Pilots

Benjamin Watts awoke in the bed he and his wife shared to discover he could not move from his neck down.

Before panic set in, he rolled his head right to glance at the time, seeing it was mid-morning. Waking at nine was no worry, he had flown the night before and had gotten home at half past eleven, showered, read, and fallen asleep, if he remembered correctly, at 12:15.  

His first thought on feeling, or rather not feeling, his inability to move was, “Oh, no, I have to fly today.” 

Like a good pilot, he ran through his checklist, trying to suss out the problem. Legs, yes, there but immobile. Arms the same. Hands, feeling a bit large and clammy, but frozen. Lungs, yes, breathing. Heart, he could hear the beating in his chest. Systems were nominal, but no contact. 

“You’ll be late,” his wife said. She strolled into the room with a basket of clean laundry on her hip. 

Benjamin, a man who had been trained for one of the worst disasters, a plane falling out of the sky, was suddenly very frightened. His wife’s simple movement with the basket, the way she stopped, put the basket on the end of their king size bed, and then started folding the laundry produced in him a storm of dread. 

Oh, I can’t move. He thought to himself completely for the first time. I can’t move. 

“Mary,” he said, whispering without meaning to. He worried his voice was afflicted. 

“Yes, Ben. I bet you’re tired. Do you want coffee? Breakfast?” She asked.

“Mary,” Benjamin said again. His voice louder, but tenuous. 

“Oh, hunny, you sound horrid. Are you feeling ill?” 

“It’s just that,” Benjamin said, afraid to say the words out loud. “It’s just that…”

Mary stood up straight and held one of Ben’s t-shirt in her hands, pressed against her chest. She stared at her husband with a face reserved for suffering loved ones. 

“I can’t move,” Ben said.

“You can’t move?” She lay the shirt she was folding back into the basket. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean I can’t move. Not my legs or arms or hands.” 

“But you,” Mary started, then stopped. She went to him, running her hands up and down the length of first his legs, then his arms, then patting across his stomach and chest. 

Benjamin kept a running commentary as she progressed. Legs, yes, arms, yes, stomach, yes, chest, yes. 

“You mean you can’t move at all?”

“Not at all.” 

“But, can you try?” Mary asked. Confused as he was, she was not trained in disaster preparedness, so asked useless questions. 

“I am trying, right now,” Benjamin said. He squeezed his eyes shut in a show of force. “I’m trying to lift my right foot.” 

Mary watched, waiting for the foot to rise. 

“Oh, dear,” she said. 

Mary held the phone to Benjamin’s head. 

“Arthur, Watts here… Yes, yes, I think everything is alright, it’s that I’ve, well, I seem to be ill… No, not the flu… I hear the same thing, flying all over the place is bad for the flu… It’s, well, it’s hard to say… I know I’m scheduled for a Cleveland two p.m. today but, well, I can’t seem to move… Yes, strangest thing… Oh, yes, otherwise I feel fine, I guess… Thing is, you know, I can’t fly… I believe Rogers is on stand by… Yes, please let me know… God, I hope I do soon, too… Yes, I bet it’s a fatigue issue, they’ve got us flying ragged… Ok, then, ok, talk soon.”

“So?” Mary asked. She hung up the phone for him.  She had retrieved a hot water bottle and steamed towels in the bathroom to lay across Benjamin’s body and he was warming under them as he spoke on the phone. He didn’t know what warmth would do, except make him hot, but he didn’t have any better ideas. He felt for Mary more than he was feeling for himself. 

“He’s going to call Rogers, then call me back.”

“Well, I’m going to go downstairs and call the doctor. We should get you an ambulance. What if this is, I don’t know, a virus or something?” 

“Why don’t we give it a bit of time, Mary. Let me wake up, maybe. It could be a fatigue thing, like Arthur said. Could be.”

Mary scrunched up her lips in concentration, a face he normally loved, but Benjamin saw tears come to her eyes. This crushed him. 

“Mary, don’t, it’s, it’ll be ok,” he said. 

