the pilots she knew flew for the air force, and she had no idea what experience pilots in Outback Australia had. Surely they’d have to return to Sydney? But even as she waited for the pilot to make that announcement she realised it was ridiculous.
Returning to Sydney wouldn’t miraculously resolve the problem. The landing gear would still be stuck. It couldn’t be fixed in mid-air. So what was he going to do? They couldn’t fly around indefinitely. At some stage they’d run out of fuel and then they’d drop out of the sky.
As her fellow passengers also put two and two together she could feel fear building up around her. Like a living breathing presence in the air it moved from one person to the next, wrapping its icy tentacles around each and every one of them, binding them together in a potential tragedy.
Everyone was silent. Were they thinking about crashing or were they too terrified to utter a sound? Whatever the reason for the silence it was there and it was complete and there was nothing to distract anyone from the pilot’s next words.
‘This is going to make landing difficult but not impossible. The airport has a dirt landing strip, which we can use in this situation, but I ask you all to assume the crash position as directed by our cabin crew.’
His last sentence succeeded in breaking the silence. There was yelling, there were tears and there was screaming. It seemed as though everyone had found their voices at once and the cabin reverberated with noise. Emma’s heart leapt in her chest and she felt it seem to lodge at the base of her throat. Nausea filled the empty space in her ribcage where moments before her heart had been.
In the commotion the crew moved calmly through the cabin. They opened the window shades and instructed the passengers to put their heads into their laps or brace themselves on the seat in front of them. Surely they couldn’t be as calm as they sounded?
But gradually, as the plane continued to circle, the cabin crew managed to quieten the passengers and the noise was reduced to a less frightening level.
Emma put her head in her lap. She knew the plane was circling in order to give the emergency crews on the ground time to get into position. She could picture the fire engines and ambulances racing to the edge of the runway and she wondered whose services would be required most.
This was crazy, she thought as she hugged her knees. She’d flown halfway around the world searching for peace but she hadn’t expected it to come in the form of mortality. This was why she should never make plans. They always went wrong. She was going to die at twenty-seven years of age. Just like her mother had.
No. Thinking like that wasn’t helpful. She had to believe that the pilot was as confident as he sounded. She took a deep breath and crossed her fingers as the overhead lights were switched off and the cabin was plunged into semi-darkness. The afternoon light bouncing off the desert and coming through the windows was only just bright enough to take the edge off the gloom.
Emma closed her eyes and waited for the moment that everyone talked about. She wasn’t waiting for her life to flash before her eyes but for the moment of regret for things she hadn’t yet done. But it wasn’t things left undone that sprang to mind. It was things she’d lost. Her mother had died when Emma had been a toddler and she barely remembered her, but her father had died recently and Emma felt his loss keenly. She and her father had shared a close bond. For many years it had been just the two of them, and she wished more than anything that he was still part of her life.
She’d tried to fill the void left by her father’s death with other relationships but her choice of Jeremy, her last boyfriend, had been disastrous costing her both a place to live and her job.
That was something else she missed, she realised. Her job as a nurse, which she loved. But maybe it was time to put that behind her. Jeremy had said and done some cruel things that had made her question her nursing skills but she shouldn’t let him dictate her path. Not any more. She wasn’t about to ask for her old job back, she knew she’d never want to work with Jeremy again, but that didn’t prevent her from nursing altogether. There were plenty of other hospitals that would love to have her.
Her career was something worth living for and she promised herself that if she survived this landing she would set about returning to nursing.
She had just started running through a mental list of which hospitals she should apply to when her head bounced and her chin slammed against her knees, jarring her teeth as the plane hit the ground and slid on its belly. The collision with the earth took her by surprise as she hadn’t realised they were that close.
She could hear the screech of metal as the fuselage complained about being thrown at the ground and she waited for the sound of metal tearing as the plane was ripped apart, waited for the smell of fuel, the roaring heat of flames.
Around her people were screaming, including the girl beside her. Emma opened her eyes. The girl was cradling her left arm and her hand was twisted and lying at an unnatural angle relative to her forearm. She couldn’t have been in the brace position properly and she must have slammed into the back of the seat in front of her on impact and fractured her wrist. The break looked painful and, considering their circumstances, there was every chance she’d go into shock. But what could Emma do?
She could feel the plane sliding sideways before it came to a halt. She looked along the aisle. Some of the overhead lockers had sprung open with the impact and contents had fallen out, but incredibly the plane appeared to be in one piece. There were no explosions, no gaping holes, no fires. People were crying but she couldn’t see any movement, not from either the crew or the passengers. There was no one to assist them, not yet. What could she do?
Over the sound of crying passengers Emma could hear the sirens of the emergency vehicles. She looked out the window but the view was completely obscured by a curtain of red dust that billowed around them. The red haze swirled as the emergency vehicles raced through it and the cloud pulsed as the emergency lights bounced off the dust particles. Help was on the way but she couldn’t tell how long it would be before they’d be reached.
The girl had stopped screaming but was still cradling her left arm protectively and sobbing. Emma touched the girl lightly on the shoulder, needing to get her attention. ‘I think you’ve broken your wrist,’ she said, stating the obvious. ‘I’m a nurse. Do you want me to help you?’
The girl looked at Emma. Her face was pale, completely drained of colour, and her eyes were wide. ‘I’m a nurse too,’ she said, ‘but I can’t think of what to do.’
Emma understood exactly what the girl meant. Administering treatment to others was vastly different from working out how to self-treat. And even though Emma wasn’t used to giving treatment in quite this situation—state-of-the-art emergency departments were more her scene—she knew that any assistance she could give would be beneficial.
She dragged her handbag from under her seat. She knew she probably wasn’t supposed to remove it but she needed to do something while they waited. Rummaging through it, she found a packet of painkillers but left them alone. The paramedics would want to be in charge of that.
She dug deeper into her bag and found a large cotton scarf that she carried in case the air-conditioning on the plane was too cold. She gave a wry smile as she pulled it out. Efficient air-conditioning was the least of their problems.
However, she could use the scarf to stabilise the girl’s arm because somehow they still had to get out of the plane. Emma assumed they’d have to exit through the emergency doors, which would mean sliding down the inflatable chutes. That wasn’t going to be good. But if she could make the girl more comfortable it might help.
‘Would you like me to support your arm with this?’ Emma asked, showing her the scarf.
She received a nod and she quickly fashioned a sling, holding the arm close against the girl’s body. By the time she’d finished, the cabin crew had got the emergency exits open and were moving through the aircraft, organising the evacuation process. Any injured passengers and those travelling with young children were directed to evacuate first.
A flight attendant stopped by the girl’s side. Emma