The Far Side of the Sun
December
Heidi Stillwell winced as the shrill throbbing cadence of her alarm clock penetrated the early morning fog, causing her to bolt upright even as she became aware of a deep pain resonating somewhere behind her right eye. She tried to rub five hours of sleep from her eyes, tried to connect with the realities of the day ahead, but she knew that without a shower – and about two liters of strong, black coffee – the effort was doomed to fail.
"First things first," she said to the empty room. "Coffee."
She padded to the little kitchenette in these spartan quarters and slapped a pod into the funky looking automated coffee thinga-ma-whozit and hit "BREW" as she slipped a cup under the spout, then off she went to the head and flipped on the shower. She brushed her teeth as the water warmed up, then stepped under the water while she continued brushing, all the while trying to concentrate on the day ahead.
0400 now, be at the line shack by 0440 for pre-flight briefing, pre-flight walk-around at 0515 – or close to it – then about 15 minutes to enter frequencies into the radios and cross check against her flight plan. Maybe ten minutes for engine start and taxi to the active, putting me airborne by 0545 latest. First airborne re-fueling would probably be somewhere over Lake Erie, most likely just north of Cleveland, the second west and north of Chicago. If the weather-Gods cooperated she'd zip on in to Mountain Home Air Force Base in time for lunch, do a quick de-brief then make it to the base clinic in time to see a few patients.
Stillwell was an U.S. Air Force Academy graduate; she had gone to medical school at Duke after graduation, and after gaining her M.D. did her internship and residency in Family Practice at military facilities in San Antonio. She continuing her duty obligation in the Air Force as a Flight Surgeon, and moved to Idaho, to Mountain Home Air Force Base after completing her residence. One of the perks of that posting was continuing flight time, for, or so the theory went anyway, you had to be a pilot in order to become a Flight Surgeon, and as Heidi Stillwell loved flying more than just about anything else in the world, this wasn't a burdensome duty. In fact, she lived for these intermittent proficiency checks, and grabbed every opportunity she could to rack up more hours.
She'd learned to fly as soon as her feet could reach the rudder pedals, or so her father had always liked to say, and because he had been an Air Force pilot, he had started her flying "in earnest" when she was ten years old. He had left the military when she was still very young and started flying for Delta, and so Heidi ended up with her pilot's license before she had even considered getting a permit to drive a car. To this day, she still hated automobiles: they were simply too slow...
Heidi Stillwell had always been on the far side of smart, too, and this she inherited from her mother. Her IQ had consistently been measured over the years at 160 or better. Einstein territory, in other words, and she had tended to intimidate most of her teachers in high school, let alone the few boys who dared talk to her. Still, she had run into the same glass ceilings her mother had, and everywhere she turned: male teachers rarely acknowledged her intelligence and often all but ignored her in the classroom; Academy classmates brushed her aside as a noisome nuisance, and even now the pilots in her wing ignored her, probably, she assumed, because she hadn't seen combat. Yet. But it was always funny to her how nice they were when time rolled around for the bi-annual flight physicals. Funny too, she thought, how quiet these men became when she checked them for hernias.
It probably hadn't helped that she'd conscientiously ignored the jocks and their cheerleaders all through high school. Further, to the amusement of her classmates, she spent almost all her free time pushing an old red and white Cessna 150 through the skies around of Atlanta, Georgia, and these kids just couldn't relate to that kind of seriousness, not in the age of video games, anyway. When she received her appointment to the Academy, she already had more than seven hundred hours of flight time, and was licensed to fly multi-engine aircraft under instrument flight rules, a rare accomplishment for one so young. Let alone, heaven forbid, a girl. She had never considered that her classmates were envious, and that some almost in awe of her accomplishments. Still, it became a point of contention for her father, if only because he wanted her to be a well-rounded kid, and well rounded girls had boyfriends, didn't they? He was concerned, he told her, because he felt she'd never really find true happiness in life until she was surrounded by friends and her own family. Going it alone wasn't going to bring happiness into her life, he said over and over.
But the way things were going? No friends? Only her studies, and flying?
When she graduated from high school, he doubted she'd even held hands with anyone. Ever.
