Janine was fighting as hard as she could not to scream out in agony. Without their ELT, their chances of rescue had just gone from bad to way worse. She’d checked all the emergency equipment during her preflight inspection, including the spare ELT inside the overhead bin at row one. During the evacuation, when they were scavenging the aircraft before getting into the rafts, another flight attendant had grabbed the spare ELT. Why didn’t I grab that first, instead of the water bottles?
Janine was on the verge of a meltdown at the thought of never seeing Molly again. Don’t go there, don’t go there. She had to pretend she had her shit together in front of the passengers, but she clearly didn’t.
Kerri reached for her hand and looked at her. “Janine, someone’s going to find us. It’s just going to take longer.”
Kerri’s attempt to comfort her touched her. “Do you know how much longer? We don’t have much water.”
“I really have no idea. Our rescue went from hours, to days, maybe even weeks. We have to keep them calm, ration the water, and wait.”
Kerri squeezed her hand. “We will be found. Just hang in there with me.” She gave Janine a little smile.
“Captain Kerri, is there anything in here that will help us?” Mel dragged over the raft survival kit.
Kerri turned to Mel. “Yes, honey. There sure is. Let’s open it.”
Janine watched Kerri and Mel sort through the items in the kit. During annual training, all crew members practiced using the different emergency equipment. Spread out on a table in the training classroom, it looked like a lot of stuff. Seeing it now, it seemed rather skimpy. She listened to Kerri discuss each item with Mel.
“This is the day flare, and this is the night flare, because it has bumps on one end. That’s so you can tell which one it is, even in the dark.”
Mel was paying close attention to Kerri’s every word.
“We have two small cans of water, a bag to catch rainwater, fishhooks, Band Aids, a signal mirror, and, most important, our sea-powered hand radio.”
“How does it work?”
“We open this bottom part, fill it with sea water, and a chemical reaction with the salt water powers the radio for about thirty minutes. We flip this switch on the top, and then we can transmit on the emergency frequency. If any ships or planes are within range, they’ll be monitoring the frequency and listening for us. Let’s try it on the hour and the half hour.”
Janine observed how patient and thorough Kerri was with Mel. She wasn’t maternal, but more like a mentor. Maybe Kerri had taught flying in her past before she became a 767 captain. She was a good teacher. All she knew was that Mel was engaged with Kerri and not thinking about her lost parents. Mel had a band of freckles across the bridge of her nose and dimples in her cheeks. This could be Molly in a few years.
Fear clutched her. What if I never see her again? Janine had to force her thoughts to stay on the present. She couldn’t allow herself to think about Molly. She had to stop looking at Mel. This young girl, all alone on the ocean, reminded her too much of her own daughter, and their similarity was tearing her up inside.
“I’m going to check on the passengers.”
Janine could do her job, take care of her passengers, and wait for their rescue, no matter how long it took. She would never give up hope.
* * *
“I have a very important job to do, and I need your help with it,” Kerri said.
Mel answered enthusiastically. “Okay. Tell me what to do.”
“Let me show you how the signal mirror works. Find the sun in the sky. We’re going to flash that bright sunlight with the mirror to any passing ships or planes. Hold it up to your eye and look through the hole in the center of the mirror. You change the angle of the mirror to reflect the sun at your target.”
“Like this?” Mel held the signal mirror against her right eye.
“Yes. Now aim the center circle at, say, Mr. Shapiro over there.”
Mel did as instructed, and a bright, white light flashed across Shapiro’s smarmy face.
“Hey, what the hell?” he snapped.
“Just testing our emergency equipment, sir.” Kerri tried not to laugh at him.
“Now hit your target with three short flashes, followed by three long flashes.”
Mel complied, and Shapiro yelled, “Knock it off, or I’ll knock your block off!”
“Really? Go ahead and try,” Kerri answered as she opened her jacket to show him her pistol.
“I’m still suing you.” He snorted, then turned his back on her.
