A Chick in the Cockpit (10 page)

Since aviation was shut down during the weeks after the terrorist attacks, I thought it would be months before I was back in the air. As it turned out, I ended up being one of the first flight crews that were in the air after 9/11. Unknown at the time as to who our passengers were, we did several contract charter trips for the Department of Defense, one of which was down to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We were mainly flying troops around, even though we didn't know yet who the enemy was. I was a captain, but since I kept my currency in all three flight deck seats, I was asked to cover some emergency trips as flight engineer. Realizing that the security of every pilot's job was in jeopardy due to the entire shutdown of aviation, I jumped at the chance. Only later did we all realize who our passengers were and why they were going down to Guantanamo Bay.

Even though I was able to work a few flights, our company was still sliding towards bankruptcy, and all scheduled flights were cancelled. Brad and I decided to take this time to be together, use our free pass travel and spend some of the money I'd set aside for Kenya. We wanted to show the terrorists that they couldn't stop us from living, and since we couldn't go to Europe, we chose to go to New Orleans instead. We wondered if traveling on a pass and sitting standby during this crisis was going to work, but we didn't have to worry. There were only fourteen people on the entire flight. As our plane headed south, I wondered how this aircraft could afford to operate with the income of just a dozen people (we were riding on a free pass). The devastating impact this would have on the aviation industry sunk in, along with knowing the domino effect that would take down many airlines in slow motion.

New Orleans was subdued. The nation was still in shock, and even rebellious New Orleans had a reverent quiet about her. We spent our days wandering the old neighborhoods, cemeteries, and museums. We finished our nights with Zydeco music and pizza at midnight. We felt guilty to be happy, but we were, and we thought the best revenge on Al-Qaeda was for everyone in the world to give them the finger and smile while doing it.

On our fourth day, I noticed that Brad was quiet and withdrawn, but figured he was tired. After an aborted trip to the Audubon Zoo, we decided a walk through a park would be better, given the oppressive heat and humidity. The oak trees were monstrous and spooky with the Spanish moss groping at their limbs. If you looked closely at the tree branches, there were hundreds of Huntsman spiders in their webs waiting for their prey.

Brad stopped under one of these trees draped in spiders and said he had a question to ask me. I watched as he bit his lower lip. I'd never intuitively known what was going to happen next more clearly than I did at that moment. I knew he was going to propose, and I didn't want him to.
It's too soon. Not here, not now. Our life is perfect; don't change it
I pleaded inside my brain.

The realization put panic and adrenaline into my heart, so I instantly said out loud, “Oh please, no!” His eyes got wide and he tilted his head because he hadn't said anything yet, but he plowed ahead because he thought I didn't know what was coming next. His eyes filled up with tears of emotion as he dug into his pocket. Before he found what he was looking for (the ring), his trembling hands reached for mine and held them while he collected his thoughts. When he began to speak, his face was filled with an intensity I'd never felt before. “Erika, I love you so much,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes,” and I think that we could have a great life together. I have never, and will never, meet anyone like you again...I was wondering if you would marry me.”

A flood of heat coursed through my veins. Spoiled by fairy tale books and Hollywood romance movies, I figured I just didn't want him to ask me when I was close to passing out from heat exhaustion with spiders looming inches from our heads. But there it was; the beautiful, life changing offer. The question. My moment. The future. He was the symmetry to my narrow balance-beam life. He would be there to catch me if I fell. This could really be a good life together. 9/11 enforced the idea that I should live in the moment, and in that moment together we were invincible. I was tired of being the captain of my life, and I wanted to fly with just the responsibilities of being a copilot. I wanted a captain. Of course, I said yes.

He finally found the ring and placed it on my finger. We hugged each other like our lives depended on it and kissed with the passion of Adam and Eve to seal our fate.

