The screen door banged against the outside wall of the lodge. The wind hadn’t let up for hours and every time someone walked out to the courtyard the door slapped wide open. The children played outside despite the gusty air. It was a late June day and the air was hot and wild. The swings wrapped themselves in a twist of wood and chain and two sisters ran back and forth against the turning merry-go-round. Claire was the oldest and had been playing with Marianne and their two friends all morning.
Ray and Bernadette Ellis had spent the night at Chico before leaving for the Beartooth Mountains for camping. They had planned this vacation for quite some time and the two girls were excited for the adventure. Before leaving, they planned to spend a night at Chico Hot Springs with friends from Oklahoma. They had soaked in the hot pool earlier and were getting ready to leave when they heard an airplane was due to land in a few minutes. Their friend, John, was a retired Air Force pilot and wanted to see the plane land on the remote highway, so they decided to stay a few minutes longer to see it themselves.
Ray and Bernadette worked opposite shifts at the hospital in Billings and both needed a break from the hectic schedule. They worked in the Intensive Care Unit and dedicated time and emotions to treating critically ill patients. Ray was a Respiratory Therapy and Bernadette was a Critical Care Nurse. They took turns flying with the Billings Life Flight and Air Ambulance and had years of medical experience between the two of them. They weren’t skydivers, they just happened to be there that day.
“Claire, you and Marianne can play for just a minute longer and then we need to say good-bye.” Bernadette hollered above the whistling wind as she walked to the road where Ray and their friends were watching our small airplane turn onto final approach.
“I’m surprised they can land in this wind.” someone commented, “But it doesn’t seem to be affecting him very much. If there is a cross wind up high it isn’t nearly as bad as it is down here.”
Although it took strength to walk in the wind, the four adults were standing in the middle of the road where twenty feet away, the steep plateau embankment made a good shelter from the constant wind. In that shelter, the wind disappeared and the windsock hung lifeless. They stood just beyond the southern entrance of the parking lot with several other guests. As they stood in the road, they helped with traffic detail in case any cars tried to drive down the runway from their end of the road. It was strange and exciting for them to watch the airplane’s headlight as it briefly touched down at the other end of the road and headed directly for them. Once it landed, the plane would pull into the parking lot thirty feet from them.
Off to the right the construction crew working on the new lodge sat on the long porch eating lunch. A couple of cooks were standing outside the back door of the restaurant and the children continued to play in the courtyard. It was a typical beginning to a typical weekend.
Ray held his camera steady as he snapped a shot as the airplane came within a few feet of touching down.
“He’s up again,” John said. “Keep her steady there, Buddy.”
Ray snapped another shot as the plane lifted a few feet off the ground. “Why are
“Why are they landing twice?” Bernadette asked.
“I’m not so sure he intended to.” John said, as the plane left the road for a third time. “It looks like he’s flying pretty hot. He needs to slow down if he is going to make this short landing. He has taken most of the runway and he isn’t even down yet. It looks like he is fighting the wind. I think it surprised him.”
As the aircraft approached the north entrance to the parking lot, the crowd at the end of the runway stood looking head-on into the airplane’s windshield. There was less than a hundred yards between the airplane and where they stood at the narrowing of the road on the southern end of the parking lot. It flew low to the ground, buffeting up and down against the wind. People began to fidget and finally someone said, “Should we be standing here? He’s headed right for us.”
Just as Ray was contemplating where to take cover in case the airplane couldn’t land, he watched through the viewfinder of his camera as the pilot pulled the plane up steep and turned hard to the left. He was sure the picture would show the underside of the plane and make a great story. Ray snapped the shutter button for a third picture and before he had a chance to take the camera away from his eye he heard gasps from the small crowd.
We slammed back into our seats whipping our heads like a shaken ragdoll, then suddenly rose upward as Steve radically pulled the yoke to his chest. “Hang On!” I imagine he screamed into the headset and then a long series of, “Oh, shiiiiit!” as he pled for the plane to maneuver away from the roadblock of cars and people and lodge windows. As he pulled at the yoke and watched the sky fill up the windshield, he looked out of the side window and realized the plane was tilted too far over to the left and the nose was too steep to stay in flight.