“Flash the bald spot on the back of his head, and repeat the sequence—three short, three long.”
“Is that a message?”
“Yes, Mel. It’s SOS in Morse code. This is your job on our raft, and it’s very important to help us be seen. Take my watch, and every fifteen minutes, I want you to use the signal mirror all around the horizon for ships, and back and forth across the sky for planes. Can you do that?”
“Yes, I can, Captain Kerri.”
“Good. I’m going to appoint you my captain’s assistant on this raft.”
Mel smiled for the first time, then got busy with her signaling duties.
Kerri looked for Janine across the raft. She was attending to passengers with small injuries and giving sips of Coke to the worst seasick cases. She was so kind to everyone that it surprised her when Janine was rather cold to Mel. She barely looked at the girl and wouldn’t speak to her. This didn’t add up to what she knew about Janine. What was the issue between them? If she was honest with herself, she wanted to know everything about Janine.
Despite all that had happened, Kerri was still attracted to, and intrigued by, Janine Case. Maybe after they got rescued, Kerri could ask her out on a proper date. If they got rescued.
Kerri poked her head out from under the canopy to look at the entire sky. She always looked at the sky, even when she was at home. Kerri loved looking at clouds. She wasn’t just assessing the weather; she had to see the clouds against the blue sky. No matter how bad her day was, if she was able to look at the sky, it was a good day. That’s why she chose her home in an LA high-rise, so she could view the sky every day and wake up to it.
Now, however, she studied the sky in light of their survival situation. The usually shimmering blue ocean of this morning was steel gray. The white, puffy clouds had become a broken cloud layer about three thousand feet above them. This cloud deck would make them almost invisible to search aircraft.
Kerri watched the cloud deck accelerate as it moved across the sky. This movement indicated the wind was picking up and they could be in the path of more bad weather from the typhoon. The swirling wind could even pull them farther into the eye of the storm. If that happened, they would never survive.
Kerri realized she had no control whatsoever over her fate, a very uncomfortable feeling. She prided herself on her calm, cool demeanor when flying as a captain. She never raised her voice, never panicked, never lost control. She also never lost control of any other aspect of her life. She was methodical, organized, competent, and self-assured in everything she did. Everything, that is, until she had to land her jet on the ocean, abandon it, and end up in this raft.
She was responsible for the lives of all these people, a privilege she’d earned by her skill and leadership, and she always honored it. Her passengers trusted her with their lives every time they walked onto her jet. Now, she could do very little to save them. She made her “Mayday” radio calls every thirty minutes, knowing only a slim chance existed that anyone would hear them because they were so far off their original route.
Kerri couldn’t believe that her life could end in this raft, with these people. She’d had such great plans for her layover in Kona with Janine. She’d made a reservation at her favorite restaurant on the Big Island, with a gorgeous view of the sunset over the ocean. From there they could watch sailboats, outrigger canoes, and surfers as the waves broke against the sea wall next to their table. It was the most romantic place Kerri could think of to have dinner with Janine.
Kerri had planned to invite Janine to walk with her along the beach after dinner, to the best Hawaiian shave-ice place on the island. Then she would walk Janine back to her hotel room and hope Janine would invite her in. There they would kiss good night. A wave splashed cold water into her face and washed the fantasy about Janine from her mind. She wiped the salty water off her face with her sleeve. What an idiot I’ve been.
The day seemed to drag on forever. Even though the water was cold, the air temperature was warm, and people were sweating. The passengers were quiet and listless, many of them probably dehydrated. She and Mel kept signaling, hour after hour, even though the clouds were now a solid layer obscuring the sky. The wind picked up, and the increasing swells made the raft pitch and roll again. Kerri evaluated the weather.
The clouds, horizon, and sea were indistinguishable from each other in a gray mist. The wind whipped up the water into whitecaps. Lightning bolts struck the water from a line of clouds in the distance. They were drifting right toward the lightning. Another horrible night in the raft loomed. They might make it, or this would be her last night on earth. Either way, they were at the mercy of the sea.
