Snap out of it

I heard the heavy breathing well before I was pulled into the scenario. As I became aware of the noise, I realized it was not so much heavy breathing as it was very deep, very rhythmic breathing — like a person might do if they were trying to avert a panic attack. Then I felt the tap on my left arm. 

“Excuse me, sorry…(gasp)…to bother you…(gasp)…but…”

The woman, looking straight ahead as if focusing somewhere in the distance, was extending her right hand to me, all the while moving her left arm slowly, rhythmically, from up by her head, down, along her body, in time with the breathing she was clearly — I now had my eyes wide open — trying to control. 

In an instant I realized she was panicking. She needed to be connected to someone who wasn’t.

I reached out and grasped her right hand with mine and used my left to form a vice-like grip around her right wrist. 

“It’s alright,” I said. “It’s ok. Just concentrate on your breathing.” 

She wrenched her head around and looked at me, a little wild eyed. “Do you know Lamaze? …957…(gasp, ragged breath in)…956…”

“No,” I replied truthfully, but realizing that my sensible British mother’s upbringing of me and my own reading and re-reading of the Sue Barton, Nurse books during early adolescence had prepared me for this very kind of situation. “Doesn’t matter,” I reassured her. “I’ll just keep holding on to you.” The woman kept managing her breathing. 

My participation in this woman’s drama quite took my mind off my own discomfort. We were seat mates on a late-June flight to Toronto. I at the window, she on the aisle, the middle seat was empty. My eyes had been closed earlier because I was maintaining my own equanimity during the turbulence that had materialized two-thirds of the way through the journey.

Suddenly the woman spoke again. “Sorry…need to move my elastic band…sorry…” 

I released my vice-like grip and she moved the blue band, which I had originally believed to be one of those message bands but which, in fact, served a more practical purpose for this frightened woman. She needed to move the blue band from her right wrist to her left.

Before reclaiming my right hand, she pulled the blue band quite far back and let it snap sharply — painfully? — onto her left wrist. “Stop it!” she commanded her body, but as the turbulence continued so did her gasping, ragged breaths. 

As the plane bumped its way through the clouds, the woman confirmed out loud, “I’m losing it,” and then continued to count, to breathe, to do the arm movement from her head down along her body, all the while continuing the countdown: “…948…947.” 

Passengers around us had begun to notice her distress and motioned for the flight attendant to…well, to attend to her. But it seemed my strong grip and the woman’s own breathing and counting routine were sufficient to see her through her terror towards calm, which came as soon as the turbulence ceased. Then, she and I fell into a conversation. 

“Toronto’s usually rough,” she said, by way of explanation. “Oh," I said, not entirely sure what she meant. “The heat, the humidity, the air — it’s rough,” she explained.  

It turned out that she flies a couple of times a month for her job, and the fear doesn’t diminish with frequency of exposure. It took a Fear of Flying course to get her into a plane again after two years of mainly ground-only travel. After a long bus ride, train journey, and a hair-raising taxi ride to the course, the woman promised herself she would take the graduation flight home no matter what. And she did and has been flying ever since. Not happily. Not easily. But successfully.

“I normally try to be very self-contained,” the woman said apologetically, “but on occasion I’ve elbowed my seat mate when I’ve pulled my band back to snap myself.” We both agreed that fear is often not rational, but it can be manageable with the right routine — and a bit of basic knowledge: Turbulence equals discomfort not drastic danger.

Holding a stranger’s hand hadn’t been in my plans that day (back in June 2018), but I’m glad I was there in that moment for that woman (we never did introduce ourselves). We should all be so lucky as to make such an important connection with a stranger on an ordinary day. 

Postscript: On my flight home in mid-July, we also encountered turbulence, but the experience of the young boy sitting behind me could not have been more different. He said to his dad, loudly enough for me to hear clearly, “These bumps are awesome, Dad! It’s like being on the roller coast at the fair!” 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash