I wouldn't call myself a pessimist, but I do admit that I find life to be more sad than happy. That no matter how good things are in one moment, the world is full of hate and depression. The concept of yin and yang comes to mind, that both good and evil live in harmony. I find that awfully biased. I will hope for the best, but sometimes I lose hope and accept the inevitable, that in a world of good and evil, evil will win. I wish I wasn't like that but I do know why I am like that.
I have always enjoyed flying. Being 30,000 feet in the air made me feel powerful. Not like Chuck Norris, but more in the sense that I was part of the great human races whose potential was bound only by the confines of ones own imagination. Even if I was seated right in front of a screaming baby whose parents didn't know how to make him be quiet, I had my good friend Mr iPod. Flying relaxed me. Just me, music and the clouds. I think I slept on the plane, thinking about my mission work in Peru. I got to help people get their first eye exam and glasses. Peruvians as young as 4 to as old as 89. Helping these unfortunate people gave me a emotional high. I felt good about myself and I felt that there is a lot of good in the world. After about 4 hours of ecstasy in the sky we arrived at our destination.
Miami might have beautiful beaches and breath taking women, but the airport is disgusting. Sea foam blue carpet with green and gray inlays made me feel sick. The whole "chi" of the places made me feel like I had to sneeze but for some reason i couldn't. I hate that feeling. Maybe the design of the international wing was designed so that you would get so uncomfortable that you wanted to leave the terminal. That the only safe refuge was baggage claim. Ironic it is that those walls made me feel trapped, isolated and abandoned.
I needed an escape from this torture. I walked over to the vending machine and pulled my wallet and scrambled for a dollar. I felt currency but it was a Peruvian Sol, useless. “Can you spot me a buck?” I asked my grandad. He waddled over and bought me my Coke. The cool beverage tasted so good. The feeling didn't last, however, as we heard a shriek from down the terminal.
“IS ANYONE A DOCTOR? HELP!”
My grandad, fortunately, was a doctor and he ran down the hall. I rushed after him in amazement at both how my grandad can run so fast, and at how empty the terminal was. There were no other flights. No airport employes. No vendors selling food. No other help. After the longest 20 seconds of my life we finally reached the downed women. She was Peruvian, around 38 years of age, and on the heavy side. She wasn't breathing and she was twitching. My grandad immediately began emergency CPR.
“Does anyone know who she is?” asked my grandad.
No one said anything. A man stepped forward and spoke something in Spanish. He held out her passport and motioned that they were together. My grandad asked him if she had allergies and the other obligatory questions. He couldn't speak any English.
“Frank, go back and get the A.E.D from the airplane. Hurry!” my grandad ordered.
I sprinted back to the plane, rushing past all of the other passengers. The run seemed to last forever. The plane was no more than one hundred yards away, but it seemed like and eternity. As I got to the plane they told me that the A.E.D was broken. Apparently checking the emergency equipment isn't a part of the take off procedures. I left the plane and headed back to the dying woman. By now a crowd of 20 people were around her. All of them huddled around my grandad. I delivered the news of the broken A.E.D to him. From then on the situation turned from bad to hopeless.
At that point everyone started to look for help. There was a locked door right next to us and one person broke down the door and rushed through. Someone else noticed that the Peruvian man disappeared. Two people ran down the terminal to try and find him. A woman pulled a fire alarm. The ringing of the bells put everything in to motion for me. A dying stranger brought 20 people together to try and save her life. Normally I would spend the time walking to baggage claim in peace listening to my iPod. Now I felt like a hero, saving an innocent woman's life.
After 8 minutes of horror we saw the fire department on the air field. They approached the woman in the laziest fashion possible.
“Hurry! This woman is dying!” someone yelled, trying to speed up the firemen.
“Sir, calm down we are coming.” Barked a fireman. It was obvious that they would take their sweet time to climb up the stairs.
These men were not servants of the people, they were lazy men who were not concerned with the well being of a dying foreigner. Watching them relieve the duty of my grandad angered me. He was the only one doing anything productive for the woman. Handing them over to them was putting the nail in the coffin for her. They took out a stretcher and took the woman down to the air field back to the ambulance. Our moment of glory turned to rage, and later depression and lament.
The rest of our time at the airport was spent talking to police and giving complaints about the lazy firemen. They disregarded our complaints and told us we could leave. We got on a bus that would take us to Orlando. No one talked the entire time we traveled. Everyone was sad, thinking about the now dead woman. I sat there on the quiet bus contemplating on what happened. Why did it seem that the fire department cared so little about a foreigner? Would things have been different if she was white? Why was the terminal so secluded from the rest of the airport? I never felt so low. I just got back from a mission trip feeling great about myself and then this happened. Was god himself mocking my existence? Was there no hope for humanity? Why was the world so cruel? I fell asleep thinking these questions.
We later find out that the woman died of a drug overdose. She didn't use the drugs, she was just a carrier for the drug dealer she was transporting for. Ironic, that after no more than 5 minutes in the United States, that she would die. I think that I could have kept my hope for the world if I never knew about this.
No comments:
Post a Comment