Read Online Permanence by Vincent Zandri - Free Book Online

these yellow life preservers, modem technology. My God, our very lives are dependent upon the remaining healthy engines and a couple of over-stressed pilots.
    Repeatedly, I do something I should not do: I stare outside the porthole window at the blackened, failed engine. There is the occasional sputter of smoke. Other than that, nothing but blue, heavenly sky.
    This is crazy, but I feel like laughing.
    I feel like crying.
    My stomach is as heavy as a stone.
    Doctor leans across my lap. “The engine is finally dead,” he says, his voice suddenly calm, poised, and accepting. “The engine is gone.” His face is white; tiny beads of sweat run from his brow onto his closely cropped, salt-and-pepper beard. “Just dead,” he repeats, in a whisper voice.
    “Dead,” I say, for lack of something else.
    “Dead,” says doctor, as if trying to convince himself.
    Safe, but not sound
    The flight attendant requests that we remain in our seats for the duration of the flight, unless using the bathrooms becomes a matter of life or death.
    Life or death.
    Strange words for a flight attendant, considering the blown-out, burned-out engine.
    So this is life in the face of death.
    And, of course, I have to use the bathroom. I feel the near perpetual pressure just below my stomach, but I am afraid to move. I feel that even the slightest motion will send this plane plummeting into the ocean.
    Life and death.
    A new flight attendant appears from behind the white curtains that separate the flight attendant station from business class. She whispers something to our tall, blonde attendant. Together, they smile. Doctor leans into my ear and whispers: “That smile is a sight for sore eyes.”
    The flight attendant announces to the passengers of coach class: “The captain has informed us that the fire in port engine number one has been properly extinguished. It will now be possible to continue our flight on the remaining engines.”
    But what I want to say is this: do we have a choice?
    Somehow, I am not relieved.
    As I said, we are requested to remain in our seats with our safety belts fastened. We are expected to maintain emergency procedure.
    NO SMOKING!
    This is life and this is death.
    “We have begun our decent and should be landing safely in Rome in approximately one half hour,” the flight attendant adds. But I know this: the hour will seem like a lifetime.
    I turn to doctor.
    “What does she mean by ‘should’?”
    “She means we will,” insists doctor. This is the expected answer. Our hands are moist from holding on to one another. I decide to trust doctor, whether I want to or not. He is all I have in the place of God. He is what I have in the place of Jamie and baby. I need him like I need no other. He is my life in the face of certain death.
    On the house
    The blonde flight attendant comes up behind doctor. She is pushing the drink cart. She smiles at doctor. “On the house,” she says. “Compliments of the airline.”
    “Make mine a parachute,” interrupts the drunken man from where he is seated, four rows ahead. The flight attendant ignores the man. She says nothing; I say nothing; Doctor says nothing. We are not amused by the drunken man.
    “Scotch,” says doctor, casually, like ordering a drink inside a bar on the safety of the solid ground.
    “I’ll have the same,” I say. My voice trembles and breaks. I smile, as though embarrassed by my fear of crashing—a travel agent who finds the friendly skies very unfriendly.
    “Make it two,” says doctor, looking up to the flight attendant and smiling an uncommon smile. “Two drinks apiece, that is.”
    This is not like the doctor I know at all.
    Some kind of bad dream
    I’ll tell you what else is unlike the doctor I have come to know: he places a tranquilizer on top of my fold-out table. Then he lifts my full cup of scotch and places it back on his own table. But I am apprehensive about taking the drug since I have already swallowed some of the scotch. And this: I