by Melissa Yi
Mr. Money stepped into Margaret Thatcher's previous leg room and heaved Gideon after him. It was so tight that when he bent over to drag him, his butt jutted into the aisle.
Then he hollered at the other two exit row passengers, an elderly black lady in the window seat and what looked like her petrified daughter in the middle seat, "On your seats, slaves! Get out of my way!"
Everyone gasped.
Tucker snatched Mr. Money's left elbow, dislodging his hand from Gideon's collar.
"Don't touch him!" Linda shouted at Tucker.
"Fuck off, kid." Mr. Money kicked backwards.
Tucker twisted, evading the kick, but dropping the arm.
"Tucker!" I fought my way forward. Linda was only a few inches taller than I was. I could take her.
"Sit down, doctor!" Linda widened her stance and threw her arms out like a star.
"No!" I tried to dive between her legs. Not my smoothest move, but as Tina Fey pointed out, if there's an obstacle, take a cue from Sesame Street and try "Over! Under! Through!"
Linda screamed and snapped her legs together before I could get my head between them. "Stop it!"
"Just get out of my way!" I started to rise, pushing on the floor for extra leverage, but at this low vantage point, I had an excellent view of Tucker, who'd also gone low, grabbing Gideon's collar.
Mr. Money thwacked his hand.
His hand. As doctors, our hands and our brains are our livelihood.
I opened my mouth.
"Gid-ee-onnnnnnnnn!" Gladys's shriek Dopplered toward me.
It was like a linebacker hit me in the kidneys. I sprawled left on a diagonal, onto a lady's white tennis shoes.
"You okay?" I gasped.
Gladys continued to lumber forward—after I got flattened, Linda had enough warning to fly to the right, into the opposite bank of passengers—and Gladys reached over Tucker to hammer on Mr. Money's right shoulder.
He kicked backwards once more.
I screamed. Tucker sprang out of the way, toward Herc.
Mr. Money made solid contact with Gladys's knee.
She dropped like a de-stringed puppet, emitting a faint "Oof."
My own back twinged, but I could still haul myself up, using the tennis lady's arm rest. "You okay?" I asked again.
The tennis lady nodded, which was good enough for me to turn back to Tucker.
I'd have to vault over Gladys first. Since it looked terrible for a doctor to hurdle over an injured human in order to save a dog, I glanced down at Gladys to make sure she could breathe without spinal injuries.
Somehow, Margaret Thatcher had battled through the throng and crouched over Gladys's head. Gladys seemed to be talking back to her.
Cool beans. Aside from the kidney punch, Gladys had actually done me a favour by knocking Linda out of the way before immobilizing herself. Now I could do battle with Mr. Money without the head flight attendant or the doggy defender obstructing me.
I launched into the aisle, back issues be damned. I landed right into the spot between Gladys's splayed legs, which encouraged her to wriggle out of the aisle, toward Linda.
Linda cowered away from both of us, covering her torso with her arms. The woman kept thinking I was attacking her. "I'm saving you!" I yelled.
Meanwhile, Tucker pitched himself at the ground. Toward Gideon. He yanked the collar, so his hands still worked. He was trying to wrench it out of Mr. Money's grip.
That was the smart thing to do, save the dog without assaulting the rich guy. Smart Tucker.
Except Gideon was crying and choking again.
And Mr. Money said, "Oh, no, you don't," and booted Tucker in the stomach.
In his recently-repaired stomach.
My turn to scream.
18
Tucker folded in half and pitched on his ass, trying to catch himself with his non-dominant right hand.
Herc heaved him backwards, out of the fray.
And I sprinted forward. I must have looked pretty fierce, because Mr. Money's eyes widened in the split second that he saw me coming. He started to raise his arms.
I kicked his abdomen.
Seemed like quid pro quo. Most middle-aged guys, no matter how much they work out, develop cushioning. I kicked him so hard, he crumpled toward Margaret Thatcher's seat.
Gideon snarled and shot across the aisle.
Someone grabbed my right shoulder from behind. I shook that off.
Tucker lunged toward my face. "Stop, Hope, stop!"
