Thursday, July 14 - Friday, July 15: A self-fulfilling domain name: Our small hell getting home

Many of you already know about our disastrous trip home to New York.  After so much medical drama during our trip, I was hoping against hope that we'd be able to jump on our flights effortlessly and get Steven to a doctor once we got home.  Instead, "malo paklo"--the cutesy, memorable name I chose for this blog--turned out to be exactly what the last two days of this trip eventually became: "a small hell."

Prior to leaving Zagreb, I was already anxious about the process of getting home.  For weeks there have been reports of chaos at Heathrow, a condition we had already witnessed when we flew in on our way to Zagreb.  As a perpetual worrier, I was concerned about returning the car to OKMobility. I worried about getting Steven a wheelchair at the airport.  I worried that we couldn't get both sets of boarding passes at once.  I worried about getting a wheelchair for Steven at Heathrow.  You can imagine me in a general state of high anxiety which, as I have stated elsewhere, is my operative mode of behavior.

As it turns out, I had nothing to be worried about during the Zagreb - London leg of the trip. The staff at British Airways at Pleso airport (Zagreb) were terrific.  All we had to say was "he needs a wheelchair" and everything was taken care of.  An attendant--a very earnest but friendly man from Velika Gorica in Zagorje--made the whole process very smooth, as I explain below.  Steven wasn't the only person in need of wheelchair assistance to the plane. A man with cerebral palsy controlling his own electric-driven wheel chair was flying from Zagreb to London and on to Manchester.  

I can't remember whether the wheelchair assistant gave us his name.  I'll just call him "Darko."  Darko ploughed the way forward with Steven's chair: up elevators, over to security, down elevators to a waiting area where he said the ambulance would be picking us up to take us to the plane.  We had plenty of time to shoot the breeze.  I wandered upstairs among the duty free shops and restaurants, unimpressed by the offerings except by the substantial "leave a book, take a book" library located right smack in the midst of the shops.  Very cool.

Steven, in the meantime, connected to the guy from Manchester and his attendant over airlines and wheelchair issues. Steven shared horror stories about Lauren and Zach getting Zach's chair returned to them at the end of flights in various states of disrepair.  We were curious to see if Manchester guy's chair would survive the Zagreb - London flight.

About 45 minutes to takeoff, the "ambulance" arrived.  It was actually a kind of freight mover outfitted with wheelchair spaces and a ramp elevator.  We all got on the platform at the back of the vehicle.  It raised us all to the passenger compartment.  Then the ambulance drove right up to the plane, already in the parking section of the tarmac.  We all advanced to the front of the vehicle, where a second platform raised us all--along with two more airport attendants--to the very door of the plane opposite the staircase for able-bodied passengers.  We had to wait a bit to get in, as the plane was just then finishing its pre-flight cleaning.  After about ten minutes, I heard Darko say in kajkavian dialect "Kaj djelaju?" [What are they doing?] before banging on the door again to remind them we were here.

The rest of the flight was uneventful. Steven hobbled on a cane down to our seats.  The plane was not full, giving us a little more room to navigate.  The flight was nominally "sold as British Airways" but operated by Finnair.  Nice crew, polite, accommodating.  All I cared about was getting Steven OFF the plane and through passport control on to leg two of our journey.  Fortunately, we did not have to contend with another elevator ambulance to get him off the plane, as a jetway gerbil tube connected us to the terminal.  Even better, there was an airport wheelchair assistance person ready to take us through the terminal again to a terminal bus that would bring us to the next terminal. Terminally.  We went through the perfunctory passport control for people catching connecting flights, and then on to Heathrow's comprehensive security check.  As annoyingly thorough as the security people are, they are equally as respectful and polite.  It took about 15 minutes to get through.  Not bad considering the nightmares many others have had to endure over the last month.

We're feeling pretty good right about now.  We had lunch at a bar-grill place with craft beer, then unhurriedly made our way to the gate. Everything was going just swimmingly.  Until it all fell apart. 

I may be reading too much into some of the experiences we had just prior to our scheduled departure, but in retrospect it comports entirely with the size dimensions of our small hell.  There were a lot of peculiarities along the way.  For one, we were leaving from a gate at ground level where busses would take the passengers to the plane parked out on the tarmac.  While such an embarkation procedure makes perfect sense for smaller planes headed for regional destinations (like Zagreb), it is uncommonly inefficient for moving three hundred or so people on a transatlantic flight.  Next, the wheelchair assistant--a jolly avuncular figure--parked us next to the restrooms beside the gate.  There must have been a sewage backup because the whole place smelled just vile.  We waited there for nearly an hour when the elevator ambulance arrived.