Suddenly, she broke down, tears flowing and her tight lips opening to a broken cry. She lay her head on Benjamin’s chest and wept. He wanted nothing more than to hold her, but his arms wouldn’t respond. 

Arthur called back and Mary again held the phone to Benjamin’s ear. 

“Oh, is that so… All of them… Peter Matters, too… What is going on?… I don’t know, I woke up, I couldn’t move… No, nothing else… Yes, yesterday was Atlanta, then a short run to Toledo, then back to LaGuardia… I didn’t see anything… I don’t think anyone on the plane was ill… This is strange, but… No, we haven’t trained for this… Ok, we’ll call back, Mary’s helping me, after they arrive… Ok, ok, bye.” 

“What’d he say?” Mary asked. 

Benjamin moved his head to the side and looked her in the eye. “It’s odd, but Rogers is like this too. Arthur called Matters and he can’t move either. It’s, it’s…” then his words failed him. 

Mary, who had been feeling stronger since her cry, lay her hand on Benjamin’s cheek. He nuzzled her palm with the side of his mouth. He was then scared and confused. “I don’t understand, Mary.” 

“I know, dear, but we’ll get to the bottom of this.” 

Dr. Prattel, a young man in street clothes, stood at the end of the bed. Mary sat next to Benjamin on her sleeping side, holding his immobile hand and stroking his cheek. 

“I see nothing visibly wrong with you,” Dr. Pattel said. He had gone over Benjamin’s body with stethoscope, prodded his torso with his fingers, and had attached electrodes to Benjamin’s legs and arms to attempt a muscular reaction. “Your apparent vitals are perfect. Your heart and lungs are working regularly. You say there is no pain. If you were fine yesterday, up and walking, flying even, there is no clear explanation. But we should run more tests.”

“Should he go to the hospital?” Mary asked. 

“Eventually, yes. But let’s not move him now,” Dr. Pattel said. “What I’d like to do is call my colleagues, talk to your supervisor, learn about the other pilots, Matters and Rogers. Maybe it’s a pathogen of some sort you all contracted at an airport, on the plane. Sit tight, I’ll make some calls.” 

Mary and Benjamin nodded. It was the extent of Benjamin’s capabilities. After the doctor left, they sat in a moment of silence. Benjamin’s mind was a complete blank. He was normally capable of instant solutions, actions, and plans. Now though, he was left with an empty unknown. 

“I want to check the news,” Mary said. Unlike her husband, Mary was full of little steps, tiny actions she would use to get through this. She had folded and put away the clothes while waiting on the doctor, prepared Benjamin a smoothie, fed him, and gotten herself and him cleaned up. “There may be something on there.” 

Benjamin didn’t object, couldn’t. 

She turned the television to the news and waited. For a moment, the news was regular, a series of political updates, commercials, and more political updates. After ten minutes, they got their first bit of relevant information in a breaking bulletin. Dr. Pattel hadn’t returned to the room.

“Oh,” Mary said, after the words flashed on the screen. Benjamin only sunk deeper into the pillows and mattress. 

“We have a breaking news bulletin. Delta Airlines has grounded its entire fleet. No reasons were offered but we have reports of airplanes across the country crashing while landing starting at six a.m. this morning. No real numbers as of yet, but we’ll be receiving a statement from the airline at any time. For now, we go to Amy Graves at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport.” 

Several moments later, the anchor returned to announce that all airlines around the world had grounded their planes and were calculating the damage and deaths from planes falling out of the sky. 

Benjamin’s hospital room wasn’t private. He was sharing it with two other pilots who were suffering from the same malady. Four weeks after the Pilot Paralysis, short hand for what the news agencies and doctors were calling the affliction, every single pilot in the world was either bed ridden at home, or, if they were lucky, had been brought to a hospital early in the emergency. Benjamin had been lucky, though he no longer considered himself so. 

As was habit now, the television had been left on after the men were fed their morning meal. Neal Anderson, a younger pilot, fresh out of the Air Force and new to commercial flying, lay closest to Benjamin, in the middle of the three beds. Closest to the window was Allen, Gabriel Allen, a veteran pilot, who had been flying international only, and was nearing retirement. 

