I don't know why my brain thinks up stories like this one. Nevertheless, enjoy.
I work as a flight attendant for Emirates International Airlines. My job seems pretty simple at first glance. I mean, who looks twice at a kind young lady or man who goes around asking people if they want drinks? But in reality, a lot of us have actual lives back home—wherever home is. I just… prefer to be stuck in the air. Flying. Dreaming. Soaring. But most importantly, far away from the ground. Maybe it’s just something with my mind, like the opposite of vertigo. But now… it’s just this feeling.
This feeling that I can never go back.
And I never will.
The events that unfolded—on land, by the way—are mainly the reason I began my job in the skies. I actually did some research—and this isn’t an unnatural thing at all. You see, all of our brains follow a routine. As you participate in the routine more and more, it becomes your habit—like this is what happens every day. Which is precisely what a routine is. It’s like autopilot. You wake up, and autopilot is engaged. But a small slip up in the routine doesn’t stop the routine as a whole. Your brain functions on multiple levels, not just one. So just because one part of the routine is left out entirely doesn’t mean the rest of the routine can’t progress. Look at it like this: say you’re going to work and you’re in the car, driving. You arrive, you attend a meeting…
Crap. You just now realize that you left your phone in the car.
Autopilot disengaged.
That’s the way your brain screws you over sometimes. Leaving your phone in the car is minor, a fixable mistake. Others… however… can lead to such a change in your routine that you… forget. You forget what happened… like it was some sort of dream. I can’t remember exactly what happened that day. But just know, sometimes…
Our brain is our own worst enemy.
At the time, I was an Uber driver and took people places—like Ubers do. I remember the morning was particularly cold… and for living in Fairbanks, Alaska, that’s pretty damn cold.
Ubering allowed for some squeezable extra sleep time. It was around 7:30 in the morning. I like to wake up about a half-hour earlier than start time—to be able to drop my son, Jacob, off at school. I looked at my phone on my nightstand, and noticed that the battery was lower than usual. So I plugged it in and went to brush my teeth.
That’s it. One small change in the routine made a huge impact on the rest of my day.
Autopilot engaged.
The routine after that was the same. I brushed my teeth, stepped in the shower, got dressed, brushed my hair, did my makeup, grabbed my bag, scooped up Jacob’s hand in my hand, and started the car. But this time, my phone wasn’t in my bag like it usually was. It was laying down silently on my nightstand, charging. But I hadn’t noticed that because my brain was in routine mode. And in the routine, my phone was already in the bag.
Autopilot engaged.
My son seemed pretty tired that morning, and he was yawning as we stumbled carefully to the car. I could see the drowsiness in his eyes as we crunched on newly forming ice under our snow boots. I don’t like to talk about it a lot, but my son is autistic. He’s shy and can’t seem to communicate in the way most 5 year olds do. That’s why, instead of making him take the bus, I drive him to school every day.
The car was freezing cold. The steering wheel was almost iced over. The seat was almost too frozen to sit on. Jacob climbed into the back and plopped into the middle seat. I adjusted my rearview mirror to show the reflection of his cloth-covered face.
He moves to the seat next to me to avoid the sharp gleam of snow next to him. Normally he’d sit in the middle. Where I could see him. Now he was behind me. I couldn’t see him anymore. He changed the routine.
Autopilot disengaged.
I drove down the bumpy roads and contemplated whether or not I should get a nice, warm hot chocolate on the way to my first passenger. I stopped at a Dunkin Donuts and grabbed one as I drove further and further into the seemingly endless blizzard that was growing.
I hit a curb at one point, and hot chocolate spilled all over my jacket. Disgusted, I stepped out of the car to clean it up. That’s when the outline of a human stepped towards me and asked me if I was okay.
“I’m fine,” I replied. “Just a little chocolate accident. Is everything okay?”
“I’m a mechanic,” he said. “I saw your car trying to push through the flurry. Thought you could use a little help.”
“Oh, no thanks, I’m fine.” I shook my head, an awkward smile probably peering across my face. “But thank you for the offer.”
“You sure?” the stranger persisted. “I’ll bring it back without a scratch, I promise. Just to take it to my shop and get it geared up for the rest of the storm.”
Hesitantly, I plopped the keys in the man’s hand. He started the car and rolled down the driver window.
“You got someplace to go?” he asked.
“Oh, no. I just dropped my son off at school.” I shut the door for him and watched as he rolled away into the misty snow.
Obviously, now I had to call a taxi or Uber for someone to drive me home. I reached into my bag to pull out my phone—
Crap. My phone wasn’t in the bag. It was on my nightstand, charging.
Autopilot disengaged.
Now what was I supposed to do? I had to walk all the way back to someplace with a heating unit. It was too cold out here—
*crash*
“What the hell was that?”
I ran into the direction of the sound and found my car in wrecks near the edge of the highway.
“Shoot,” I muttered. Then I saw the hand of a man poke out through a broken window. It was the mechanic. He was alive! I pulled him out of the wreckage and heaved him to his feet.
“I—apologize,” he stuttered in between gasps. “Just—at one point, I lost my way, and then—”
“Are you alright?!” I asked him. “I want to make sure you’re alright.”
“Fine, but… the car…”
“I’ll take care of the car. Right now we need to get you to the hospital. And I have to pick up my son from school.”
Long story short, we were able to make our way to the coffee shop. I used the payphone to call my husband to tell him to come pick me up at my location. I bid farewell to the mechanic and my husband drove us to Jacob’s school.
“What are we going to do about the car?” he asked exasperatedly.
“Something,” I replied. “For now, we need to pick Jacob up. His school’s probably closing from the storm.”
My husband parked the car outside by the front entrance, where I usually go. But there was a sign on the door. A change in the routine.
“Due to the blizzard warning, this door is locked temporarily. Please use the back door to enter school.”
What? This sign wasn’t here this morning—
My phone was on my nightstand.
I hadn’t been here this morning. I had forgotten to drop Jacob off—
My phone was on my nightstand.
I had driven past his school while drinking hot chocolate. He was tired, he fell asleep in the car, moved over to where I couldn't see him, he didn’t say anything when I drove past his—
My phone was on my nightstand.
The car was freezing, the seat was iced over, the steering wheel too cold to touch—
My phone was on my nightstand.
The crash.
I dropped my bag.
My phone was on my nightstand and my son was dead.
Autopilot disengaged.