“HANG ON!” Steve yelled into the headsets hoping we had missed disaster.
Then, “Noooooooo…,” as our three screams blended to one as we began a horrendous cartwheel.
Ray’s camera had a brief delay as it tried to autofocus. The wings that had been close to the pavement moved through the air until the plane became completely vertical in the sky. The crowd looked at the belly of the plane as the camera shutter snapped catching a blank blue sky; missing the image of the plane entirely. The plane stalled and sliced sideways through the air with the left wing leading the way down to the ground. The wingtip caught earth and impacted snapping entirely off. Bags, headsets, luggage, parachutes and bodies flew violently against the inside of the cockpit then instantly the entire left side of the fuselage crushed pilot and windshield and controls. As it continued to roll, the force of the right wing abruptly hitting hard ground broke seatbelts and cables. In less than an instant the airplane had fallen sixty feet to the ground and flipped itself wing-over-wing across the horse pasture.
What happened in the next three seconds seemed to take minutes. The scream that escaped the crowd was a blend of horrible vowels and. “Oh, GOD, OH, my God!” People ran; others stood stunned at the sight.
The wind calmed as God inhaled and children continued to play. A picture of perfect dichotomy: children’s faces with wide-open giggles and blonde hair flipping back and forth as they leaned their heads back catching the wind of the wooden merry-go-round. And in the background, pieces of twisted fuselage skipped across the area and imbedded at odd angles in the dirt. Men dropped their thermoses full of black, noon coffee.
Then fire flickered from the plane as it finished cart wheeling and fell upside down into the green pasture.
Fear and terror fell across the quiet little resort. Nothing had, or ever would again, impact the people watching that day as intensely as the previous few seconds. What had just happened? The impossible! And as quickly as time stopped, it sped to reality. People did not take the time to consult next steps or evaluate. They did not look at each other with raised eyebrows for cues; they instinctively ran toward the crash not knowing how to do anything but help. Somehow, Bernadette hollered at John’s wife, Diane, to stay with the children and she ran breathless toward the mangled white metal in the field. Camera still in hand, Ray’s long legs carried him past Bernadette.
“Don’t get any closer, it could explode—is there a fire extinguisher?” Ray instinctively shouted warnings as he bolted across the pasture toward the crash. A man ran beside him. As they approached the airplane, Ray could see the fire: small, yet very dangerous. It lit the spewing fuel like a liquid torch. He was stunned to see the man beside him aiming a fire extinguisher at the flame. The airplane fell just a few yards from the new lodge where a construction worker leaned against the fire extinguisher eating his lunch. The man, the first nameless hero to give me life that day, ran directly to the aircraft wing where the fuel spewed to the ground and he tried to douse the fire. The foam from the extinguisher blew into the air like parachuting dandelion seeds as the wind spread it everywhere but into the fire. He moved closer, inches from the flaming torch until he felt the heat on the hair of his arms and the gasoline fumes filled his nostrils. Summer and fire often go together, but this jumbled scent was not the friendly, nostalgic scent of neighboring Yellowstone campfire marshmallows or the welcoming smell of an old farmer burning ditches. The black scars of grass stubble left after all was burned away would remain until winter like the scars of burnt ditches. But ditch grass replaces itself and grows greener afterward; the scars of black grass saturated with traces of gas would stay with him forever, never replenishing itself, only the charred smell of memories would stay. He focused on the fire as it lessened and finally doused under the chemical spray.
It wasn’t long before people frantically moved in closer and were trying to stabilize the aircraft. They wanted to try to do something that felt like the right thing to do. They didn’t know how many people were inside and there was no one around to tell them who we were. Only John had flown an airplane and no one for counties had ever seen one crash. It was a crowd of people who instinctively did the right thing to save a life.