They had been together in the room for three weeks. Their first few days in the room were somewhat chummy, given the circumstances. After those introductory hours, they had each retreated to a silent, recalcitrant place, hardly speaking to one another throughout the day. Most of the time, the curtains were pulled between their beds, isolating them in their somber moods. In the morning, the nurses insisted on pulling the curtains back, opening the blinds, and flooding the room with light from the one window. They also turned on the television, which none of them cared to view any longer. The nurses claimed it was doctors orders. 

The three of them hated the open window and voiced their feelings everyday. But the light, the noise, the headaches they complained of were a gloss for the heart of the matter. If being stuck in a hospital room with two other men who suffered similarly wasn’t bad enough, the daily reminder of the sky was too much to bear. 

The news, which was constant on every channel, interrupted every so often by commercials that appeared more rude and egregious as the crisis wore on, reported on little else but the Pilot Paralysis, but had little to say. 

“Why do they bother?” Allen mumbled from his side of the room. He was a grey haired gentleman with the squared jaw and strong brow seen on classic illustrations of pilots. His immobility had softened these features and turned his brow inward. 

“The world is reeling from the cessation of flight,” the news broadcaster was saying. “Global trade and travel has nearly ceased. The large shipping companies are increasing their volume but can’t yet keep up with the overflow once carried by planes.” 

“I don’t see why it can’t go back to the way it was before,” Anderson said. As the youngest, his optimism had decreased the least. He held onto a bit of hope in the long weeks of immobility. 

“It’s because there are seven hundred and fifty thousand of us bed-ridden,” Allen growled. “There’s no way to go back to before.”

“We’ll get up, someday,” Anderson said, “but people have to travel. Trade has to happen. What about armies?”

Allen groaned and refused to engage in the conversation, turning his head to the window and looking out over the hated greenery. 

“I mean,” Anderson continued,” there was a time before flight. We still have trains and boats. I’m sure the armed forces are already rerouting transport to ground-based means.” 

Benjamin was neither depressed nor inquisitive like his two roommates. His bed by the hallway was pleasant enough. He wasn’t forced to look out the window and was first in line when the nursing staff came in with the wheelchairs and meals. He could always see Mary walking down the hall toward him. 

This morning he had a bit of a sugar high from the bananas in his morning smoothie. Anderson’s questions were a bit intriguing. Up to this point, he had assumed the issue would end and they would go back to flying. How it would end wasn’t yet known, but it would, eventually. He was sure of it.

“What happens if they train more pilots?” Benjamin asked aloud. “Will they go, um, still, too?” 

“I can’t see that happening?” Anderson said. His boyishness was quick to answer. 

“But there’s no other reason but the flying. Maybe even the knowledge of flying made this happen,” Ben said.

“Nah, first they’ll start the ships and trains. Then they’ll get the birds back in the air,” Anderson said. 

It must be the Air Force, Benjamin thought. They must have drilled this mono-focus into him. 

“Me though,” Anderson said, changing topics, “I’m ready for the chair ride today. You know, I’m still, but it doesn’t feel stiff.” He laughed. Allen moaned. Clip after clip of planes falling out of the air and pilots strapped to beds were shown again and again. Benjamin fell into a silent rumination.

He knew what Anderson meant. The stillness was there, with a very low level of feeling on the skin’s surface. As his wife ran her hands over his body, he could feel them at a far distance but nothing would move in reaction. It was as if the hydraulics line had been disconnected, to use a plane analogy. 

Just then, a middle-aged doctor strolled in. Dr. Freeman didn’t wear a white coat, because he was a psychologist. The hospital had assigned a large team of psychologists and psychiatrists to work with the pilot patients. No virus, genetic marker, bacteria, nerve syndrome, or bone ailment had been found in any of the paralyzed pilots. A mental evaluation had started after the first week, but as they were told each day after their session, “these are early days and the mind is a complex mechanism.” 

