Author's note: the following story actually happened, just as related. I've not included names to protect both parties but also because we never exchanged names!
It had been a good week and I was sorry to see it end but had been fortunate to be able to be there at all. Having been "absorbed" into the workforce of the buying company after a merger with a younger but more energetic company, I turned out to be one of the first employees of the company to celebrate 25 years with the company. I had to laugh at that because the buying company was three years short of being 25 years old itself.
Still I had to say that the company took care of its people. As an anniversary award, I was given a week's vacation from my home on the east coast to any of several choices, which I quickly narrowed down to Hawaii and then to the island of Maui. I would have a condo and enough expense money to pay for a car rental, meals, and the various entertainment offered on the island, including but not limited to dinner cruises, parasailing, plantation tours, train rides and a tour of the island.
And the week had been truly magnificent, with perfect weather, whales in the cove off Lahaina, fresh-cut pineapple everywhere you looked, and a great surf for swimming. The seafood was fantastic; the service was great everywhere, and the luau I attended on the lawn of a hotel in Kanapali was a fun experience. I had even met a couple of Polynesian girls that I got to first base with, although I would have loved to have had more time with them to see what would have developed.
As much as I would have liked to delay the inevitable, the end of my week in Hawaii came on Wednesday. I checked out of the condo, drove to Kahului, where I boarded a Boeing 767 for the first leg of the journey home. The plane was only about a third full when we took off and I had hopes of being able to stretch out and catch up on some of the sleep I'd been missing.
Alas, it was not to be. We landed at the Honolulu Airport on Oahu long enough to take on additional passengers for the mainland. The plane, arranged with 2-5-2 seating in coach, rapidly filled up until the row I was in near the back was packed solid. I did have an aisle seat but it was going to be a long six hours before we landed in LA. I kept scanning the seats I could see to determine the possibilities of a more comfortable arrangement but as take-off time neared, I couldn't see many vacancies.
Right at the last minute, one of the flight attendants came down the aisle leading a woman who was struggling with a crutch. As she passed by me, I could see that she was wearing a pressure bandage on her right knee and was not putting any weight on it. As the attendant helped her into a seat a couple of rows behind me, I heard her say that she'd had an accident and had torn ligaments in the knee. However she couldn't let that stop her from a long-planned visit to her sister on the west coast.
Ten minutes later, the doors were closed and the plane was pushed back from the gate. Quickly I got up and went to the back of the plane for one last look around and I found that the five seats in front of the rear bulkhead were occupied only by the lady with the bad knee ... she had settled into the three seats on the left side, covered by a dark blue blanket with her head on a couple of pillows resting against the aisle seat's arm rest. She appeared to already be asleep. Since there was no one in the other aisle seat or the one to its left, I hurried around the bulkhead and settled into the aisle seat just as the plane began to roll.