We planned a July wedding and hoped we'd be able to get time off from work. In the meantime, I picked up as many extra flights as possible and bid the heaviest flying lines to cover the upcoming costs. As usual, I was away from home most weeks of the month and rarely saw Brad. My focus was getting flight hours to earn enough money to pay for our wedding. Never once, from my first solo to my Boeing 727 captain's check ride, had I ever considered what would happen if I couldn't fly. Flying defined me. I was nothing but a pilot, but something happened two months before our wedding that planted a seed in the back of my mind and shook the foundation of who I thought I was. It was something that made me wake up and realize how precarious life is. In an instant, life can change forever with the simplest of twists. I had bought a horse.

His name was Tuff (aptly named, I might add) and I boarded him at a stable about a mile down the road. His history was unknown, but I purchased him from a desperate man who was moving to Australia. I swear he must have drugged the horse the first time I rode him because he was the most docile creature I'd ever met. Within two days, however, he was as calm as a wild mustang on BLM roundup day. I realized he was going to need time and patience, but I was in no hurry. Brad and I would drive over and visit him almost every day.

I had a trainer start working with him, which dismayed Brad. He couldn't imagine why anyone would own a creature just to play and look at it. He wanted the horse to be ridden, not a pretty lawn ornament, and after just three weeks as we're driving to the stable, Brad grumbled that, “If you don't ride that fucking horse today, I think we need to talk about why you have a horse.”

Three weeks. My goal was to be able to ride him within a year, so I was shocked to think Brad thought now was an appropriate time to give it a go. I wanted to show Brad that having a horse is a good thing and, at some point, I wanted him to have a horse, too, so we could ride together. I didn't want him to be soured on the whole idea so quickly. I wanted this to be a good experience, I wanted it to work. I threw away my common sense checklist.

The stable owners had wanted me to sign a release of liability to use the arena next door. I realized I forgot the slip as I was walking Tuff and getting him used to the reins and saddle I'd bought for him. Not even in my wildest dreams was I planning on riding, but Brad looked at the saddled up horse and said, “Well, this is a perfect time to ride this fucking horse. Jump on him and ride back to the car and get the slip.” My heart stopped at the challenge.

“Nah, I'll just walk him up there. I'm getting him used to the equipment.”

Brad rolled his eyes and laughed at me. “You've got to be kidding! You have a horse and he's tacked up and you're going to
walk
with him back to the car? Are you insane? I don't get it. Do you want a horse or not? What's your problem?”

I knew I shouldn't have done it, but I was pissed and wanted to show him that I knew what I was doing. I did know what I was doing by
not
riding him, but I jumped on instead.

Tuff didn't seem too concerned that I was now riding instead of walking him. I sat up there on his back trembling with fear and pride at being laughed at. As we were riding up the side road back to the car, an unfamiliar Boxer dog came running out of an out-building and spotted us. It was a visiting dog that hadn't been around horses, so he started running right towards Tuff and me. It took my horse half a second to decide he was going to get eaten by this dog, and bolted into the dense woods. In an instant, I saw Tuff lower his head, and my reflex told me he was going to try and buck me off, but as it turned out he was ducking out of the way of a guide wire off a telephone pole. I just misread the cue.

He ducked and I had pulled straight up on the reins thinking he was going to throw me, so the guide wire hit my raised hand first and it boomeranged me off the back of the horse. I landed flat on my back and it knocked the wind out of me. I lay there hoping I could move, and a wave of relief washed over me when I realized I could sit up. I put my left hand down to leverage myself up so I could stand up but before I could rise, I felt a sharp pain shooting from my fingers to my shoulder. I looked at my left hand and paled when I could bone sticking out of my ring and pinky finger.

“Oh, that can't be good. Oh, no...Brad! Help!” He'd already seen the whole thing happen and was running up the hill to retrieve what was left of me. We drove to the local doctor (this is on a Sunday, as Murphy's Law would have it) and after one look, the doctor said there was nothing he could do. He had given me a shot of morphine as soon as I walked into the clinic, which now required a thousand dollar ambulance ride to Denver because he couldn't release me after a shot of morphine.

Before they wheeled me into the operating room, I looked the surgeon in the eye and said, “I'm a pilot and I'll die if I can't fly anymore. Please do a good job.” The doctor said he'd do such a good job that he'd let me be his captain. They operated and stuck three pins in my fingers, which extended out of my hand. During the months of recovery, I could make myself almost faint just by looking.