“Good morning, all,” Dr. Freeman said to the room. Anderson was the only one to return the greeting. The doctor noted this in his leather journal he always carried. He continued speaking while he wrote, “Mr. Watts can I interest you in a bit of travel?” He made bad jokes like this all the time, seemingly unaware. 

A nurse wheeled in a chair. Two orderlies lifted Benjamin from his bed, positioned his limbs in the right place, his head on the brace, and scooted him from the room. He had thought to answer, “No. Don’t take me anywhere.” But he hadn’t. 

Dr. Freeman’s office, or the room he saw Benjamin in, was a drab hospital room with several blue, pleather chairs arranged in a semi-circle. The room had a single window that looked out onto the landscaped parking lot. The walls were drab, off-white, as was the ceiling, and in some attempt at homeliness, there were two, large landscape paintings hung opposite one another. 

Benjamin was positioned so he could see out the window and Dr. Freeman sat against the wall opposite, so that one of the paintings were above each of their heads. 

“Today I want to start where we left off last time,” the doctor said. “You were telling me about when you started to fly and what it felt like.” 

Benjamin gazed out at the cars in their lines. The sun was shining and glinting from the windshields. Several blurry people were strolling from car to building, or the inverse. It appeared as if the scene were made from toy things, plastic cars, fake people, foam trees, and a painted asphalt lot. 

“What?” he asked the doctor.

“Can you tell me more about when you started to fly, were learning to fly?”

“It was like everyone else,” he said. He pulled his eyes away from the parking lot. “Three thousand hours before the test, some thousand more before a commercial license.”

“How did it feel?” the doctor asked. His leather journal was open on his crossed leg with his pen poised above the page. 

“Feel?”

“Yes, what was it like? What was it like knowing you were flying? Was there a force? Were you excited?”

“I guess,” Benjamin said. “There is force when the plane is taking off. The force of acceleration in the air.”

“I mean,” the doctor said, changing tack, “what was it like inside, for you?” 

“I don’t know, I don’t remember.” 

“Were you scared at all?” 

“Maybe. There’s so much to remember, there’s not much time to feel anything when you’re flying.” 

“Ok, ok, I see,” the doctor said. He made a few notes in his journal. 

“Well, let’s talk now of the recent past.”

“Doctor,” Benjamin interrupted, “when can I leave?” 

“Oh, well, I’m not the admitting doctor so I can’t say.”

“I’ve been here weeks and nothing’s happened. I want to go home.” 

“Yes, do you?” More notes.

“Please, doctor.” Benjamin tried to instill his voice with a smooth tone. In the past week, his melancholy had given his voice a grumble and tremor. “This isn’t helping anyone. If anything, I should be home with my wife.”

“We’re working together to find a solution for all of you,” the doctor said. 

“You know that’s bunk,” Benjamin said. 

For a moment, they sat facing one another without speaking. Dr. Freeman looked deeply into Benjamin’s eyes. The gaze of others and his gaze in return were one of the few sensations he had left, so he matched it and felt a wonderful return from it. 

“I’ll make you a deal, Benjamin,” Doctor Freeman said. “I think you’re a rare case among the others. Most of the time you have a real insight into your present condition. If you agree to continue working with me, I’ll recommend you be sent home. How does that sound?” 

“Yes, sounds good,” Benjamin said without hesitation. He was willing to do anything to get out of this frightening place, away from young Anderson and grumpy Allen. “One thing more,” he said. 

“What is that?” 

“Are there wheelchairs that I can steer? Maybe with my head?” 

Several weeks later, Benjamin and Mary were out in their neighborhood. Mary was strolling and Benjamin was steering his wheelchair with his forehead. Occasionally, Benjamin would stop and peer up at the empty blue above them. Clouds were unobstructed. No con-trails streaked along the predetermined routes. The air felt quieter in the absence. 

Mary turned to her husband, having walked on without seeing that he’d stopped. 

“Are you alright, Ben?” she asked. Her habit of peering at him like a weakened child had changed. 