The plane laid upside-down with her propeller and part of the nose buried in the brown dirt. The propeller blades bent at a random angle as we flipped and it dug its fingernails into the fleshy soil. It looked like an awkward anchor that kept it grounded. Fuel continued to pour from a deep gouge in the only wing that was still attached to the airplane body, and the fuselage tottered back and forth from the shock of the abrupt landing. One wing lay underneath the plane, totally severed, and a pool of fuel was seeping into the ground where new clover had grown during the Spring.
There were no officers or first-responders at the scene. Only people frantic, frightened and already scarred with memories of what they were about to undertake. Men with tool belts, chef hats, and camera bags frantically danced around the site trying to see inside the mangled parts. White metal against the black tires was one of the thousand freeze-framed details preserved forever. The cockpit was crinkled into a few square feet of metal. The dashboard wrapped into the small space as though it was neatly folded and corners tucked in tightly. The tail sheared in half was no longer a straight continuous line of flight, only a jagged disjointed elbow bent backward. The windshield had popped out of its casing in several places but hung to the dashboard in random dashes. Broken glass and metal mixed together. Bags and cases had fallen from the wreckage and were laying in odd places. The fuel eventually reduced to a small trickle. There was also silence; freshly decided death with the sound turned off.
Quietness surrounded Steve like an air pillow. Then shouts broke the frozen scene.
“Over here. I can reach him from over here.” Eyes darted in and out of where the cockpit should have been as a man leaned closer into the mess. He saw the fiber of a man’s cotton shirt and the blue webbing of the seatbelt. Steve was trapped upside-down and was still secured to the seat by the seatbelt. His head, face, left arm, and torso were visible through the pilot’s side window. The headset was no longer on his head which allowed organized tufts of hair to fall downward. His arm was positioned as though he had just recently moved it away from the throttle and put it in his lap. His shirt cuff was neatly buttoned around his wrist. The rest of his body was encased in fuselage which molded around his lap and legs. It was apparent that he was the only person tightly wrapped up in the plane.
Ray ran to the side of the plane and joined the man at the pilot’s window. They unconsciously touched shoulders as they both squeezed in to get to Steve. As he reached for him, Ray instantly felt a penetrating remorse that would stain his soul forever. Ray’s heart was big and it was hard to put aside personal feelings for any patient—especially today. Although Ray did not know the dark-haired man who hung before him, he shared a slice of his lazy June-day vacation and that made caring for him very personal and immediate. Ray touched Steve’s neck and found a slight pulse.
The description of Steve will haunt me forever. Even though Ray delicately described Steve’s color as simply “pale” when he found him, I can imagine the color of death as a much darker hue. Perhaps the acute pain of my loss of this dear friend adds to the depth of description. My imagination magnifies the details that Ray omitted. Steve was seat belted to the seat, hanging upside-down, but so tightly held in place that no other people were visible inside the plane. The plane was molded around him, his head and neck were at an odd angle, and the color of good-bye was gray on his face. There was a deep gash on his arm, but little blood. Ray described the scene as through there was no evidence that Steve had been hurt except for the gurgling breaths coming from his chest. Ray had seen many people in respiratory distress and he recognized that Steve would die within minutes.
I’ve come to realize that the descriptions of the crash as told to me were homogenized for my benefit. Now, many years outside of the crash, I have a more realistic image of bodies mangled, sliced and swollen beyond recognition.
By now others were gathered around, Ray looked into the man’s eyes who knelt beside him and as though he was a dear friend, and wanted to say, “His breathing is slow… um, a sign of critical brain damage. I’m afraid he is dying,” but he remained silent and continued to touch Steve’s neck where the pulse stayed slow and steady.
“Can anyone hear us?” Ray heard himself pleading for any kind of sound as the crowd shushed, but there was no answer. Another bubbled breath and a pulse beat was Steve’s reply. Everyone knew they had to get the pilot out immediately. But the body of the airplane was so tightly twisted it was hard to tell where man and airplane began. Every time someone attempted to touch the aircraft it shifted and threatened to collapse on itself.
