Saint Louis

November 2011

My stomach hit the floor as we pitched sideways, the fire on the wing flowing from the engine like the tail feathers of a macabre phoenix. The engine went silent in a stream of smoke, but there were other noises to take its place.

Shrieks, both human and metal. Mechanics. The high-pitched whine as the other engine fought to carry the burden.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could only hear the screams from the passengers as our roll became a dive and we careened to the left. The armrest struck my ribs. Overhead compartments burst open, raining down luggage. Something hard hit my shoulder. More screaming.

My hand white-knuckled Nathaniel’s.

“We lost an engine.” His grip tightened. “But we should be—” The engine on the right sputtered and failed.

Screams erupted around us.

How was this happening? How was this real? We’d lost both engines.

The logic in me understood. Down. We were going down.

I must have spoken—or cried—the words aloud, because he whipped toward me, grasping the side of my cheek with his hand and leaning in like he could somehow block out everything around us.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

I dragged my focus from the apocalypse outside our window, and his blue eyes bored into mine, consuming my field of vision until he was all I could see.

“This will be okay.” He was so calm, so sure. So utterly freaking insane.

“This is not okay!” My voice was a strangled whisper as we plummeted downward, our angle only decreasing slightly as we leveled out horizontally, but not vertically.

“Stay calm!” one of the flight attendants called out as the plane shuddered, the metal vibrating around us like it would come apart at any second.

I swallowed the scream in my throat and focused on Nate.

“This is the captain,” a tense voice said over the speaker. “Brace for impact.”

We’re going to die.

My pulse thundered so loud it became a roar in my ears, mixing with the cacophony of startled cries from the other passengers.

Nate’s eyes flew wide and he released my cheek, but he kept hold of my hand as we moved to follow instructions.

“Brace! Brace! Brace!” the flight attendants yelled in cadence. “Head down! Stay down!”

I folded my body in half, resting my face near my knees and covering my head with my right hand. My left stayed firmly entwined with Nate’s as we fell from the sky.

“It’s okay,” he promised, mirroring my position as best he could as the flight attendants repeated their commands. “Just keep looking at me. You’re not alone.”

“Not alone,” I repeated, our hands clasped so tight we may as well have been welded as one in that moment.

“Brace! Brace! Brace! Head down! Stay down!”

There was no montage of my life flashing in front of my eyes. No outcry from my soul that I hadn’t accomplished anything of any significance in my eighteen years on this planet. None of the revelations people talked about after coming out of near-death experiences. Because this wasn’t near-death.

This was actual death. Period.

Serena—

“Brace!”

We hit a brick wall and I became a projectile, my seat belt punching my stomach as my limbs went limp, flinging forward without instruction.

We hurtled to the left, and pain erupted in my side. Then we were weightless for a breath of a heartbeat before ramming the earth again like a stone that had been skipped on an unforgiving lake.

Every bone in my body jarred loose. My head bounced off the tray table.

Something heavy pressed against my back as we barreled forward through unreceptive terrain to the soundtrack of screeching metal and screams. The very ground beneath us roared and the world went dark.

We . . . stopped.

My vision blurred as I lifted my head, the seat in front of me barely discernible in the murky darkness.

Was this it? Was this death? No singing angels or waves of energy . . . just . . . this? Whatever this was? It felt like being rocked to sleep, rising and falling a little with each breath.

Green lights flickered, illuminating the cabin just as the darkness fell away from the windows in a wave.

I blinked, trying to force my eyes to focus.

A woman across the aisle opened her mouth, but the ringing in my ears eclipsed any sound she tried to make. There was a baby in her arms, and it, too, appeared to be caught in a soundless scream.

Warmth surrounded the side of my face as my head was turned. Nathaniel.

He was alive . . . and so was I.

His mouth opened and closed, his eyes searching mine as a stream of blood ran down the side of his face from a source somewhere above his left eye.

“What are you trying to say?” I called out. “You’re hurt!” I lifted a trembling hand to his face.

His mouth moved again, and suddenly there was another sound competing with the high-pitched roar in my ears. The intercom?

“We have to move!” Nate shouted, his voice breaking through. “Izzy!

We have to move!”

As though someone had hit unmute on the TV remote, sounds of panicked cries and wailing came rushing in.

“Evacuate! Evacuate!” The command came over the intercom. We’d somehow managed to survive, but for how long?

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I have to get the door!” Nate gave my hand a squeeze and then unlaced our fingers, unbuckling my seat belt before unlatching his own. “Can you get yours?” he yelled across the aisle.

“I’m on it!” a voice answered.

Nate stood, his enormous back blocking the view of the emergency exit as he worked the handle.

Something ice cold rushed from the floor, chilling my feet instantaneously.

“Oh God, we’re in the water,” I said to myself. The river. People stumbled into the aisles in a flurry of movement.

Nate dislodged the door, then threw it outside the plane using both hands.

“Evacuate! Evacuate!”

I fumbled under my seat, then his, grabbing the inflatable life jackets and shoving them inside my vest before yanking the zipper up. There’d be time for those later.