Something just felt way off when we got on the ambulance. Three other passengers joined us: an elderly woman and her husband (oh, for God's sake...they could have been our age), and an older obese guy dressed hasidically, constantly on his phone speaking Yiddish.  Since Yiddish is somewhat comprehensible to German speakers, I picked up that he was talking to family members and clients the whole way to the plane, letting them know when he'd be arriving.  Our avuncular attendant cheerfully informed us that we could put our passports away, because all we'd need from now on was our "boarding pass and a smile."  We were finally on the plane in our seats.

It took a while before the able-bodied passengers in our section of the plane finally showed up to claim their seats.  A lovely Polish family of four: mom, dad, teenager, and child sat immediately in front of us.  I swapped seats with a French father so that he could sit next to his teenage son, and I could sit next to Steven.  All settled in, we only had to wait for Heathrow control to let us pull away from the parking spot.

And that's when the hell part started to take hold.  Over the course of four and half hours, the pilot tried several times to engage departure only to be stopped by an errant exit light on our side of the plane within sight of our seats.  The cycle of each attempt went something like this.  Flight attendants were told to perform a cabin check, the doors were "locked", then the left-side door remained lit even after the sequence for cabin check took place.  The pilot apologized.  A mechanic from ground crew came on board the plane.  He pulled open a panel from above the door and adjusted wires.  The pilot engaged several boot-up sequences first for testing, then for engagement of the plane.  And just when we thought we were set to go, the whole sequence occurred again.  Three more times over the course of four and half hours.  Each time, we saw the frustration on the faces of the flight attendants.  We saw the perplexed middle-aged mechanic and his partner scratching their heads at the lighting panel above the door.  We heard the pilot with all due transparency explaining the conundrum they faced.  In the meantime, I watched the entirety of "The Northman" while we waited and waited and waited.  (Great film, by the way.)

It was now just before 11:00pm.  The pilot came on to say that they would make one more attempt to get us off the ground, but yet another obstacle emerged.  Local London noise ordinances prevented the departure of planes after 11:30pm.  Even as he was explaining that the airlines were trying to get this law changed, the flight attendants were serving dinner!  That's when ALL of us knew that we were not going anywhere that evening.  They served a full-on dinner followed by a brief announcement explaining that we would have to disembark, get on busses, go through passport control and meet in arrivals where an American Airlines representative would be providing us with hotel rooms for the night.

By this point, I am a basket case.  I knew they wouldn't have an elevator ambulance to get Steven off the plane, and I also knew he was in excruciating pain.  We realized we would have to wait until all the passengers got off before we could even move.  And then a slight altercation with a fellow passenger:  one young guy with his carry-on slung over one shoulder and a luggage cart with wheels over the other smacked Steven in the back of the head with the luggage cart.  

When Steven shrieked "ow!," I yelled out "Hey, you just smacked him in the back of the head."  Steven later says he heard the guy mutter "sorry" and just ploughed ahead. But I didn't hear it. Two small children followed, and then a woman, presumably his wife YELLED at me, "He didn't mean it.  He didn't MEAN IT."

"He SMACKED my husband in the HEAD," I repeated, not sure if Steven was now bleeding from the top of his body in addition to the bottom of his feet.  

"HE DIDN'T MEAN IT."

"Just go, move. Please just move," realizing that arguing with this woman, no doubt as frantic as I was would not lead anywhere except to further delays for us getting off the plane."

"YOU just move," she countered.  I'm sure she had no idea that her retort completely fell flat.

"I would LOVE to, bitch!"  Okay, I was completely off base here using the b-word. In the heat of the moment, meanness took over.  I am not proud of this, and I'm especially pissed at myself that it just popped out so suddenly like a fart on the sly.  Given the sanctimony I felt about people behaving badly on planes, I now realized I was one of them.  Fortunately, this exchange did NOT blow up into a full-on altercation.  The passengers all got off the plane.  And finally it was our turn to disembark.

At this point, I'm weepy.  We got the attention of the flight attendants who realized Steven was in an awful, pitiful state.  I was asking if there would be an elevator ambulance to get him down, unsure if he could manage the steps. One flight attendant called ahead and made sure there would be a wheelchair attendant waiting for us.  Another flight attendant talked us through how we could get him down the steps; she would be happy to take our bags down if I could maneuver him.  Still another attendant wanted to dispense hugs. She asked us where we were going, and we explained this was our anniversary trip after thirty years together.  She kept on asking if she could slip us a couple bottles of wine or whisky for the rest of the evening.  I am a blubbering mess now, overwhelmed by the unknown ahead of us and the pure kindness immediately before us.  The attendant who coached us through getting Steven off the plane mentioned that she knows how tough this is navigating a wheelchair, as she has been taking care of her partner with cancer for some time now.  Needless to say, I am bawling.  "Don't you start, or I will to," said the other flight attendant.

