Carrie stepped into her patient’s room. “Did you press your call light, Alice?” she asked, making her way toward the woman’s bedside.
Alice’s oxygen canula was a little crooked, and Carrie instinctively reached out to straighten it up. As she did, Alice reached up and took Carrie’s hand, pointing at the TV screen in the room.
“What’s going on?” the old woman asked in a rattly voice.
Carrie frowned. She and her colleagues had been watching the news at the nurse’s station as it unfolded. “A plane hijacking,” she answered, reaching for the remote. Her patient didn’t have much time left. From what Carrie suspected, Alice’s body should have given up days earlier. The only thing keeping her alive was the hope of seeing her daughter.
It was a tragic story, one the nurses all felt keenly. Alice had been incarcerated for the past thirty years, serving a life sentence for murdering her husband. Carrie had gone online to look up the details of the case. Apparently, the murder had been one of Detroit’s greatest scandals of its day, and with good reason. Alice had taken out multiple life policies on her husband, then killed him before trying to flee the country with their child. Alice was a murderer, a felon, and a child kidnapper, and now she was trying to reconnect with the daughter she’d injured in her husband’s fatal attack.
“Justine’s coming from Boston to visit me,” Alice announced each and every time Carrie came into the room. Carrie just hoped that her daughter knew what she was getting into. It was common knowledge on the hospital floor that Alice would say anything to get people to give her what she wanted.
Alice continued to stare at the screen even after Carrie had turned off the news. A flight attendant and two passengers had been killed. It wasn’t the kind of story an old woman on palliative care needed to worry about.
“Was that the flight from Boston?” Alice asked, her voice weak.
Carrie’s stomach dropped toward the floor. Boston? It couldn’t be the same flight Alice’s daughter was on, could it?
“I don’t think so,” Carrie replied, but her uncertainty must have been obvious.
“Turn it back on,” her patient demanded. “I need to see this.”
“Alice,” Carrie began, her voice softening, “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to …”
“Turn it on,” Alice snapped.
Carrie obeyed. In spite of her patient’s weakness, she thought she detected a hint of the same rage that so long ago had led the woman to cold-blooded murder.
Now, the news was even worse. A fire on the plane. The video footage panned over a tarmac studded with ambulances and fire trucks.
“See there,” Alice announced, pointing at the screen. “Flight 219. From Boston. That’s the plane my daughter’s on.”
Carrie patted the old woman’s shoulder. There was no way that Alice could be certain of the exact flight number, could she?
“I’m sure it’s something else,” Carrie began, then let her voice trail off. The plane was about to land. Fire and smoke billowed from its back half. Carrie wasn’t even sure how many passengers the medical crews on standby would find alive once it touched down.
“I don’t think we should watch this anymore,” she said, her voice low.
Alice didn’t respond.