Scott handled all the telephone communications with my parents while I was still pretty out of it. He kept them informed of what was going on and what the doctors were telling him. My mom wanted to know how she and my dad could get to Malta. They both wanted to be by my side, but I didn’t want them to come. I was too tired and didn’t feel like having a lot of people around me. I didn’t want to see the hurt in their eyes. I needed some space—peace and quiet—to sort out what had happened. The doctors felt the same way.
As a special education teacher, I knew something was seriously wrong with my sight, hearing, and memory. In the hospital, I had to ask Scott, the doctors, and the nurses to speak slowly, one word at a time—and to repeat themselves—when they spoke to me. If someone said, “Go mow the lawn,” I heard, “Go row the tawn.” I’d think, Why would you want me to go row the tawn?
I remember one nurse saying, “Go brush your teeth.”
I heard, “Go trush your teeth.” I didn’t get it. What did that mean?
“Say it again,” I said, “one word at a time.”
She said, “Go.”
I processed “go”—what does “go” mean?
“Brush.”
What does “brush” mean?
“Your.”
I tried to remember what “your” was.
“Teeth.”
What’s “teeth”?
For crying out loud, this was hard!
Like many people who have had head injuries, strokes, or learning disabilities, I had memory problems and problems understanding simple spoken and written words. My long-term memory was just fine. I recalled my childhood, education, friends, places I’d been, books I’d read, every detail of the hijacking. But my short-term memory, the ability to hold on to things that are happening right now, like this sentence, wasn’t working.
Nurses and other aides in the hospital were very kind to me. They did everything they could to make me feel comfortable. Toward the end of my five-day stay in Malta, I was able to start eating some solid foods.
One time, they asked what I wanted to eat. Since I felt like I’d missed out on Thanksgiving Dinner, I asked for some turkey and dressing.
“We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving,” the nurse said in broken English. “Can you think of anything else you’d like?”
Hmm, I thought, what’s like turkey and dressing?
“Do you have any chicken and mashed potatoes?”
Her eyes lit up. “Yes! We can get you that.”
For lunch that day, the nurse brought in a plate of chicken, mashed potatoes, and gravy. I was so excited. I smiled and laughed. “Thank you,” I said. “This is really great!”
Seeing how much I appreciated the meal, that it brought a smile to my face, the nurses brought me chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner. They started serving me chicken and mashed potatoes around the clock—at every meal except breakfast. They’d come in and say, in broken English, “We got you chicken and mashed potatoes!” And their faces would just light up.
“Honey, you’ve got to say something,” Scott said.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I ate other foods too. “I’ll just eat chicken and mashed potatoes,” I said.
This went on for about three days.
Before leaving the hospital in Malta and being transferred to a U.S. Veterans Administration (VA) hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, I had to tell officials my story of what happened on the plane. I didn’t know why they needed it—they had reports from Patrick Baker and other passengers, but the Maltese police wouldn’t release me until they had mine as well. They wrote down everything I said.
Shortly after, they wheeled me out of the hospital. It was great to see the pretty blue sky again. Malta looked like a beautiful country. I wished that I’d been able to enjoy it under different circumstances. Scott and the U.S. ambassador to Malta, Gary Matthews, looked on as medical attendants hoisted me into the plane.
On the flight to Germany, Scott and I were the sole passengers on a USAF C-9 “Nightingale” transport plane, normally used to evacuate wartime casualties. I lay flat on a bed dangling from the ceiling in the cargo bay. I was so tired from the hijacking and the surgery that I slept much of the flight.
At one point, the copilot came back to visit with me. She looked so young, and I asked her when she started flying.
“I’ve been doing it a long time, ever since I was a little girl,” she said. “My father flew. Would you like to come up to the front?”
She led me to the cockpit and let me sit down in her seat and look out. When I started feeling weak, she helped me get back to my bed in the back.
We were en route to the second General Hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, but a snowstorm forced the pilot to divert us to Rhein-Main Air Force Base in Frankfurt and the ninety-seventh General Hospital (the one that Captain Tesstrake and the TWA hostages flew into exactly five months earlier), where we stayed overnight.
The next morning, we continued on to Landstuhl, where I was admitted on the neurosurgery service.
The U.S. military took good care of us in Germany. They put Scott up in a barracks-style hotel on the base, near the hospital. After living in constant worry for nearly a week, and not sleeping for more than a few minutes at a time, Scott could finally slow down enough to feel. The doctors had assured us that I was going to be okay. Scott and I had talked long enough so that he felt happy and confident that I wasn’t going to be a vegetable.
He sat on a chair in his room, closed his eyes, and cried. After crying, Scott fell fast asleep. His body had released all the tension and worry.
The next morning when he came to the hospital, I could see that something in his eyes had changed. “What is it honey? What’s wrong? Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” he said. “I had a good cry last night, that’s all.”
I was still numb. I hadn’t cried about what happened to me yet. Obviously, there was another side to the story. I’d barely survived a horrible tragedy and was in a state of mental and emotional shock. During the hijacking, I stuffed down my emotions to cope with the trauma. I tried to close my eyes and ears to the horror of what was happening. It was too awful to watch.