How did he get past Herc? And why should I stop? If anyone should stop, it was this maniac trying to throw a helpless dog off the plane while smashing any humans who got in his way.
I launched myself at Mr. Money again.
He slammed me with an uppercut under my chin.
I bit my own tongue. I fell backwards on the blue carpet, jarring my head hard enough to knock off my glasses. I lay there, stunned.
"Hope!" Tucker shouted.
My tongue throbbed. The jaw pain was flatter and more diffuse, but omnipresent. My skull ached, and the blood pounded in both my temples. My back still twinged. So five different sources of pain competed for receptors.
I didn't move while my brain tried to compute all that sensory input, plus the most important factor.
He hit me. That bastard really hit me.
I couldn't see anything except blobs, and yet I knew I had double vision. The person to the left of me had four blurry shoes instead of two. Damn it.
Terrible time for a concussion.
"Ouch!" I yelped. Two people had grabbed my arms and started dragging me toward the front of the plane, giving me rug burn on top of everything else. The one nearest my face—Pascale—was asking, "Are you okay?"
"Don't touch her! Don't move her!" said Tucker.
They immediately abandoned me in the aisle, stepping over my body to get back to Mr. Money, whom I vaguely realized was still causing a ruckus, but I had more important things on my wobbly mind.
"My glasses." I tried to focus.
I needed my glasses before someone stomped on them. "My glasses!"
I crawled forward, despite the nausea, and located my glasses to the right, under an aisle passenger's seat, precariously close to some tan loafers. My hand snaked forward.
It took two tries because of the double vision, but I snagged my specs. I breathed a little easier, propped myself up on my elbows, re-hooked my glasses over my ears, and yelled, "Tucker?"
He was already leaning over me. He tilted his head to avoid casting a shadow on my face as he gauged my pupil size. "Hope. Hope!"
"I'm okay," I said, although I had to close my eyes and lie down on my back because now everything was spinning, including Tucker's anguished expression. I should cover one eye at a time and see which eye was causing the diplopia, or if it was both, but I wasn't up to self-diagnosis at the mo'.
"You hit your head. How many fingers?"
I clamped my eyes shut. "I can't do it right now." People stepped over us—more civilians fleeing the brawl—which made my brain sway. Then another thought struck me, and I snapped my eyes open. "Is the dog okay?"
He twisted to look over his shoulder. "He's—oh, Jesus."
"What does that mean?"
Tucker didn't answer. I tried to keep my eyes open, but the yelling and the pushing and the lights made me feel sicker than ever. How was I going to save Gideon when I couldn't even see, and Tucker was too busy rescuing me to knock out the bad guy?
"You go," I told him. "I'm okay. It's just a concussion."
He swore under his breath. He reached around my neck, checking my C-spine with firm fingers, top to bottom. "Does that hurt?"
"No! I didn't break my neck. Go get the dog!" I shook my arms and legs to show him that I had no obvious neurological injury.
The plane bumped again, making my temples shriek and a few people gasp. Someone stepped on my arm. "Ouch!"
Tucker braced himself on the floor over me.
I will not throw up. I w
ill not.
Although if I do, it'll be on Mr. Money.
"Go back to your seats!" Linda hollered. Then she added, "Stay in your section!"
I took a quick peek. The worst of the exodus had already occurred. Some passengers had spilled out of the front rows of economy class, bunching up at the curtain. A few passengers remained barnacled to their seats, although the Portuguese kid was standing on his, clinging to his iPad.
Margaret Thatcher bobbed into an aisle seat near my feet, which was closer to the action than I would have liked for her, but since some people had cleared out, we did have more room to fight, once I could stand up.
Gladys seemed to be blubbering now, and Gideon was whining in a high-pitched, piteous way that made me push a reluctant Tucker aside and drag myself to my knees, then my feet, only to disbelieve my own confused eyes—
—I shook my head again, dizzier than ever, trying to figure out what was going on.
While I'd been flattened on the ground, Herc had taken down Mr. Money.
Mr. Money had also been knocked on his back, although the method looked different. Maybe Herc had snatched his right leg out from under him, because Herc grasped that ankle and forced the extended leg up to 60 degrees while Mr. Money snarled, "I'm gonna sue you! I'm gonna sue every last motherfucking one of you!"
