It was a redeye flight. Pre-pandemic. My wife and I flew out of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport at an ungodly hour of night.
We had been in Arizona to visit my cousins. July in Phoenix was hotter than playing tag in the attic. Earlier that day in Glendale I’d seen a college kid at our hotel frying an egg on the hood of his car as a joke.
Our nine-o’clock flight had been cancelled, so we took a flight departing from PHX while the rest of the sane world was sleeping. We sat in the rear of the plane; livestock class.
I watched the pinprick lights of the Copper State twinkle from 30,000 feet as my wife slept with her head on my shoulder.
The aircraft was mostly empty except for a few sleep-deprived flight attendants and us masochists.
On my other side was a woman wearing pink medical scrubs. She was drifting in and out of consciousness. Her head kept falling onto my other shoulder, whereupon she’d catch herself and apologize.
“Oh, jeez. I’m sorry, sir.”
I smiled. “Don’t be.”
She
had cropped salt-and-pepper hair and wore a hospital lanyard nametag that read LPN. She seemed restless.
I started the conversation. “You’re a nurse.”
“Yeah,” she replied groggily. Then she closed her eyes again, signaling we were done talking.
I glanced at the flight attendants, half-sleeping, buckled in their jumpseats. I was jealous. I tried to fall asleep, too, but it wasn’t happening. My wife was snoring like a GM 6.6 liter diesel.
I pointed to the nurse’s hospital nametag. “Originally from Phoenix?”
She shook her head, eyes still closed. “Nobody’s originally from Phoenix. I’m from Georgia. You?”
“Sunshine State.”
The sound of turbine engines hummed beneath us and we both tried to sleep. But failed.
She said, “So what do you do?”
“Very little.”
Her turn to smile. It was a great smile, but there was sadness…