In Germany, some of the nurses wondered why I was in such a good mood, why I was laughing so much. I was just plain excited to be alive.
I shared a room with a woman named Susan Joyce, and it turned out she was originally from Minnesota, where Scott was from. She and her husband, Pat, were living in London, England, where he served in the air force.
Susan was in the hospital for surgery to remove cancerous growths in her brain. She’d already had several operations, but the tumors kept reappearing in different places. She was partially deaf from the surgeries and, after the next operation, doctors feared she’d also be blind.
Hearing Susan’s story made me realize I had nothing to complain about. I remember thinking, Boy, and I think I have it bad. At least I’m not losing my hearing.
Besides, I was still overjoyed just to be alive. Early on, I didn’t think much about the long-term effects of my injuries. Mostly, I was just glad to be alive. I had expected each hour on the plane to be my last. Now, here I was in a German hospital, with Scott and doctors all around me. I felt so grateful. My prayers were answered. Who wouldn’t be happy about that?
Scott and I joked around in the hospital. I asked him to take some pictures of my bald head. I wanted to look good for my homecoming, but I was bald and my face looked bruised and raggedy. Scott went out and bought me a wig.
He came back and said, “This looks just like your hair.”
I looked at the wig in his hands and blinked twice. Who were you married to before? was my thought. The wig was this wild hair that hung down almost to my waist! Before the hijacking, my hair was cut short—just barely over my ears.
“Scott, I can’t wear this!” I said. We both broke out laughing. He took the wig back.
I thought everything was go
ing to be okay. Scott and I would go to live in Minnesota. I’d meet some new friends and eventually get a job. Life would move on and we’d be okay.
One day, shortly after I arrived in Germany, a U.S. Army psychiatrist came into my room. He walked over to my bed and sat down. He seemed like a kind man—something in his eyes told me that. “Sometimes,” he said, “people who have been in warlike situations, or gone through rapes, major accidents, criminal assaults, or other traumatic events experience posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD],” he said.
I’d never heard of PTSD before. “What does that mean exactly?” I asked.
“Sometimes, there’s a delayed emotional reaction to the event,” he explained. “You may find yourself crying or feeling bad in a few days, weeks, or months.”
Before the psychiatrist left, he told me to call him if I needed anything or just wanted to talk.
His words didn’t really have much effect on me. I was still so excited to be alive that nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have any hair. It didn’t matter that I’d gone through a hijacking or that I’d had to leave the place I loved. I was alive!
One day, a speech therapist came into my room to do some tests. The first question she asked was what I did for a living. I couldn’t remember. I knew I was a teacher in Cairo, but what kind? I looked at Scott and said, “Why can’t I remember what I did?”
“Don’t you remember?” he said. “You’re a teacher. You’re an educational diagnostician. And you tested kids.”
When he said it, I thought, Yeah, that’s what I did. I tested kids.
She asked me another question about teaching and testing.
Again, I couldn’t remember the answer. I look at Scott and, again, he said, “Don’t you remember? …”
I just kept looking at him and saying, “Why can’t I remember this?”
No one in the hospital had asked me these kinds of questions before. They had asked for my name and that was about it.
The speech therapist showed me a series of flash cards with different pictures on them. First, she flashed me a black-and-white drawing of a watermelon.
I knew what a watermelon tasted like. I knew it was green on the outside and red on the inside. But I couldn’t remember what it was called.
She showed me another picture, this time of a pyramid.
The same thing happened. I could see myself at the Pyramids. In Cairo, I saw them almost every day. Again, I couldn’t think of the name for pyramid.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was still in shock. I hadn’t come to grips with the magnitude of what I’d just been through.
A few days later, things started to change. I started waking up in the middle of the night from nightmares about the hijacking. I kept seeing the little children, the ones that died. I’d hear them cry in my dreams. I’d see them boarding the plane. They were such beautiful children. When children die at an early age, it really hurts me. I couldn’t understand why they had died and I had lived.
As my memories of the hijacking slowly became clearer, I began feeling rage toward the hijackers. For the first time, the full weight of the tragedy was starting to sink in. I realized that my vision was damaged, that my memory was really weak, and that I couldn’t express myself. Scott was getting frustrated with me because I couldn’t do some of the simple things I did before.
It was very uncomfortable for me to let my feelings out. I didn’t want to get angry or cry in front of Scott. Growing up, I’d learned that feelings were private matters best kept to oneself.
Naturally, I didn’t want Scott to think anything was wrong. I wanted to protect him from my pain. He’d ask me how I was feeling and I’d say, “It’s okay, honey. Everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to get through this.”
Boy, who was I kidding! I was holding it all in.
One day, when the pain got bad enough, I decided to call the army psychiatrist. I was afraid Scott would be mad at me for sharing my feelings with a stranger, so I waited for him to leave. This was hard because he rarely left my bedside. I finally saw my chance when Scott left to eat and pick up a few things at the army store. I asked a nurse to get the psychiatrist.