“We have to stabilize this side first.” Someone had taken control and by now it was evident that if anything was going to be done safely and quickly, they had to work as a team. The white metal was held in place delicately by several people and each time anyone moved or let their hold relax the plane shifted. Several placed themselves on one side then on the other as they did what they could to stabilize the fuselage. Hearts raced but their minds remained focus on what had to be done. Some concentrated on one side that rocked from the weight of the wing while others debated the best strategy to reduce fuel from spilling out. People began calling out damage where they could see it and every few feet people held pieces of engine, wing, and fuselage still.
--
Bob was late getting on the road to the airport that morning and was hurrying to get to Chico in time for our landing. The Livingston newspaper had called him to schedule an appointment for an interview. The paper wanted to do a news article about the upcoming boogie so the reporter asked Bob, and his wife, Julie, to stop by their office before he drove on to Chico. Bob was reluctant to throw another errand into his already busy day, but finally agreed that they would. It took longer than he really wanted so he was frustrated and in a hurry to get to the resort.
“Damn, I shouldn’t have stopped,” he said. “They are going to get there and I’ll still be driving on this damn road,” Bob was losing his patience because he didn’t stick to his original list of errands.
“Don’t land there.” He shouted. He had the big windsock in the truck with him. The little one that always stood in the field near the road wouldn’t do for this kind of wind. It would be hard to see and because it was smaller, it would play down the intensity of the wind.
He drove through the valley, thinking about the high cost of aircraft fuel which was another delay to his day because he had to negotiate a lower price. He and Julie rode silently for a little while, but the closer he got to the turnoff, the more frantic he became. He needed to talk to Steve on the radio before the plane got too close.
“Come on, Steve, listen to me. Don’t land.” Julie listened to her husband plead for his friend to hear him.
“Please, God, let them be late.” The ground winds were way too strong for a landing on the Chico road. The Flying Y was near and Bob was rushing to get to a radio so he could tell Steve to land there instead.
“Listen to me,” he screamed at the windshield, “Go to the Flying Y!”
He wasn’t sure how strong the wind gusts were at Chico, but every few seconds, gusts would rock his truck and he knew it would be a nasty landing. Steve was a great pilot, but the winds were unpredictable at Chico on a good day, so there was no sense taking chances.
He glanced in the rearview mirror, watching police lights far behind him. Montana didn’t have a speed limit and he knew he was driving safely, so he kept his speed steady and continued driving the last five miles to the Chico turnoff. The lights gradually gained on him and his throat became dry accompanied with a foreboding thought: Something’s happened! He needed to get there. The Sheriff passed him going ninety and Bob watched as the car turned onto the county road leading to the resort.
“Oh, my God. Nooooo!” A panic overtook Bob so strongly—so paralyzing—that he was amazed he had made it the last few miles when he found himself following the police lights through the pasture gate.
It took seconds for Bob to get from his truck to the crash, but for the next several years he played the sight over and over as though it were hours. Every tiny, inexplicable detail was branded into his brain. He would never forget how he noticed every muscle grow tight in the men’s arms as they worked together to hold the plane steady. The dark, wet grasses under the wing, the shrill sound of people calling out details, and the regret he instantly felt that, somehow, he should have prevented this.
People were scattered around the white and blue Piper that had settled near the horse coral. Bob ran to the pilot side of the aircraft and found a couple men tending to Steve. Bile filled his throat as he saw his dying friend.
“His name is Steve.” He choked back the burn in his throat and heart.
Two men ran toward the plane, knees and heels kicking high through the tall grass. They each carried two cinder blocks and quickly handed them to waiting men who began stacking them beneath the damaged wing. It took several trips, until they had made a small pile of blocks holding the wing precariously in place.
“Uhh… Mmm… Ohhh.” A cry came from somewhere—somewhere inside the tanglement. More frantic motion around the aircraft began and everyone set to finding the source of the small sounds.
“There are two other people inside.” Bob told them that there were others in the plane. But the tiny space left in the cockpit could not have held any more bodies.
The airplane lay on its back, wheels praying to the sky. The right wing was bent badly, but remained attached and spread out to its side and upward as though it was pointing out shapes in the clouds. The left wing, broken from the body, lay under the airplane.
