lady godiva rides again

All the violence and commotion has not diminished the wants and needs of the other passengers. The lights have been turned down in the cabin, and the crew are hoping that some of the passengers will finally fall sleep. That doesn’t happen though. The cuffed Polynesian is one of the few who do go to sleep. Geoff has collected the witness forms and is ready to sit down to fill out the endless reams of paperwork that accompany an incident like this. Damien is seated on a crew jump-seat near the galley. His nose has stopped bleeding, but both his eyes are black and puffy.

Damien looks up, ‘I feel like I’ve been partying at the Mardi Gras for a week, except not in a good way. I must look like hell?’

Yes, he does. He looks like he has been ten rounds with Mike Tyson. But I don’t tell him that.

I reassure Damien that he will bounce back to his former pretty self within no time.

I haven’t even had time to snack on something, and I am starving. Just as I search for a bite to eat, another woman enters the galley to tell us that the young girl – yes, the one who is not the sharpest tool in the shed – has taken some sleeping tablets and is behaving ‘strangely’. The last thing I feel like doing is dealing with a drunken girl who has taken sleeping tablets.

What the hell is she thinking? She is not thinking – that is the problem.

I thank the lady for informing me about this and reluctantly make my way to the young girl. I see that she is delirious, mumbling something about being on a train and then something about a Barbie doll. This girl had her TV antenna up when she came onto the flight, yet she wasn’t getting its full reception. Thanks to alcohol and pills, whatever reception she was getting is now fully scrambled. I don’t have a lot of patience for her, but spend some time trying to tell her that she is on a plane, not a train, and her Barbie doll is nowhere to be seen. At the end of ten minutes, she still doesn’t even know her own name; however, based on the dealings I’ve already had with her, she may not have known it in the first place.

I would normally walk someone around the cabin in this situation, but decide to let this girl sleep it off. When she finally sleeps I slink back to the galley to rummage for something to eat and to tell Damien about our brain-dead friend’s antics. As I try to scavenge any morsel of food, Damien stands up, turns to me and points towards the aisle. ‘You are not going to believe this!’

I look down the aisle to see the young girl staggering towards us. That is not the unbelievable thing that Damien pointed out though. She is naked, totally and utterly naked.

I grab the only spare blanket I can find and wrap it around her. She is totally oblivious to the fact that she has taken off all her clothes and is muttering ‘toilet, toilet’. I throw her into the toilet, close the door and stand outside, guarding it.

Deb returns from delivering drinks in the cabin and I ask her to call Geoff again. I need some pyjamas from the front of the plane, if there are any.

Geoff arrives with the last pair of pyjamas onboard. I tell him the story, and he chuckles. He is amused but not surprised; this has happened several times before in his career.

The young girl has been in the toilet for some time now.

I knock on the door, ‘Are you OK in there?’

No answer.

Geoff also tries, but there is still no answer.

I explain to Geoff that I have given her a blanket to cover herself. Geoff knocks a few more times, and then he decides to go in. He pushes the bi-fold door open to find the blanket crumpled on the floor and her sitting on the toilet, fast asleep with her legs wide open.

‘Hello, vicar,’ I hear Geoff mutter as he closes the door again.

He hands me the pyjamas and says, ‘I think you better handle this one, Danielle.’

She is out cold. Although small and thin, trying to dress a collapsed rag-doll is almost impossible. She partially comes to as I slip the pyjamas on. I help her out of the toilet and back to her seat. Just as I am about to leave her, she throws up all over herself.

Could this flight get any worse?

In the meantime, Geoff had gone over to check on the Polynesian in the crew rest. He approaches me just as the young girl finishes vomiting and passes out again.

Geoff really does find the situation amusing and bursts out laughing.

Not seeing the humour in the moment I ask, ‘What is so funny?’

Geoff explains, ‘The big fellow in crew rest has just woken up and wants to go to the toilet. When I told him he wasn’t allowed to go, he has called me every name under the sun.’

Once somebody is handcuffed onboard it is policy, as well as the law I guess, that they cannot be uncuffed until they have been handed over to the appropriate authorities. The Polynesian will be unable to use the toilet for hours.

Geoff continues, ‘This young girl is now throwing up, and I will bet any money that she will soil herself shortly. Why don’t we make them a couple?’

Unsure of what Geoff means, I ask, ‘What do you mean a couple?’

‘Let’s put her in the crew rest with King-Kong.’

Geoff does just that, and after about fifteen minutes I go to check on them. I open the curtain just a smidgeon and take a quick peek, already sure that one or both have indeed soiled themselves. I race back to the galley to tell Damien, ‘You must come and see this. This will cheer you up immensely.’

Damien follows me to the crew-rest area. The young girl is lying out cold there. The man responsible for his injuries is sitting in a pool of his urine and covered in vomit – not his vomit, but the young girl’s – and he looks exactly like you would expect someone to look if they were handcuffed, facing jail, hung-over and sitting in your own excrement and covered in someone else’s vomit.

Damien looks at the Polynesian and grins from ear to ear, ‘You, my friend, have just learnt how karma works’.