And on her fifteenth birthday, Heidi Stillwell's mother passed away. Cancer. A vicious ovarian cancer, a malignant monster that had taken her mother in less than a year, and the experience defined Heidi Stillwell's life in many ways, but most of all the journey to death she made with her mother informed her choice to become a physician, and her outlook on life, in every way conceivable.
With all this in mind, consider that at 29 years young Heidi Stillwell had in fact shown almost zero interest in men (or women too, for that matter), and while she had (once) kissed a boy at a high school dance (and enjoyed it too, for some odd reason), that was the extent of her intimate interpersonal relationships. She was, in other words, somewhat lacking in experience when it came to these matters, yet lately this had been causing her to lose more than a little sleep. It just wasn't right, she told herself. At least that's what the little voice in the back of her head kept saying...only now, after almost thirty years ignoring her father...she was beginning to listen.
+++++
The pre-flight briefing mentioned a fast moving line of storms coming up the Ohio River Valley, and Stillwell noted the center of the low on her chart, as well as the storm's anticipated velocity vectors. She might need to alter her flight-plan once airborne to divert north around some of the cells, but at the moment the MET officer projected the line would get pushed east before it hit the Great Lakes. If so...she was golden, but being ever the realist she did the math in the comfort of the line shack and worked out the frequencies and courses she would need to divert north, and ahead of the storm, if it did in the end push north to the lakes.
Her flight suit on and helmet in hand, she made her way out to flight line and the F-15 Eagle she would fly out to Idaho; a crew chief in a bright orange vest was standing by next to the cockpit to help get her strapped in, hooked up and on her way. Stillwell climbed the ladder and plopped into the seat, then woke up the electrical bus, checked battery status, entered navigational TACAN and tower/departure COMMS frequencies on the radios, and positioned her charts on the holder strapped to her left thigh, then signaled the chief she was ready for engine starts.
She looked at the ground crew arrayed around the Eagle to make sure none were standing too close to an engine intake, then when the chief signaled, she started engine one. She watched pressures build, monitored fuel flows and checked in with the tower, then the chief signaled she was clear to start two. That done, she scanned her gauges one by one and when everything appeared nominal she saluted the chief and lowered the canopy.
"Eagle 3-2-3, we're all lit up and ready to go," she told the tower.
"Roger 3-2-3. You're clear to taxi to 2-7 right. Hold short for the C-5 on final."
"3-2-3."
She advanced the throttles, released the brakes and made a smooth right turn onto the taxiway. She pumped brakes to check hydraulic pressure, watched gauges as she taxied, and while occasionally looking around for any sort of ground traffic that might become a conflict. Everything felt good, and the rush of pushing the Eagle out to the runway was, as always, exhilarating.
"3-2-3, holding short," she said as her Eagle braked to a stop well back from the runway. She finished her checklists and made sure the frequency for departure control was up on COMMS 2, then she looked over her right shoulder as the truly huge C-5 transport floated over the threshold and flared for touchdown. She could see at least three more sets of C-5 landing lights strung out in the distance on final, and though she had to hold for about a minute to let the huge aircraft's wake turbulence settle down, she was anxious to get the show on the road.
"3-2-3, clear to taxi to position and hold."
"3-2-3, roger." She advance the throttles and turned onto the runway, then set her brakes and began her engine run-up. She paused just short of "full military power", or full afterburners, and watched her engine gauges carefully.
"3-2-3, clear for takeoff."
"3-2-3." She rechecked the throttles were all the way to their stops and could almost feel the air outside the Eagle as the power ripped through the air like man-made thunder. Indeed, she knew from experience that the Eagle's scream could be felt more than ten miles away at this setting. Watching the instruments carefully now, she released the brakes and felt the full weight of the jet's thrust push her back into the seat. Watching her speed build in the heads-up-display, she pulled back on the stick at a hundred and sixty three knots and felt her stomach sink as the Eagle left the ground, raising the landing gears just as the aircraft left the ground. At four hundred feet above ground level and climbing fast, and at a hundred and ninety knots indicated, she throttled back and raised the flaps a notch, then switched to departure control.