Bernadette, who had worked herself around the airplane to the pilot’s door left Ray with Steve and ran to the other side of the airplane, peeking and leaning around the wings so she could see where the sounds originated “There is someone alive over here.” she yelled. “There is someone else.”
There was a small space between earth and wing where Bernadette squeezed. She found me tucked up between the seat and the instrument panel with my knees pinned against my chest. My face and arms were wedged against each other and the side of the co-pilot door held most of me tightly in place.
“We are here now. We’re here.” For the first time, Bernadette saw blood in the wreckage. My head was twisted oddly and partially sticking out of the broken side window. She couldn’t see a face, but she saw long blonde hair covering it. She tried to brush the tight tangle from my face but it was caught in the glass and upholstery. She pulled at small tufts until she could see a cheek and chin. The plexiglass slashed through my face.
“What’s your name?” She asked. “You’re going to be okay. I’m just going to move this piece of windshield away from you.” She carefully broke away the sharp pieces and cleared as much as she could. The glass left a two inch long cut down to the chin bone and nearly severed my upper lip. I didn’t answer her question.
Oh, my... she’s so young, Bernadette thought as she tried to find a hand to hold. She reached through the broken window and inched her fingers along an arm trying to find a hand.
She must not even be a teenager yet. My body was now the size of a small child squeezed into the tiny space. There was no room to move arms or legs to make me comfortable so she stroked the part of my face she could see and continued to speak to me.
“What’s your name?”
“What grade are you in?’ She wiped away a few more strands of sun-bleached hair that stuck to the blood-caked mangle that once was my top lip. Locks of it looked like the smooth silky hair of a young girl. And for long moments, only cries answered Bernadette’s reassuring questions.
“Have you turned thirteen, yet?”
“I’ve been to Utah before, what part of Salt Lake do you and your parents live in? Maybe I’ve been there.” She persisted asking questions to try to get some sort of coherent reaction from me.
“Come on, sweetie, can you tell me your name?”
A tiny, “Kelly,” squeaked from my throat, and Bernadette felt a small victory for those trying to save something from this tragic, mutilated scene. “You’re going to be fine, Kelly. You’re going to be fine.”
It had only been a couple of minutes since the plane fell from the sky, but so much was happening that it was hard to know everything going on. Some one drove a backhoe from near the new lodge closer to the airplane. A man was running with a heavy metal chain dangling from his arms. “Here, I have a tow chain I keep in my truck. If we use it, we can lift the plane up enough to get underneath.”
“We have to move this first.” And men started negotiating the best way to maneuver the chain to raise the airplane so they could support it with the cinder blocks.
“Then take hold of that end of the wing. We will lift from this side.” Back and forth people hollered commands trying to stay organized but work as quickly as possible. They were still working against time as fuel continued to stream from the plane. They gathered what they could to prop up the unstable side of the airplane. Someone looped the tow chain around the strut on the wing, and the backhoe driver began lifting. They continued to slide lumber and more cinder blocks under the severed wing.
“Whoa, whoa! Watch the sparks!” A man pulled his hand away from the cinder block, stunned at Ray’s rebuke.
“The chain is causing sparks! It could explode with all that fuel coming out.” Fear and urgency made Ray’s remarks short and bold.
“I’ll be careful.” He started the backhoe again to inch the chain upward in tiny increments. But a few people around the airplane were yelling above the noise of the back hoe and waving to shut it off!
The electricity throughout the airplane was still hot and live and caused occasional sparks. Bob knew that even though the propeller had stopped turning, the magneto was sending electricity to every metal part in the wreck. It had to be turned off before the whole place exploded. As Bob tried to get near the cockpit to find the magneto switch the Sheriff began ordering everyone away from the airplane. He was fearful of the fuel spilling out of both wings. The fire department would be arriving shortly and they could stabilize the fuel leak. “It is just too dangerous. We don’t want anyone else hurt. Stay back!”
“I can do it,” Bob yelled. The crowd reluctantly drew away as the Sheriff tried to gain control. Bob and Ray argued with the Sheriff.