“Hmm? Yes, yes, I’m ok,” he answered, staring upward, distracted. 

“Is there something,” Mary started, hesitant to ask, “something wrong?” She had lived these past two months since Benjamin had been home in a state of mild panic, caught between a boiling sadness and the immobility of fear. She kept saying to herself, “Two of us can’t be like that.” With this silent statement she was able to carry on. 

“No, nothing wrong,” Benjamin answered. “I just miss it.” 

“The sky?” 

“Yeah, the sky, being up there.” 

Mary walked back to him and knelt down by his side. 

“Dr. Freeman has been asking me about the feeling up there,” he went on. “I keep telling him it was a job. I got up in the morning and put on my wings and clocked my hours. But that’s not at all true.” 

Mary was stroking his cheek, listening intently. Outside of the panicked feeling, her love for Benjamin had taken on a new level of intensity with his inability. Now that she was the stronger one, she loved him with a pity, a deep sense of protection. She loved his need. With his weakness, her love grew. 

“What’s not true?” She asked. 

“The job,” he said. “Yes, I did fly. I did get paid for it. But the feeling, I had forgotten the feeling.” He stopped and his mouth fell open looking upward. 

Mary watched for a moment, then grew worried when he neither moved nor spoke again. “Ben, Ben what was the feeling?” she asked, hiding the worry in her voice. That was her task now, be strong in her love for him, hiding distress. 

He lowered his gaze and turned his neck head her. His face over the last few weeks had grown younger. She was shaving him now, cleaning his teeth, combing and styling his hair. He wasn’t a doll, but the acts shifted him from man to boy, nearly a babe she was gratefully in charge of. His look now was one of astonishment, as if he had seen the sky for the first time, realizing it wasn’t a flat band of blue paper placed above them. 

“It was freedom, you know. A freedom from myself,” he said. 

She stroked his face, feeling the wave of compassion take her over. “Anything for this man,” she thought.

“When flying, but more, when up there, you can’t feel,” he said. “It’s hard to explain, but there is no time, no room. The sky is, well it’s too big. Even with all that space there’s no room for your smallest emotion.”

“That sounds lovely,” Mary said. 

“Not to be mean, but when I was up there, even you faded away. All that was left was blue, or dark blue at night, some lights, and the emptiness. But it wasn’t empty. Oh, that probably doesn’t make sense either.” 

“I can try to understand,” Mary said. “Have you been speaking to Dr. Freeman about this?” 

“No, not really. It only just now came to me. The feeling that is.” Benjamin looked up into the empty blue again. “The doctor wants to know what it was like compared to other things, that’s how he asks the questions. What was it like to land, to take off, to learn, to realize you were flying. As if there was a real difference between flying and everything else. But the feeling was one of not having a comparison at all. It was a feeling of almost nothing. It was only, well, I guess, it was only the then and there.”

“The moment,” Mary said. She was now looking up into the sky with her husband. 

“Yeah,” Benjamin said dreamily. 

Over dinner that night, a decent plate of chicken and vegetables for Mary and a full meal shake for Benjamin, he returned to the topic. 

“I can’t believe I never realized it, or couldn’t name it before,” he said between sips at his straw. 

“Hmm? What’s that?” Mary asked. 

“The feeling while flying. That nothing, that moment we were talking about before.” 

“Do you think you’ll tell the doctor about it?”

“I don’t know if I can,” Benjamin said. “It seems hard to explain.” 

“I’m starting to understand, I think,” Mary said. Then, “No, I do understand.” She thought of the enveloping compassion for Ben she now felt and what it did to her sense of self. It was like stepping out of a costume, no longer playing the same role. 

“I knew you would,” Benjamin said. “Only you could.” He gazed at her and put all of his missing feeling into his look. 

Overtaken, Mary got to her feet and rushed to him. She leaned down and kissed him, hard, opening her mouth and feeling the few parts of him that could react to her with physical emotion. 

“Oh, Ben,” she said, covering his forehead with kisses. 

“Mary, I want to go up,” he said in a whisper. 