We got Steven down the staircase and on to the terminal bus, waiving goodbye to our angel-flight attendants.  An American Airlines rep met us on the bus and helped ensure that wheelchair assistance would be available once we got back to the terminal.  Hasidic guy joined us, too.  Initially, he was pissing Steven and me off because he was so gruff to the AA rep.  Later on, after eight hours together in the arrivals terminal, we actually came to like the guy.

Both Hasidic guy and Steven had their own wheelchair attendants for the series of elevators and hallways we had to navigate.  It is entirely true that you get through an airport MUCH faster in a wheelchair than without.  Our attendant wheeled us right up to the front of the line at passport control, and we zipped through without a hitch.  He brought us down to arrivals where yet another distressed and helpless American Airlines rep greeted us not with a voucher for a hotel, but with a pamphlet that essentially outlined the passenger bill of rights.  He apologized profusely but he could not put us up in a hotel for the night, as "they were all booked up."  He did suggest that we should spend the night in arrivals as opposed to departures (which would have entailed another security check) because it would be more comfortable.  For what, we wanted to know.  It turns out for a very, long wait.

In the meantime, the American Airlines app chimed with several different messages informing us that flight 141 would depart at 9:30am, then 3:00pm, and the one that nearly pushed me over the edge, 10:00pm.  The app finally settled on 1:30pm.  It didn't change for a while, so I was reasonably assured that that would indeed be our final departure time.

The time now is 1:15am.  The next five hours consisted of attempts to get rest on benches with armrests that prevented you from stretching out; conversations with happenstance travelers commiserating with one another over flights gone wrong and sharing "where are you from, what do you do" stories; getting food more to entertain ourselves than to nourish us at the one open sandwich shop; lots of bathroom trips; lots of long walks in the arrivals section and scoping out the departures area for the next encounter with customer service.  I was playing IT guy for people who were trying to charge their phones or access Heathrow's free WiFi.  Fortunately, our last wheelchair attendant left us the wheelchair so that I could move Steven around.  At one point, I realized I kept smelling the same awful stench, like a child's full diaper or a constant barrage of farting.  At first, I thought it was the older woman sprawled out on the bench beside us, and then I realized it was Steven's feet!  The infection had created the most foul odor.  His feet continued to bleed and to pus up, but we had no real way of changing the bandages.

Of all the conversations that stand out over the course of our stay in arrivals, two folks in particular come to mind: a lovely woman from Chicago visiting family in Ireland whose daughter was supposed to march in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day two years ago and that same Hasidic guy who now shared with us his anxiety about getting back home in time for the Sabbath.  The former was fascinated with life in New York; the latter guy had a place in the southern Catskills near Monticello, about an hour from our place in Roxbury.

At 6:30am I moved Steven from arrivals to the check-in for departures.  We still had NO idea where we needed to go, whether we needed a new boarding pass, and what provisions were made to get Steven on the plane.  (I was envisioning yet another elevator ambulance vehicle.)  The queue was unbelievable for the American Airlines desks.  There were actually two:  one queue just to get to the queue, and another for the queue we needed.  But that was the problem, we didn't know which one we did in fact need.  (I noticed one couple in their sixties in back of us only because they were speaking Croatian and my ears are attuned to that language.  It turns out they ended up on our flight sitting directly in back of us.  I tell you, I AM psychic.) The reps were being swarmed by anxious and insistent passengers.  I am guessing it helped that Steven was in a wheelchair, as that seemed to induce employees to give us "better information" about the line we needed to be in.  After several different imprecise directions, we finally made it to a rep who could help us.  I mentioned that Steven needed assistance to get on the plane, and for the first time since we were on this journey, he actually asked to see his feet.  I was about to blow a gasket, but then he immediately realized this wasn't some bullshit to get us on the plane faster.  He made a special note about assistance in their system, and then got authorization to provide us with breakfast and lunch coupons in the amount of £10 each.  He pointed us in the direction of yet another lift, this time to security and told us to see the handicap assistance desk once we got off the elevator.