When I first woke up after surgery, my hand was bandaged so heavily I couldn't tell if it was a stump or if all went well. I was in the hospital for three days. Brad stayed until I woke up from surgery on the first day, then left. I didn't see or hear from him the whole next day until dinner time. I had no idea where he was. I lay in my hospital bed thinking my career, which meant the core of who I was, was done and over forever. Meanwhile, Brad had decided to go to Bandimere Speedway without so much as a phone call to inquire if I was okay, or to tell me where he'd be for the day. As my dinner was being brought in, Brad showed up in his stinky racing clothes. He told me he'd been at the racetrack all day and forgot to call to let me know where he was and, oh by the way, he was also starving, so would I mind if he had some of my dinner? He ate my entire dinner, kissed me on the cheek and said he had to get home and change his clothes and feed the dogs. I was crushed.

The next day, the operating doctor came in to check on me. He said the surgery went well and that with extensive physical therapy I would be flying in as little as three months. “Three months? No way! I can't be gone that long.” I had never been away from flying that long. Flying
was
me, and I didn't exist unless I knew I could fly.

I was back to work in two months. I went to physical therapy religiously and basically just spent that time building up the strength in the rest of my hand since my two fingers were worthless. They still are. Crooked and mangled and permanently at an angle, they are a constant reminder of the stupidity of my pride.

The Boeing 727 has a tiller that steers the aircraft when taxiing on the ground and you have to use your left hand to operate it. It's not especially heavy, but I'd lost my hand strength, and two fingers didn't work, so I worried that I couldn't maneuver it. I needed to find out before I went back to flying, so I decided to tag along with Brad for one of his night shifts as a mechanic just to make sure I had enough strength to turn the tiller full motion. The mechanics reposition the aircraft at night, so taxiing the aircraft would give me an opportunity to test myself. After all those weeks of therapy, my heart was chomping at the bit, and I was more than eager to put aside my anxiety dreams about forgetting how to fly.

Tears of fear and frustration rolled down my face the first few minutes because I just couldn't hold the turn. The tiller would pop back into the neutral position while I was trying to turn. Brad quietly put his arm around my shoulder. “Come on. I know you can do this. Try gripping the tiller in a different position so you can use your body as leverage.” I braced my left leg against the side of the cockpit wall and used my whole arm strength rather than my hand—and it worked. I moved the aircraft from the maintenance hangar to the gate. I called crew scheduling the next day and informed them I'd be ready to bid a flight line next month. I knew I had to go to recurrent training before I was back on the line, so I got in a few more days of physical therapy. I also had my medical certificate renewed, and I downplayed the accident to my flight physician. “Oh, it was no big deal, I just crunched a couple fingers, but they're fine now.”

The story didn't end here because, once again, Karma reared its head to equalize the experience. Just two weeks after I'd been released from the hospital, Brad informed me that he was going to ride Tuff. He was convinced it was my bad horsemanship that got me hurt, and he wanted to show both the horse and me who was in charge.

Brad went for an ambulance ride, too. Tuff threw him and the saddle off in less than eight seconds. It just knocked the wind out of him but, not to be outdone, he demanded a ride in an ambulance. Not even a bruise! It made me think of how he'd pulled me to my feet before I even had my wits about me, with a bone sticking out of my hand, no less. Brad told the ambulance driver that he “for sure broke something.” They put him on the backboard with a neck collar and he got carried to the ambulance.

I sold the horse two weeks later. I was honest with the new buyer, and he was confident he could train him. I heard through the grapevine that the new owner “decided” to just walk this horse around instead of ride him, too. Tuff colicked a year later, and his bucking days were over.

A year later, I bought a kind, small horse named Riley. Such a gentle spirit, he helped me reconnect with my passion for horses. Those few moments at the beginning always triggered a splash of fear when my butt was in the saddle, but he taught me how to trust him. Brad forced me to sell Riley when I started my business the following year, but I am thankful this sweet horse gave me an opportunity to heal.