“Go up?” Mary asked, quietly. She thought he meant upstairs. Sex wasn’t a territory they had explored. Mary felt guilty in her knowledge she could still experience pleasure where Benjamin claimed to feel only the smallest sensations. 

“I want to fly,” Benjamin said. 

She pulled her chair close to him, moved the cup and straw out of the way, and cradled his chin in her hand. He leaned his face down into it, resting his face in her palm. This had become the way they now embraced. 

“You want to fly?” she asked. She searched for a meaning in his words, wondering if they were new or merely a grasp at his previous normal. 

“Yes, I want to fly,” he said. He raised his head and looked seriously at her. “And I’ve figured out how.” 

“But, you can’t…” Mary said, stopping herself, pausing in great care for him. 

“Not me, I won’t pilot. You will.” 

A half a dozen phone calls were all it took for Benjamin to find a way into his grand idea. Reaching out to air traffic and instructor contacts, those who weren’t pilots and were thus still able to move, he was able to find a plane, an airport, and some hours for Mary to work on the simulator. 

“It will be just like you taking a lesson,” he said to her. “The only difference is that you will have to do the take off and landing. That’s what the simulator is for. You’ll learn that first.” 

For her part, Mary was excited. Flying, being a pilot, had never been part of her dreams prior to this time. Her changing relationship to Ben had opened up something deeper in her, so that his wishes became hers, and when they were shared, they became something even greater than the mere desires of two people. She readily accepted the new challenge. On the first day of her simulator, she was as giddy as she had been in years. The instructor and Benjamin spoke to her from outside, guiding her in technique through headphones. 

When she landed the simulated plane without incident on the first try, Benjamin said, “You’re a natural, Mary.” 

She knew it was more than just her. She was starting to contain the both of them and this great feeling was showing her wider possibilities. 

The night before their flight, they both stayed awake talking until they could talk no more. They were two teenagers on the verge of running away together, or so it felt to Mary. Benjamin went on and on about flying techniques, telling her various tricks and what to watch out for if this gauge did this or that. Mary listened intently, the deep sound of his voice alive again with a revived passion. She closed her eyes and lay her head on his chest. Even if he could not fully feel it, she rode the vibrations of his voice into a deep and short sleep. They were up just after dawn, hurriedly preparing then leaving for the small airport. 

Benjamin had arranged for them to fly in a Cessna 162, a two seat plane. It wasn’t new, or luxurious, but it would easily take them to twenty thousand feet where the feeling of selflessness would return. 

An old friend ran this airport and he was happy to get someone else back in the air. The months of complete grounding had left a mark on those in the industry. With a rug like that yanked so hard, money and ability snatched away overnight, it had left deep holes. His friend said he would be happy just to see someone going up, even if it wasn’t yet cleared by the FAA. 

In the plane Benjamin let Mary handle the conversations with the tower, which was manned by this same friend.

“Alright, Mary?” Benjamin asked. His voice was close and powerful in her ears. The noise cancelling headphones left just enough of the engine sound, but delivered voices with crystal clarity. 

“Yes, very good,” she answered. 

They taxied onto the empty runway. With lack of use, grass had grown up between the concrete cracks and along the sides. They were in wild country and both of them were ecstatic for it. 

“Tower to 001, ready for take off.” 

“001 to tower, taking off.” 

Mary pushed the throttle, got the plane to speed, and with a dexterity Benjamin admired, pulled the plane gently off the ground. In the first instances of flight it was as if he could feel his body again. 

The tower repeated the heading and Mary responded. They weren’t going to push their luck. They had planned a twenty minute flight, far enough to feel like they were flying, but not too far to attract attention. 

“Maintain this heading and elevate to fifteen thousand,” Benjamin said to Mary. 

She pulled back and lifted the plane to a gentle climb. 

“I’m so proud of you, Mary,” he said. He felt a deep sense of closeness with her, trusted her completely at the stick. 

Mary beamed, peering through the windscreen as they pushed upward. 