Herc struggled to secure the other leg, which was actively kicking toward his face.
The flight attendants did battle with the arms. From what I glimpsed, they got in each other's way, and they were losing.
Also at Mr. Money's head end, jammed into an aisle seat, Gladys wept, "You're a bad man! You're a very bad man! You're going to hell!"
Some men had stood up, filling the aisle beyond Mr. Money's kicking foot, around row 19, but they watched Herc and the flight attendants instead of jumping in.
Then Compton, the weirdo, pushed himself to the forefront of that useless crowd. "Do you need help?"
"Get in there!" I shouted at him.
Since Herc was blockading the entire aisle, Compton attempted to scale the back of the aisle seat in row 18. It was too tall and awkward for him, so he stepped on the arm rest and tried to wedge his way through seats 18B and C. "I'm coming, man!"
Topaz, who was still in 18A, shrieked in protest and batted him back.
A woman cried out in Portuguese behind me. I bet that the dad had stood up, but the mother had forbidden him to help.
Linda started to kneel on Mr. Money's left arm and grab the right. The other two flight attendants fled up the aisle, letting the more senior attendant deal with it, but Mr. Money tried to sock Linda with his free arm.
She tumbled to the side.
"Get his arms!" I shouted, wincing at my own voice. At least my double vision had improved. I was still spinning, but not spinning with two different views of the world.
Tucker shot down to the ground.
"Not you!" I screamed at him as Linda sprang further out of his way, into the abandoned seat opposite Gladys.
Too late. Tucker grasped one of Mr. Money's wrists—no, both—no, one again—
Mr. Money cast his head from side to side, mouth opening, as he flexed his arms despite Tucker's best efforts.
"Get his head!" I screamed.
Mr. Money sank his teeth into Tucker's right forearm.
Tucker's entire body stiffened, but he didn't loosen his grip with his right hand. He hauled off and socked him in the eye with his dominant left hand.
Mr. Money gagged. Tucker wrenched his right arm out of Mr. Money's mouth.
"Someone else take the head!" I shouted.
Gladys stumbled out of her seat.
"Not you!" I yelled, but Gladys held a dark red polyester scarf in her fat hands. She looped it in Mr. Money's mouth and tied it behind his head while his eyes bulged in fury.
"Got another one of those?" said Tucker.
Linda touched the scarf around her neck. "We need zip ties, but—" She swiftly unknotted her scarf and handed it to Tucker.
"Tie his wrists together," he said, in a tight voice, "and then get me another one for my arm."
Even with the lame lighting and my concussion, I could see the circular bite marks imprinted above his wrist. Despite them, he controlled the beast's arms until Linda had secured them, both with her scarf and by kneeling on them.
The good news was that the bite was hardly bleeding, so Mr. Money hadn't managed to tear out a chunk of flesh. The bad news was that human saliva can carry up to 50 different types of bacteria.
We had to wash out Tucker's wound ASAP and cover him with antibiotics when we hit the ground. But first we double-checked that Linda felt safe.
"He's not getting away this time," she said.
"I'll get the zip ties," Pascale called over her shoulder as she rushed toward first class.
Magda handed me her scarf. The airplane bounced. So did my head. I still moved Tucker further up the aisle and bound his wound. It was superficial, but Mr. Money had broken the skin. The spectres of hepatitis and HIV danced in my head.
I heard distant barking. Both Tucker and I snapped to attention. I grimaced while my brain tried to follow suit.
"Gideon!" called Gladys, clawing me and Tucker aside. We both sprawled into an empty row.
Gideon broke through the wall of men toward the back of the plane. I could see better than Tucker, since I'd bounced out of the aisle seat back into the aisle itself and was the first in Gladys's slipstream.
"Get the collar!" one of them shouted.
"I can't!"
"Ow!"
A kid yelled, "Mommy, a doggy!" in an amazed voice that made me choke back a laugh—yes, kid, a doggie, that's what we've been fighting over for the past ten minutes—and Mr. Money roared behind the gag while Gladys stood up and mewled, "Gideon! Come back!"