“We have to do something, now!
“Not until I get clearance from the Fire Department,” the Sherriff said.
“We can’t wait for the fire department.” Bob was adamant that he could turn off the power and he moved toward the airplane again.
“Stay back!” The sheriff barked.
Bob turned away from the plane and swore loud enough for the Sherriff to hear his frustration. Walked toward an arbitrary line that the Sherriff had drawn in the weeds. Bob was spitting mad, but he obeyed the officer.
People dispersed to a wide perimeter. Most stood by themselves, casting a shadow of dread, which was beginning to grow a little longer against the early afternoon sunlight. Ray and Bernadette held each other as they watched the silent airplane sit unattended. The metal creaked, fuel continued to spill in a small stream from the wing, and they waited. Quietly; screaming inside, but welcoming the reprieve from the exhaustion of rescue.
“Have you called for the HelpFlight helicopter from Billings?” Ray broke the silence to ask the sheriff.
“They are on standby in case we need them.”
It’s an interesting thing to watch a crowd feel defeated. People detach. A man in faded Levis kicked at the grass over and over, in a rhythmic swing. A woman in a sundress and sandals who had been hauling pieces of lumber stood staring at the airplane. She was not focused on the scene, but at the space between. Her mind wandered for relief. The crowd took a deep breath and sighed in and out every few seconds.
Two minutes later, pump and fire trucks arrived and the sheriff allowed the crowd to resume the rescue.
“Honey, will you go stay with the pilot and make sure any movement doesn’t make it worse on him?” Ray slid his hand off her shoulders and said, “I’m going to see what I can do to get closer to Kelly.” Bernadette went to sit beside Steve. She sat on her knees and held her fingers against his slow, weak pulse.
The cockpit was too damaged for Bob to reach the control panel. He walked his fingers along the dashboard as far as he could. The instruments were smashed and he could not find a space big enough to reach his arm through the shredded metal to find the master switch. He ran to the passenger side where the fuselage had ripped near the cargo door. It was a small door, but he was able to yank it loose enough to fit through. He sat down, lay on his back, and leaned in with his head one shoulder then started to shimmy through the tight slit of meshed seat and metal an inch at a time. Mud, grass, fuel -- another tiny bit farther as he squirmed along to a place where he could move his shoulders. He then squeezed far enough in to grab the metal rail to which the back seat had once been bolted. He pulled his torso through the door was inside the space where we had stowed the luggage and parachutes.
What would have been three feet of space in another airplane was now ten inches of accordion metal. The tail was severed from the main fuselage and parts of the passenger side panels lay wedged into the upholstery. Sparks snapped at random intervals every few feet—it was only a matter of time before they caught hold of a fuel-soaked clump of grass or vapors rising all around the site and ignited into flame.
He still laid on his back, looking up at the ceiling. The upholstery was torn away in spots and right above him the sun peeked through and glared into his eyes. Bob punched around at the laminated wood panel that separated the cargo hold and the inside of the tail. It took him several deep blows, but finally broke through to the tail section. Once he was able to bash in one side of the panel, he slid it back far enough to allow him to squeeze into the tail itself. He wrapped his fingers around the sharp metal seams inside the tail and peeled back the jagged gash. The twelve-foot tail lay bent upward into the sky, and after a few minutes of worming through the gash, he quickly found himself inside and found the rudder cables that stretch from a mechanism near the tail panel he has just punched out and the far end of the tail. One cable felt like it had broken off, but it was still taut. The cables made it harder to move around in the tail. The battery was bolted into place at the very end of the tail so he wriggled along the tail pushing himself along with his shoulder blades and heels an inch at a time. He squeezed his arm above his head and reached behind blindly to find the square battery, it was just beyond reach. He inched his hips farther into the tail and winced as he heard the metallic fabric creak. He took a startled breath and moved a tiny bit more until he found the battery box. Come on, come on, hold steady, he said under his breath. He traced the shape of the battery downward until his fingers found the post and cables. His knuckles ached as his pried the cable from the post with his fingers. Once it was off, he didn’t take time to relax.