It was over an hour and the psychiatrist still had not showed up. I was getting a little anxious, because I didn’t know when Scott would be coming back. Eventually, the psychiatrist walked into my room. I wanted some privacy, so I told him I wanted to talk in his office.
About a week after my surgery in Malta, I was forced to get up and walk around the halls of the hospital. The doctors thought it would be good therapy for me to get back on my feet. But I tired easily, and when I did, I’d stop and hold on to the walls until I caught my breath.
The psychiatrist and I walked to his office, and when we arrived, he shut the door and directed me to a chair across from him. It didn’t take long for the tears to come.
“I’m feeling really sad and angry about the hijackers and the things they did,” I said. “I’m having a lot of nightmares and waking up in the middle of the night. I see the faces of the children who died.”
“What would you like to do with the hijackers?” he asked.
“I’d like to hit ’em,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Hit ’em?”
I said, “Yes, I’d like to hit them.”
“Wouldn’t you like to kill them?” he pressed me.
“Well, I’m not supposed to do that,” I said.
I grew up with the idea that I shouldn’t have thoughts like that—and if I did, I certainly shouldn’t talk about them.
In the midst of our conversation, there was a tapping at the door. The door opened and Scott came walking into the room.
I was startled and afraid he was going to be mad at me for talking to the psychiatrist.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“We’re going to need some more time by ourselves,” the psychiatrist said.
“Oh, sure,” Scott said and backed out the door. “I’ll go wait in your room.”
I continued talking to the psychiatrist for a few more minutes. He said it was okay for me to cry.
When we were done, I walked back to my room. Scott was waiting there. “Hi, honey,” I greeted him.
I got back into bed and looked over to see how Scott was feeling. I thought he would be mad that I didn’t ask to see the psychiatrist when he was there. I wasn’t honest with Scott about why I waited for him to leave. I didn’t tell him that I didn’t want him to see me cry.
“You weren’t here and I needed someone to talk to,” I said.
“Sometimes, that just happens,” he said. “You have to do what you have to do.”
I felt better. Scott seemed to understand.
Going to the psychiatrist’s office that afternoon was a small step toward naming, accepting, and releasing the pain I’d stuffed down for many years. At that point, however, I had no idea of how much I stuffed and held back—toward the hijackers, Scott, my parents, and others in my life.
Shortly after Scott and I arrived in Germany, a drove of journalists descended on us. They had been working on the story for U.S. and foreign newspapers, magazines, and television stations and were following up on the human interest angle of my story. They were panting for juicy details of my life and the hijacking.
We turned down all the interview requests. I was still in shock and had no desire to meet the press. I needed to focus on recovering in quiet. I spent most of my time sleeping.
Yet one reporter managed to get past the head of army public relations. He claimed to be with a respected daily newspaper in New York City. The reporter offered to pay Scott two thousand dollars for his version of the hijacking story. Scott and I discussed the offer and agreed that Scott would talk to the reporter. We were both concerned about my mounting medical bills; we thought doing the interview would help us meet some of our expenses.
Scott gave the interview, including his chronology of the hijacking and how we had both spent the prev
ious two years in Stavanger, Norway, and Cairo, Egypt.
But the story did not go according to plan. The article appeared in a big, sensationalist tabloid newspaper. And we never saw a dime of the money that was promised.
I was in Germany for about a week. I spent most of that time sleeping, hobbling around the hallways, and slowly starting to realize what I’d been through.
The first days and weeks after the hijacking were hard on my family and friends back home. They felt helpless to do anything but pray for me in those dark hours of the hijacking. I couldn’t be reached by telephone for about a week after I was shot.
On Friday afternoon, November 29, my parents got two pieces of news: a letter I’d written from Cairo, telling them about my upcoming trip to Greece and Thanksgiving plans (including a picture of me riding on a camel near the Pyramids) and a phone call informing them of my transfer to Germany.
Then, one day, a phone rang at the nurse’s station of the VA hospital. A nurse at the switchboard interrogated the caller asking to speak to me. “Are you a relative?” the nurse said.
“Yeah, this is her sister Barbara,” Barb said.
The nurse came to get me out of bed. I got up, dizzy, and she motioned for me to come over to the phone. “Its your sister Barbara,” the nurse said.
I don’t have a sister named Barbara, I thought to myself. Who could this be?
I put the receiver to my ear and heard a familiar voice.
“Hello, Jackie?”
“Barb?”
It was my friend Barbara Wilson. She told the nurse that she was my sister because the hospital was only allowing me to receive calls from immediate family members. I was glad that Barb had exercised a little ingenuity to get around the bureaucracy.
I met Barb shortly after I started teaching special education in the Baytown School district, a few minutes west of Pasadena, Texas, the Houston suburb where I grew up. Barbara was also a teacher, and the two of us hit it off immediately. We hung out with the same crowd, went to the same parties, took trips together, and got to be like sisters to each other.
Miles To Go Before I Sleep Page 8