Here's where we realized just how short-staffed the airport was. The rep at handicap assistance asked if I could push Steven through security.  While I was thoroughly exhausted at this point, I would do anything just to get us on our way. Her colleague got us through to the front of the line, but from there on in, we had to fend for ourselves in the chaotic queues of Heathrow's security.  Again, I got weepy.  The lack of information, the imprecise queues, all of this conspired to fray my nerves.  "Get out your passports. Make sure the liquids are in an approved see-through plastic bag. Pull out your laptops, making sure they are not covered by the bag."  And all the while you're not sure who wants you to go where.  I was chastised for bringing Steven to a queue not designated for wheelchairs, but there was no signage to indicate otherwise or anyone to tell us where to go.  One funny moment: after I had pushed Steven through the gate for wheelchair access, one attendant could see I was really concerned and said, "Don't worry.  We've got your dad.  He'll be okay." If I weren't so tired, I would have laughed my ass off.  I did not share that story with Steven. He'll find out about it if he in fact does read this blog after all.

Once we were through, we got to the emerald city that was duty-free world in this terminal.  I have never seen SO MANY high-end stores that seemed so completely out of place and inappropriate for the vast number of passengers passing through this space: Gucci, Coach, Hugo Boss, caviar and champagne places, who shops at these places?  And no sooner did I muse upon that question, than I saw a woman in the Coach place modeling a bag that she was toying with buying.

Steven and I landed at a terrific brunch and bar place.  It was 8:30am, but I was having a couple pints of beer and an awesome salmon egg scramble on toast, goddamn it.  It turned out to be a mistake, because for the rest of the morning, I could barely keep my eyes open.  Once we finished breakfast, the remaining hours of our time in the airport were spent waiting for a gate update for our flight.  It was coming upon noon-ish.  Gates are announced at least 1 1/2 hours before a flight.  As I was concerned about having to get on an elevator ambulance (I had know idea there would be a jetway for THIS flight), I was anxious about not getting any information.  I decided to wheel Steven over to the airline desks some--I'm guessing now--quarter of a mile away.  Just as I got to the queue for that desk, sure enough, the American Airlines app updated, and we finally had our gate.  So after making fun of all those people we'd been seeing running to their gates through the airport, that's exactly what I did.

When we got to the gate, it was as if we had come home to a family reunion.  Everyone who had been on the flight sixteen hours earlier was there now queueing up with the same raggedy boarding passes.  Steven and I were overwhelmed seeing the same flight attendants who were appalled to discover we never did get the hotel rooms we were promised.  I announced to the crew who were sitting together how impressed we were by the kindness and attentiveness. This group of about fifteen were extremely appreciative of my remarks.  

We spoke at length with several of the attendants about what it is like working for the airlines now.  Here are couple interesting points:

• Everything works on seniority.  If you're in your fifties/early sixties with twenty-five years experience, that's not even considered the most senior!  There are folks there who've been working thirty-plus years.
• Some flight attendants choose their schedules for time off, others for destination.  And just as you might suspect, the older attendants tend to go for more time off, the younger for fun destinations.
• COVID nutjobs weren't as frequent as one might think, given the news reports.  They've heard from colleagues who've had horror stories, but none of the flight attendants in this crew experienced it.
• The crew is everything, just as in any workplace.  This crew was exceptional in the way they worked together and liked being with one another.  I commented that Steven and I thought American must have an awesome hiring policy, because we couldn't get over the level of empathy and support they had given us.  We got the distinct impression this was DESPITE the working conditions at American.

After the flight attendants boarded, we hung out with a group of passengers, none of whom had known one another prior to this flight.  It turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip!  We regaled one another with horror stories and continually riffed on the bizarre moments we all had.  All of us had the distinct feeling that whenever we mentioned to any of the customer service reps or airport personnel that we were on flight 141, they all responded with a kind of hushed reverent tone of awe, a profound empathetic sadness for our misery.  This group of eight managed to salvage the humor from an otherwise deplorable situation.

We boarded again, this time the first on the plane thanks to a kindly airline rep.  We saw the same people taking their seats around us: the Polish family, the Croats behind us, and the French father with whom I again swapped seats so that he could sit next to his teenage son.  Just before the flight took off, one of our favorite flight attendants brought us a couple of cups of wine.  Once we were airborne, another came by with an entire bottle.  About halfway through the flight, the purser (whose name is Louise) personally conveyed her apologies on behalf of the airline and told us she hoped we would write a letter of complaint.  We told her that we would also be writing a letter of commendation to let American know how awesome her crew was.

This flight now went off without a hitch.  When we arrived in New York, Steven initiated a round of applause for the flight attendants and welcomed everyone to his city.  A bit cringeworthy, but after as much wine as we had, totally understandable.  

Wheelchair assistance was right there for us when we got off the plane this time.  I tell you that was the fastest I have ever been through an airport, especially after an international flight.  We got from the plane to the taxi stand through passport control in about 20 minutes.

It took us another 30 minutes to get home from the airport by taxi.  Once there, we crashed for about twelve hours until Saturday morning.  That's when the hospital emergency room adventure began, and where this blog finally ends.