She started to walk toward her dog, directly over Mr. Money's body.
She bowled Linda out of the way, into the rightward row of seats. Since Linda had been imprisoning Mr. Money's scarf-bound arms, this freed him up to sling both fists upward at once, in a vicious chop between Gladys's legs.
Gladys staggered into the next bunch of seats on her left, knocking into Margaret Thatcher, who'd been crouched over Mr. Money, perhaps nerving herself up to flee toward business class.
Margaret Thatcher flattened herself on the ground like a startled cat before she snaked her way toward the window seat. Since she was moving all four limbs, and so was Gladys, who looked like an overturned beetle, half on the seat, half on the floor, I figured that the two stooges had once again miraculously escaped serious injury.
The only problem was, even though Herc locked down both of Mr. Money's knees, throwing his hands as well as his own knees into the mix, the bad guy lifted his still-bound arms to hammer on Herc's head.
"NO!"
We had to pin him down. He could not escape.
I leaped just as the airplane swerved.
I stumbled over Mr. Money's head and arms, crash landing on all fours. My wrists slammed into the carpet. One knee landed on his torso instead of the ground. My head was jarred by impact. I looked like a human-sized bug squatting over him, with my face too close to his crotch and my nether regions over his face.
Gross. I sat down fast, thumping my bum down on his chest hard enough to make him gasp.
I perched on his torso with my back to his head. I couldn't see a damned thing behind me, including Tucker.
I didn't have time to turn, because once Mr. Money caught his breath, he bucked like a bronco, yowling behind his gag. My wrists and ankles ached from impact, and whoopie, my vertigo and nausea started up again. But I couldn't do a 180 when I was acting like a human lap belt.
When you restrain someone in psych, you don't restrain only their wrists and ankles. You also bind their bodies to the stretcher with a waist strap. Then you might clamp a face mask on them to stop the biting and spitting, before the drugs kick in.
I was the body restraint.
I was sitting facing Mr. M
oney's groin, almost like the reverse cowgirl sex position, but better than a near-69.
Mr. Money bucked some more. My head spun. I tasted bile and swallowed it back down. I would cheerfully barf on Mr. Money, but Herc was right in front of me, sitting on the knees, and I didn't want to spew all over him.
I did need Mr. Money to stop moving, though, so I punched him in the crotch.
His limbs stiffened. He howled behind his gag.
I felt like hurling again myself. I'd never bagged a guy on purpose before, and I felt like his flesh had been imprinted on my knuckles. But if it saved Tucker and Gideon, I'd do whatever it took. And he was lying more still.
Behind Herc, Compton shouted, "I got him! I got him!" Presumably he meant a foot, which was only borderline useful, but he was trying.
A doughy-looking man told Compton, "I'll take over."
Phew. Compton was too much of a loose cannon.
I was also reassured by Herc, who quietly adjusted his weight on Mr. Money's knees, provoking a fresh moan from behind the gag.
"I have the zip ties!" cried Pascale's French-accented voice behind me, and I recognized Linda's lower pitch saying, "Good. Start with the wrists."
"I got them!" said Tucker, and I could breathe again. Tucker was alive, albeit in the thick of things.
Then Mr. Money jostled me worse than airplane turbulence. It felt like I bounced a foot into the air before I fell back down again, although it was probably only a few inches. My head begged to differ. It spun like a Tilt-A-Whirl.
"Get his feet!" Linda again.
Herc shifted. He stretched forward, scooping the zip ties in his Jack Reacher-sized hands, but the doughy guy did the actual lassoing so that Herc could remain in position.
Once Mr. Money was properly tied up, I could get off his torso and loosen the gag. It would only take a few minutes. The doughy guy looked competent as he worked, ignoring the peanut gallery shouting instructions to him. Soon Mr. Money would be contained.
The Portuguese family gave a fresh cry of alarm.
And Tucker swore.
"No!" bellowed a man's voice, and everyone looked up except me. I didn't dare turn around, but I could identify the timbre and slight accent: Alessandro, the good-looking Italian assistant, back for more punishment. What an idiot.