* * *
After several hours of mind-numbing boredom, Janine sat by herself, turned away from the passengers, and stared at the ocean. She’d always loved living near water. Whether it was the beach in San Diego, Lake Michigan, or even the Mississippi Gulf Coast, during the time her dad was stationed at Keesler Air Force Base, she was drawn to water. The endless ocean that she’d loved as a child was now trying to kill her, and she had very little way to defend herself. She was starving, thirsty, nauseous, exhausted, and angry.
Janine was very angry. It was the old anger, the old bad anger. The rage, like molten lava just beneath her surface, was accelerating. Her nerves were frayed. She was descending into a familiar dark place and could do nothing to stop herself. The maw of the pit of despair called to her again. This was the same pit she’d fought against to reclaim her life. In the past, Janine had been able to muster her last fragment of hope to claw her way out of that horrible place. That hope had come from Molly.
The dark pit before her now was the ocean. The same feelings of helplessness and desperation gripped her throat, making it hard to swallow. Bobbing up and down on the water, she once again had no control over life. She was losing her battle to resist the overwhelming panic. The only thing left to do was to curl up in a ball and wait for the relief of death.
* * *
Kerri looked for Janine but couldn’t find her. How can you lose someone on a raft surrounded by water? She glimpsed something blue on the far side of the raft under a blanket and climbed over the people in the raft to reach it.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
Janine didn’t answer.
“Janine? Can you talk to me?” Kerri was growing very concerned.
“Leave me alone,” Janine mumbled.
“Are you hurt? I can’t leave you alone. We are the crew of this raft, and we have a job to do.”
“What job? Do you actually think we can do anything to help us be rescued? We’ve done all we can, Kerri. I’ve just accepted the fact that we won’t make it. I suggest you do the same.”
Kerri had no response. Janine was always so confident and friendly, but this change in her attitude alarmed her. It looked like Janine was giving up, and Kerri had to figure out how to reengage her. She needed her, now more than ever, with another night of fierce weather looming before them.
Kerri squeezed in next to her. She needed to talk to her, but she didn’t want any of the passengers to overhear them.
Kerri leaned in close. “What’s going on with you? Can I do anything to help?”
“No. Nothing. Please, Kerri, just let me be.”
Kerri sat in silence, struggling for words to break through to Janine. They were all suffering from dehydration, lack of food, and illness, but she and Janine had been trained to survive, and Kerri expected more from her. Maybe Janine wasn’t as strong as she appeared. They were in a life-threatening situation, and she’d never heard of anyone actually surviving ditching an aircraft in the ocean, but she didn’t understand why Janine suddenly appeared to have given up.
“Janine, please talk to me. I’m worried about you.”
“I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Just then, Mr. Shapiro shouted at them. “Hey, you two. We need water over here right now.”
Kerri felt the urge to reach for her gun again, but she saw Janine flinch when he yelled at them.
“Did he say something to you? Did he hurt you? If he did, I’ll throw him overboard. I’ve had enough crap from this entitled ass.” She started to get up, but Janine reached out to stop her.
“No, Kerri. He didn’t hurt me. It’s not him.”
“Not him? I don’t understand. Did someone else hurt you?”
Janine didn’t answer but curled herself into a tighter ball.
“Please tell me what happened. I want to help, if I can.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re not going to make it, are we?”
Kerri whispered, “Don’t say that. I believe someone will find us. I just don’t know when, or how long it will take.”
“We’re not going to survive another night in a typhoon. Even I know that, and we’re being blown into it.”
Kerri turned away from Janine. She couldn’t look her in the face. Janine’s words settled on her heart like a cold stone. They were adrift in a small raft on the vast ocean. She looked at the gray horizon and saw their fate before them as lightning lit up the clouds. Janine was right. They weren’t going to make it.