contact with the water’s surface. He expected a call from his mother regarding the next day’s visit to see his sister in the hospital. He dreaded seeing his sister. Not because he didn’t care about her, but something about the tubes upset him.

When he read the caller ID, however, he felt his heart stop—at least metaphorically.

“George Stanton speaking,” he answered.

George rose to his feet as soon as he realized what the conversation was about, and his eyes opened wide while he tried to process the information given to him.

“Could you repeat that?” he asked in disbelief. George had a hard time trusting what he’d just heard. “How is that even possible?”

How could both pilots have died?

“Yes, sir,” George said, and then reminded himself to address his boss by his first name. “I’ll see you soon, Mike.”

George Stanton’s plan for the weekend had just drastically changed.

As the public relations manager at Fare Airlines, George Stanton was also the spokesperson for the emergency crisis team. In case of an emergency, he was the one assigned to deal with any inquiries from the press. In his to-date six-months-long career at the company, he’d only attended one crisis team meeting.

The airline itself had only been operational for six months, in fact, and George got the impression that the other members of the crisis team took the task lightly, as the atmosphere in that one meeting had been extraordinarily relaxed. The airline was obligated to have a contingency plan in case of an emergency, but the team members didn’t really seem to have considered the possibility of an actual plane crash. George also thought the crisis management plan itself appeared unprofessional, and perhaps even a bit childish, as the document had poor sentence structure and several misspelled words. George had wondered if the financial plan for the company was just as weak.

The CEO, Michael Williams, had just informed George that flight 7-1-9 from Seattle to Anchorage was missing. Apparently, it had deviated from its route, and then disappeared from radar somewhere in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The last known transmission from the aircraft was a text message a female flight attendant had sent to her husband in which she’d pleaded for help, claiming both pilots had died.

During his six months as the public relations manager at Fare Airlines, George hadn’t accomplished anything significant. In fact, he wondered if he had done anything at all, except show up for work . The closest he came to performing any real duties had been when he’d dealt with the repercussions of the dumbest contest ever in American corporate history.

The board of the newly founded airline had announced a contest on the internet, through which the public not only could suggest the name for the unnamed airline, but also vote for the best suggestion. Needless to say, the contest ended as a complete and utter fiasco, with the idea and name that received the most votes being “Swirly Mcflies a lot.”