The plane entered a low cloud, passed through, and emerged into the open air at fifteen thousand feet. 

“Oh,” Mary said. 

“Yes,” Benjamin answered. 

Following their plan, Mary took the plane up to twenty thousand feet, then paid attention to their distance instruments. They would have to turn around soon. She banked starboard to take their next tack. 

“Very nice,” Benjamin said.

“You know, I like this very much,” Mary answered. 

The low clouds were scattered below them. Wispy white puffs that were drifting in the opposite direction below them as they flew into the wind. 

For a few minutes they were silent. They both watched the dapples of green between the white lumps. The engine noise rumbled. Both of them, in their own way, could feel the force of mechanical power pushing against the wind’s pull. 

Then the sound, as if dissolved, seemed to fade away. They rode in the small plane in the habituated silence, the noise becoming the natural hum of their lives. The slight lift and fall of the machine in the air current was a rocking motion lulling their senses to peace. Even the occasional side to side tilt of the wings, as Mary’s hands naturally kept them aligned with the horizon, were the same as thoughts coming to them then gently leaving the mind. It was majestic. 

“Oh, this is it,” Mary whispered into her microphone. 

“Yes, this is it,” Benjamin said. 

On they flew on their simple, straight heading. There was indeed no room for the self up here, not in all this openness, in all this glorious space. Between the clouds and the limitless above, they were no longer. The plane, their bodies, their actions, were part of the whole. 

For the moment, Benjamin didn’t feel that he couldn’t feel. The angry, locking spite he’d felt since that morning released him. This feeling is what he had wanted to return to. It made sense of the drifting absence below his neck. 

Mary, in all the newness of this moment, had also been freed from overpowering feelings. Even her compassion and love for Ben, renewed in their shared fear, disappeared. She felt a singular oneness with where she was, not only the plane, but Ben, too. Finally, after all the years she’d felt so separate, staying home, being left, feeling she had no real purpose, she was now together with him. Oh, if only she would have known earlier. 

The tower returned to their headsets. “Maintain heading. You’re clear for landing.”

“So soon,” Mary said. 

“I know,” Benjamin answered. 

They soaked up one moment longer. 

“You remember what to do?” Benjamin asked. 

“Yes,” Mary answered, reluctant to leave this feeling, but proud of this new ability. 

She steadied her mind and prepared to pull back on the throttle, push the stick forward. She reviewed the steps as Ben had coached her, lining them up in her mind. Even this was freeing, having the clarity of action. There was no room for question. 

With a breath, she steadied herself for the landing. When she thought to push on the stick, her hand didn’t respond. She twitched and took another breath, thinking it was only her emotion making her feel this. She glanced at the instrument panel. There was no change in their altitude. She tried to push again. Nothing. 

The tower piped back up in their headphones. “Start your descent now, Mary.” The controller said. 

Benjamin looked at her. His body was strapped three ways into his seat. “Push the stick till you reach fifteen degrees and hold it there,” he said. 

“I know,” she said. Suddenly her breath came in gasps. She tried again. Nothing. Her arms felt as if they were pushing but she couldn’t coax movement out of them. She tried her legs, then her feet, they were the same. She was still in place, held where she last moved her muscles, but not able to move further. “Ben,” she whispered. 

He heard her fright. “What is it, my love?” 

“Ben.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say what it was she felt. 

“Mary, tell me, please. Don’t be frightened.” 

“Ben,” Mary started. Her great compassion, the deep love, her open heart, rushed into her chest, filling her with a momentous sensation. “Ben, I feel what you feel.” 

“Oh, my darling, I know, this is, this is beyond description.”

She turned her face toward him, lifting each of the building emotions into her eyes, then aimed her gaze at her husband in the seat next to her. He saw and responded, knowing without fully knowing this latest period in time had now come to an end. They were moving on now into another unknown. He returned, as best he could, the fullest look he could conjure. 

“Mary,” he said. His voice was soft and intimate, even through the processed headphones. 

“Ben, I feel what you feel,” Mary repeated. “I feel nothing.”