The quiet of the A321 Neo allowed Saidbh to hear the cacophony of foreign accents on the early morning flight from Dublin to New York. The week post St. Patrick’s day was already a heavy period for trans-Atlantic traffic but the unexpected shutdown of London Heathrow for almost a day had impacted demand even more severely.
The cabin lights dimmed, and the passengers aboard Aer Lingus Flight 327 from Dublin to New York City settled into their seats, eager to get the long transatlantic journey behind them. Saidbh Donnelly, a tall statuesque stewardess with a well-defined face and pleasing pointed nose, began her final safety demonstration before takeoff in the typical perverse style of forced enthusiasm and smiles that almost seems to accentuate the fatigue and joylessness cabin crew felt doing the performance.
The quiet of the A321 Neo allowed Saidbh to hear the cacophony of foreign accents on the early morning flight from Dublin to New York. The week post St. Patrick’s day was already a heavy period for trans-Atlantic traffic but the unexpected shutdown of London Heathrow for almost a day after a suspicious fire cut off it’s power had impacted demand even more severely.
With her bright ginger hair, pale face and green uniform she stood like a living tricolour as the glint of the early morning sun illuminated her as the in the cabin as the taxiing aircraft turned to allow it’s entrance, the light creeping into place upon her like the wall at the end of the solar passage at Newgrange. She didn't know that in a few short hours, her world, and everyone else's on this flight, would be irrevocably altered.
This flight contained an assortment of Irish students, young Americans heading home after spending a week in Ireland during the week of St. Patrick’s day and many others whose connecting flights to North America had been disrupted by the fire at Heathrow. It was a young crowd, no children, none beyond middle age and a surprising diversity of nationalities who all had the same story of their only way to North America being through this Aer Lingus flight as or through a connecting flight.
This sense of being apart of something meaningful, having a mission with a definitive end, undoing the snare in the flight backlogs helped distract Saidbh from her disappointment at missing what was supposed to be an April 1st day off with Michael. Saidbh always loved April Fool’s Day with Michael, it was always a surprise or adventure, a private tradition between the two of them. This year he had asked her to take the day off to enjoy his most elaborate series of surprises and fun deceptions yet. He had planned to propose but had done it that morning in bed instead. Saidbh had been elated, Michael was now her fiance. Fiance; so exciting and sexy compared to a mere “boyfriend”, “husband” or the depressing “partner”.
Saidbh caught herself staring back at the ring, a beautiful sapphire inlaid in silver. Her delicate hands, so enhanced by the added attention to her appearance her job demanded, wore it well and a spike of excitement ran up her spine each time her gaze returned to it during every moment of downtime or opportunity for distraction.
The first trio of hours had slipped by unnoticed. The occupants of the plane, though pressed together were separated from each other psychologically. Strangers remained strangers, no amount of physical proximity could overcome or merge their bubbles of personal intimacy, intensified by the biggest barrier to spontaneous or deep interaction, foreignness, otherness.
But quietly drifting through the air was something that would soon turn all that on it’s head. Saidbh’s face bore a confused look as she noticed what increasing numbers of the rest of the plane’s occupants were too, a scent of vanilla and, even more concerning, a very faint visible haze. Correlating with this seemed to be a change in the air and mood in the cabin. The passengers seemed more alert and talkative, more talking amongst themselves and stares between them, some more lingering than from a shared confusion as to what was causing the smell of vanilla or the haze.
As the minutes passed the pilots became increasingly agitated at not being able to identify the source of the gas as they mulled declaring an emergency. As the pilots were busy preparing to declare an emergency and going through checklists to ID possible sources for smoke the engaged Saidbh, who was feeling uncomfortable with some of the thoughts she was starting to have about certain male passengers volunteered to enter the cargo hold to check on the AC unit for any gross signs of malfunction.
Saidbh squeezed herself down below to penetrate below, the new aircraft not countering to assault her crisp uniform with much defilement. As she made her way past the avionics bay she was caressed by walls and pipes along the way to the primary air conditioning unit. The air collected from the engine turbines was sent here to be purified before being pumped into pipes in 3 areas of the plane, the cockpit, mid cabin and aft cabin.
As the unit came into view Saidbh almost had a heart attack. The unit which from the outside is supposed to be a large featureless metal box had some kind of device haphazardly attached to it. As she collected herself she began to approach it despite the fear and anxiety welling in her; her white face fainted illuminated from light reflecting from her torch. She just got just a mere step or two away from being in reach of it she heard a sudden high pitched noise as it released a cloud of gas that enveloped her, the substance penetrated deep into her clothes, skin and lungs as she gasped first in shock and then from the powerful release of adrenaline the gas seemed to instantly trigger in her.