“Got it!” he shouted, and he slowly slid back out of the metal cave and ran around to the pilot door to see how Steve was doing.
“His name is Steve. How is he?” Bob softly asked Bernadette as though reverence was appropriate.
“I’m still feeling a pulse, but it is getting weaker.” And with gentle kindness and love for a dear friend and someone she would never meet but to whom she would feel eternally close, Bob and Bernadette cradled Steve’s body as closely to them as they could. They stayed with him until his breaths grew further apart. During those long minutes they talked to him and cried for the people who loved him. No matter how many times Bernadette faced death in the Intensive Care Unit it always touched her heart when there was nothing to do for a dying body. Her gift to Steve that day was a genuine, loving touch to his soul. Bernadette felt comforted with the knowledge that someone, somewhere would have wanted her to be with Steve as he said good-bye to this earth. Reverently, she told Bob the pulse had stopped. They sobbed for their friend.
I do not remember anything from the time we passed over the truck at the end of the runway to the following day. But I remained conscious for most of the rescue. I lay trapped inside the cockpit for many minutes, speaking in soft mumbles and only staying coherent by Burnadette’s and Ray’s prompting.
The group had managed to wedge the airplane level by stacking bricks and wood underneath with help from the backhoe and adrenaline induced strength. The leaking fuel was now only an irritant since the battery was disengaged and explosion was no longer a threat.
Ray lay on the wet ground and squeezed into the tiny space with me. His feet spread on the ground out toward the front of the airplane nose. Above, others finished building up the parts that felt precarious. He lay on his stomach as near to me as he could and held my right hand then slid his other hand under my right shoulder and left it there, patting reassurances while he tried to keep me conscious and make sure any movement didn’t damage me more. Two people pushed debris away to make room to clear me from the plane.
Although everyone paused for a moment while the fire truck was arriving, there was little relief from the anxiety and frantic feeling of tending to victims. More people joined the scene as word got out and people continued to help. A man who had been helping to stabilize the airplane knelt and looked at through the wreckage at Ray.
“I’m the pastry chef.” Ray looked toward the odd comment. There stood Charlie in his chef hat and apron. “I mean I’m an EMT.” Ray laughed months later at the silly comment and Charlie’s tone of voice when he added the EMT part as though it would make everyone feel a little better. Ray writes in a letter describing the rescue, “Bernadette and I have used this to add a chuckle to the middle of our crying.”
Charlie needed to know everyone’s name that was helping to move me. “We shouldn’t move her unless everyone agrees.”
“We’ve got to get this seat out. She is wedged so tight that we can’t ease her out of this mess. Does anyone have tools?”
Someone ran to their car and returned with a set of tools. I was tucked in a ball in the front seat with my knees pinned to my chest. Carefully, but quickly, hands worked the wrench and the seat finally gave away. Bob pulled it from the cockpit which gave them more room to get to my knees. Slowly, delicately, they straightened my legs while Ray held my head and neck securely in place. The ambulance had just arrived and the paramedics handed Ray a neck collar and oxygen mask. As he slipped it over my nose I winced louder because of the pain from my cut lip.
“I think we can get her out over here, but we’ll need to do it slowly.” Someone had placed a backboard at the back of the airplane.
“It looks like about eighteen inches that we’ll need to move her. Let’s lift and move together.”
“It’s pretty tight in here,” Ray said. “I’ve only got about eight to ten inches to work with. If we go all the way, I’ll lose her neck and head. We’ll have to inch our way toward you guys at the back.” Where ever there was a hole in the plane, hands stuck through and slid under my body parts.
“Okay, ready? On three. One, two, lift.” All hands lifted and moved a partial inch then put my body down as they repositioned their hands. Slide under, lift slightly, relax, slide under again. In this way they gently shuffled me to the crowd toward the back of the plane.