The baby cried as a man across the aisle cursed, grappling with his

door.

“Izzy!” Nate reached back and took my hand, pulling me to my feet as

the water rushed up over my ankles, my lower shins.

Someone shoved into my shoulder as the cabin-wide panic pitched higher in tone.

Nate climbed out of the emergency door, never letting go of my hand, tugging me behind him and up through the doorway, onto the icy wing.

We were in the middle of the Missouri River.

“Take that side!” I shouted at him as the water licked over the front of the wing.

His jaw clenched and he started to shake his head, but he let my hand slip from his as we each flanked a side of the doorway.

“Give me your hand!” I thrust mine toward the woman struggling at the exit, and she lifted up her hands. Nate and I each took one, lifting her onto the wing.

“Leave the damned suitcase!” Nate yelled into the cabin before helping the next guy out.

“They just got the other door open,” one woman cried as she emerged, her feet slipping on the iced-over metal.

“Careful!” I shouted, steadying her.

Again and again, we lifted passenger after passenger.

“Give me the baby!” I reached for an infant cradled in another woman’s arms and held the pink bundle of screaming, insulted baby girl to my chest as Nate pulled the mom out.

“Thank you!” She took the little girl and cleared the path.

The water crested over the wing, and I moved sideways to see the front of the aircraft as Nate helped another passenger out. The front exit doors were open, rafts deployed, as attendants helped passengers into the water . . . water that surged inside the doors, up to their knees as one man trudged into the rapidly filling raft.

“We’re sinking.” Nate nodded.

How many passengers were there? How long did we have until the water filled the fuselage?

A man. A woman. Another man. A scared child. We pulled them all out of the cabin until the wing was full and no one else called out for help from inside.

“Is that all?” Nate yelled into the cabin.

No one answered back as the water soaked the seat cushions.

A splash turned my head, and I saw a few of the passengers jumping into the river. We were fifty yards from shore.

Nate moved across the doorway and took my hand.

“We have to swim,” I said as calmly as I could manage. There would be no pretty little rescue-on-the-Hudson for us.

“Yeah.”

“I can’t swim!” a kid next to me cried out, burying his face in his father’s jacket.

The life jackets.

“Here.” I reached into my vest and pulled out a plastic packet, ripping it open with my teeth before handing it to the father.

His startled eyes met mine. “I didn’t grab ours.”

“Take mine. I’m fine.” I gave him a reassuring smile and nod before grabbing the other packet from my vest. “I grabbed yours too,” I told Nate, pushing the packet at his chest.

He blinked down at the vest and shook his head. “Put it on.” “I don’t need it,” I assured him. “Six years on the swim team.”

He looked from me to the vest a couple of times and then looked over the passengers. “Where is the mom with the baby?” he called out.

Her hand flew up from somewhere midway down the wing.

“Give this to her,” Nate instructed the dad next to us, and he passed it down the line until the woman received it.

Splotches of bright yellow filled my peripherals as a few other passengers slipped the vests on and started blowing them up.

Water covered the edges of the wing, and we all shuffled back, not that our weight was going to balance the aircraft or keep it from sinking to the riverbed.

The plane dipped, and a simultaneous cry of panic ripped through the crowded wing as two passengers slipped into the water.

“Look at me,” Nate demanded, tipping my chin up with his thumb and forefingers.

Had he always been this blurry?

“Shit, your pupils are huge,” he muttered, his fingers ghosting over my forehead with a wince. “And that’s one hell of a goose egg. Ringing in your ears? Blurry vision?”

“Both.”

“You’re concussed.” He looked over my head, then swung around to look at the dipping nose of the plane as the water ate up the cockpit glass and surged toward the door. “Everyone’s out, there’s nothing else we can do, and we’re going to be underwater in minutes. We have to swim for shore. Can you do that?”

My side twinged, a subtle, cutting ache. “I can make it.”

He nodded, his grip tightening on my hand. “We’re going together.

The water is about ten degrees above freezing this time of year.” Another splash, this time from the other side of the aircraft.

“And we don’t even have a door to float on. Well, there’s nothing like living out your favorite movie, right?” I forced a shaky grin.

“You’ve got jokes. Nice.”

The plane pitched forward, nose-down, and my feet slipped as people shrieked around us, sliding into the water.

“Shit!” Nate’s hand tightened like a vise as I skidded toward the edge, and he yanked me back, wrapping his arm around my side.

Pain exploded from behind my ribs, and I gasped at the intensity as it washed over me, raw and sharp.

“Got you! Now let’s get off this thing!” He edged us toward the back of the wing, which rose abruptly as the plane leaned into the water, the fuselage groaning like a dying man as water devoured the front doors and started marching up the windows. “We’re jumping,” he said, holding my hand between us and facing the shore. “Ready?”

“Ready.” I swallowed, bracing for the icy welcome of the water beneath us.

“On three.” He looked at me and then our landing zone. “One.” “Two,” I continued.

The plane gave a death gasp and rattled as it plunged into the river, picking up speed. “Three,” Nate rushed.

We jumped.