Fly with Me: a novel by Andie Burke

chapter 2

With the permission of the bouffant blonde, Olive leaped out of her seat into the aisle. Her headphones almost strangled her, as they’d somehow gotten hooked in an armrest. She pulled them off. She could do this. She was an ER nurse with ten years of experience. She could absolutely do this. The plane lurched, and Olive grabbed hold of the seats, her muscles locking up until she saw the man on the ground.

Oh shit.

They’d gotten him out of his seat and onto the floor in a small vestibule at the front of the plane. He was in his forties or fifties. Gray peppered the hair on either side of his utterly pale face. Unconscious.

Some essential gear in Olive’s brain clicked into place. She rushed to the man’s side. “What happened?”

The head flight attendant, a tall man not much older than she was, handed her a stethoscope. “The people in the seat next to him saw him clutch his chest and then slump over. We don’t know anything else. Is he having a heart attack? The captain’s working on getting us diverted.”

“What supplies do we have?” Olive asked. Another flight attendant opened a black vinyl bag. She searched through it. “Can you find out what he was doing right before he slumped over?”

Olive kneeled, pressing the stethoscope to his chest. He was barely breathing. He had a pulse. Perfusion poor. Color bad. Extremities cool.

The flight attendant appeared beside her again.

“They said he was eating a protein bar and coughed a couple times.”

Olive’s mind processed the information as she wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm. Not choking, though. That wouldn’t have been so fast.

The blood pressure was dangerously low.

Shit.

Protein bar.

Coughing.

She grabbed a penlight from the bag and looked at his throat. Not choking. Swelling. Allergic reaction. She breathed out slowly and grabbed the EpiPen from the emergency supplies bag. She pulled the cap and thrust it into the man’s thigh.

The man gasped and gagged. She rolled him onto his side, where he vomited. His skin was still super pale, and he wasn’t awake. Hypotension from anaphylaxis? Okay. Next steps. She tore his sleeve, wrapped a tourniquet around his arm, and started an IV. She let the fluid flow into him and checked his pressure again.

Still too damn low.

He was breathing better, but symptoms weren’t getting better quickly enough, and there was only one EpiPen in the bag.

Fuck.

Olive grabbed the mask and bag to start giving him rescue breaths. “I need someone to check with the passengers and see if anyone else has another EpiPen. Sometimes you need a second dose.”

A rash had bloomed all over his exposed skin. Olive pulled a flight attendant down to the ground and demonstrated how to give breaths with the mask.

The woman nodded nervously and picked up the motion. “I-I-I’ve had CPR training.”

“Good, thank you. You’re doing great.” Olive offered an assuring nod.

There was an AED beside her. She went ahead and ripped open the man’s shirt, sticking the pads on his chest.

If she couldn’t fix him soon, he was going to code. Could she manage a cardiac arrest here?

The other flight attendant came back with an EpiPen in his hand. Olive flipped it open and thrust it into the man’s other leg, holding it while rifling through the rest of the medications. She threw the used pen on the ground and drew up a dose of Benadryl and gave it through his IV, really hoping that Good Samaritan laws meant she wouldn’t get sued for this.