Part Four: When Elena Woke
She came back to consciousness in the specific way of someone who has been asleep for the first time in a very long time — not gradually, not through the comfortable transition of someone who has slept well, but with the abrupt, disoriented surfacing of someone whose body grabbed sleep while it was available and is now releasing it with the same unceremonious efficiency.
She was upright in her seat.
There was no weight in her arms.
The cabin was quiet.
These three facts arrived in sequence and the third one — the quiet — was the one that reached her first, because the absence of crying after so many hours of crying has a specific, almost physical quality. Then the second fact arrived — the empty arms — and she turned.
Lucia was in the arms of the man in 14A.
Her daughter was asleep. Sleeping with the thoroughness of a baby who has finally reached the depth of rest her body needed — the slack, complete, entirely-committed sleep of an infant. Her face was not the red, creased face of crying. It was the ordinary face of a sleeping baby, peaceful in its specific, round-cheeked way.
The man was holding her with the specific quality of someone who knows how to hold an infant — the hand at the back, the angle of the arm, the small, continuing rock that was so slight it was almost not movement at all.
“Oh God,” Elena said. “I’m so sorry, I—”
“It’s all right,” he said. He said it quietly, not disturbing the sleep. “Your daughter was very tired. And so were you.”
She stared at him.
He looked back at her with the expression of someone who is entirely comfortable with the current situation and who is waiting, with patience, for the conversation to find its natural shape.
“You’re flying to see a doctor,” he said. It was not quite a question.
She stared at him. “Yes,” she said. “A pediatric specialist. They said — the doctors at home said — he might be the only one who can help her.”
He was quiet for a moment. He looked at Lucia, who was sleeping against his chest. He looked at Elena.
“Then you don’t need to look for him,” he said. “It’s me.”