A man’s strong hands, slid under Ray’s as my head got closer to the opening. “Okay, I’ve got her neck back here. You can let go.” And Ray relaxed and shimmied back out from under the wreck. He could hear another. “One, two, lift,” by the time he ran to the other side of the airplane. With synchronized counts and tiny movements, pairs of hands were able to delicately move me the required distance. Once I was clear of the wreckage, they carefully placed my broken body onto the back board and lifted me into the ambulance.
I could not feel any sensation in my legs and was unable to move them. It was obvious that I was paralyzed, but the extent was not certain so everyone treated me as though a miracle would happen and I would recover and walk.
Everyone stood in silence for a few seconds; a deep sense of fatigue settled over the crowd—the kind of tired that sends you into a deep sleep for a night and a day. Exhausted sighs and suppressed tears choked through each person as they took a moment to rest. Numbness crawled through the crowd and tears of exhaustion, relief and anger started to well up in exhausted bodies. Bernadette had been sifting through luggage, blankets, and gear bags.
“Oh, my. There is someone else.”
There had been so much commotion tending to Steve and putting out fires and saving me that somehow the news that Brent was aboard the airplane hadn’t reached everyone.
“Yes, it’s Brent.” Bob said with regret.
I’ve heard different stories about when Brent was discovered. Bernadette was surprised by finding him. I was knotted up on top of him, hiding him until I was extracted and treated. Bob could tell from the wrangle of metal that Brent couldn’t have possibly lived through the trauma so he concentrated his lifesaving efforts on me. He has since told me that it was very apparent that Brent was killed on impact. “He was pretty beat up,” was the description he told me over a cold beer and a glass of wine years later.
I imagine the scene far removed from anything that has ever happened to me or ever will again. Brent lay twisted under me. And only once I was out from the airplane was he visible. He must have been hidden for over an hour. Waiting to be recognized, just to be acknowledged. The focus was all about me. And I wonder every day, why me? What if he had been found and some sort of first response could have saved him? Sometimes I scream for brief moments when the grief of loss and guilt get too bad. Sometimes surviving feels selfish and irresponsible and unfair. Survivor guilt may possibly haunt me forever and when I think his name, my gut writhes trying to hold the fear that I’ll be found unworthy to live compared to him.
Bernadette tells me months later as I recover in the rehabilitation center. “Now that I look back,” she looks into my eyes with tears streaming down her face, “I remember a pink arm against your face. I thought it was yours, Kelly. It must have been Brent’s and slid away when Ray was straightening your legs. That’s why we didn’t see him at first. You were huddled into his lap with your head protected against his chest.”
I tell friends of those first few minutes, and those last five seconds before we touched down. How the black truck top caught up with its own shadow as we flew over. It was a tiny shadow, only half-an-hour old. It was on the back of noon when shadows pygmy themselves and leave just a hint of darkness. A blink and they’re gone. That’s all it took, a blink, and he was gone too.
I hate myself for being in the front seat of the airplane. I had cinched my seat belt down into my lap and resigned myself to land without speaking up. But in that split second of terror I must have felt when I knew we weren’t going to make the landing, my sweetheart had reached back and pulled me from the back seat into him. During a horrific moment of limbs and airplane tumbling across the grass, Brent saved my life and sacrificed his.
Sometimes when I tell the story to friends, I forget they weren’t there; the details are so clear it feels like I’ve shared the horror with everyone. Sometimes I don’t remember either. I mix up what I know with what I want to know. I want to remember every word, every scream, every whimper, but I’m afraid of the pain. The heart pain. The way we must have shared that final thought. The one that said “I’ll save you.” And, “please don’t leave without me.” Why did I consent? Why didn’t I scream him back? Why can’t I remember his voice the instant he left? Why can’t I feel his arm cradle me as he simply swept away from me? Did he wave, did he give a tiny final squeeze, and did he move my hair out of my eyes with a wispy gesture?
I remember many things. I don’t remember him leaving. I don’t remember the awful separation as our orgied limbs untangled. I can’t feel his last kiss as he reached for whatever body part was near his lips. I can’t remember asking if he was alive that day. But a day later I asked the doctors so they would know I cared. I already knew. I must have given a little resigned sigh, then closed my eyes and slept.
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