My knuckles gripped the arms of the seat, white hot from a potent mixture of both nerves and fear. The past nine hours had taken all of my strength to endure, and with another hour or two to go, I could not say that I even felt remotely close to finishing. I could feel a small droplet of sweat moving along the contours of my brow and slowly slipping down the side of my face.
To my left, an elderly gentleman sipped from a small can of cola, the beads of perspiration that dripped from the can down onto the plastic tray positioned just in front of him suddenly becoming brilliantly clear in the periphery of my vision. To his left, what could have been his wife, could have been his sister, read the same magazine that she had been reading these past four or five hours, blissfully unaware of the sweat that was pooling at the base of my spine, or the drumroll that was fit to burst from my ribcage. In front of me, a small child playing on his electronic game system said something under his breath, something I could not quite make out, then returned to his silence in awe of the soft, electronic noises that emanated from the small plastic box. His mother, seated to his left, kept leaning over his shoulder, to check on the progress that her child was making, smiling each time she did so, then burying her nose back in the paperback that she had packed with her for the flight.
I reached into my bag, a small, black rucksack that I had tucked under my seat, and pulled out a battered copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and began leafing through the pages in a futile attempt to distract myself from the situation at hand. This should do it, I thought to myself, this should keep my mind off things. After a few joyless minutes of scanning words that just refused to sink in, I suddenly felt my throat give way to my stomach as a new wave of fresh terror washed over me, falling down my neck, through my chest, before settling in the deepest pit of my belly. My breathing suddenly became laboured and short, as I hyperventilated in an attempt to expel such irrational fear. It was silly really, I thought in an attempt to calm myself, I’m perfectly safe up here. And then, almost without thinking, almost as a vague, whispered afterthought, came a small voice in the very back of my head, one that had been toying with me these past nine hours and one that I was convinced was external from myself, that existed beyond my conscious mind softly asked: But, what if you’re not, Harrison? What if you’re not? With that, I closed the book once more, stashing it in my rucksack, and returned to my previous activity of staring intensely at the seat back in front of me and clinging on for dear life.
“Is everything ok, sir? You look awfully pale…”
I shuffled in my seat uneasily, my thin, white shirt sticking to my back in all manner of uncomfortable place. I raised my gaze to meet hers, which was a mixture of confused and concerned, and attempted to regain my composure but had little success.
“I’m – I’m just a little warm is all. Could you- could you put the air con on?”
Her look of unease intensified.
“It’s already as high as it can go sir, is there anything I can get you?”
“No, no, not for now. I’m fine, honestly, totally fine.”
I could feel my arms shaking now, my fingers barely able to cling onto the arms of the seat for a moment longer. I tried looking out the window for a moment, watching the clouds race alongside the aircraft, but my stomach churned and leapt, and I stared forwards once more.
Just two more hours. Just two more hours and I’m home.
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