by Amy Midgett
“See” placed third in Southern New Hampshire University’s 2024 Fall Fiction Contest.
The 757 bucked and shuddered beneath their feet.
Hank gripped Elizabeth’s hand and she buried her face in the crook of his neck and shoulder. With his free hand, he cupped the back of her neck. He felt each vertebrae beneath her paper-thin skin.
In the aisle, flight attendants called for everyone to fasten their seatbelts. Passengers peppered them with questions, but the cabin crew just reassured them the captain had everything under control.
“Hank,” Elizabeth whispered into his ear. “What if we miss the sunset?”
“Shhh,” he said. “It’ll be alright. We’ll be there soon enough.”
*****
He met Elizabeth in 1973 while she was waiting tables at Paulie’s Diner in Boston. He’d recently started driving for a food delivery service and Paulie’s was on his route. Hank had noticed Elizabeth before, and he began taking extra care with his hair and uniform on days when he might see her.
One afternoon, he’d finished unloading and gone up front to get a signature. Elizabeth was alone, other than the cook, and she was harried with demands from the patrons.
“You’ll have to wait a minute,” she called to Hank over her shoulder. He watched, captivated by the pixie-like girl with dark hair carrying the tray laden with plates of food; she couldn’t be more than five-foot-two and a hundred pounds, maybe nineteen years old. Customers ribbed her good-naturedly.
“Hey, Lizzie!” a guy in janitor’s greens hollered. “There’s a fly in my soup!” His two buddies guffawed.
“Keep flappin’ your jaws, Billy, and it’ll have somewhere else to land,” Elizabeth shot back.
After several months of deliveries, Hank worked up the courage to ask her out. Over dinner, she talked about her father and a trip to the Grand Canyon he’d taken before he’d met her mother.
“Dad said it was the most spiritual place he’d ever been,” Elizabeth said. One day when she was six years old, her father brought her a Navajo dreamcatcher and hung it above her bed. Every night when he tucked her into bed, he promised Elizabeth if she dreamed only happy dreams he would take her to the Grand Canyon someday.
Then he got sick and the cancer put an end to their plans.
“But I’ll see it someday,” Elizabeth said.
*****
Only a few minutes had passed—to Hank it felt like hours—since the flight captain had announced a discrepancy with the plane’s airspeed indicators; they were making an emergency landing in Dallas. After an initial bout of agitated conversation the passengers were mostly quiet; Hank heard a woman crying softly, and several people around them tried to make cell phone calls.
The plane surged again and Elizabeth leaned further into Hank. The purple head scarf she wore to cover her bare scalp slipped sideways and she absently tugged it back into place.
“I can’t see it,” she said. The bleakness in her voice broke his heart. Hank cupped her face between his palms.
“Close your eyes, love.”
She did.
“See the sky? Purple, orange, red,” Hank said. “See the red rocks and the pink blossoms on the prickly pear and cholla cactus? And down at the bottom, the blue of the Colorado, like a ribbon.”
Hank kissed her left temple, and she relaxed a little.
“We’re dancing on the observation deck,” he said, closing his eyes and letting the image take over. “We don’t need music.”
*****
Ten months after they met, they stood before a justice of the peace, saying vows. Their stainless steel rings and Elizabeth’s simple white dress had been bought in an East Boston second-hand store the day before. The honeymoon was a promise.
“You’ll see the Grand Canyon someday, Elizabeth,” he said to her on their wedding night, moments before they slipped into bed together for the first time. “I swear to you.”
“I believe you,” she said and kissed his bare shoulder. “You’re my dreamcatcher.”
The ink had barely dried on their marriage license when Hank came home from work to find Elizabeth sitting at the table in their tiny apartment. She held up a plastic strip showing a thin blue line on it.
“Guess the Grand Canyon will have to wait,” she said, smiling.
He lifted her off her feet and swung her in a circle.
*****
The plane rolled sharply to the right and overhead compartments burst open, sending leather cases and hard plastic roller bags reeling through the cabin. Oxygen masks dropped in front of them. Elizabeth moaned and her eyes flew open.
“Stay with me in the canyon, Elizabeth,” Hank said. “Smell the desert air after the rain: blue agave, sage, orange blossoms.” His lips brushed her ear so she could hear him over the noise of the struggling airplane. She closed her eyes again.
*****
Hank and Elizabeth clasped hands in the lobby of the hospital’s oncology department, waiting for the results of what would become the first in a string of biopsies over the next twenty years.
“What if they have to grow up without a mother?” Elizabeth said through choked tears. “Who else knows that Jake likes ham, not turkey, or that Lucy only likes the blue M&Ms?”
“Hush,” Hank said. His own fear for her threatened to bubble over, but he tamped it down with tremendous effort. “It’ll be benign. Besides, I still have to take you to the Grand Canyon.”
And the biopsies were benign for many years.
Until one wasn’t.
*****
Hank slid the envelope with Grand Canyon Adventures printed on it across the table. Inside were plane tickets, hotel reservations, and a brochure for a sunset helicopter tour.
Elizabeth inhaled, her breath still raspy from the last round of chemo. Her wide brown eyes implored him from bruised and hollowed sockets.
“Next week? But Jake’s graduating law school, and Lucy—”
“If not now, when?” Hank said, more harshly than he intended. “We’re going. The kids insisted.”
She was quiet for a moment, watching him closely. Finally, she placed her hand on his and he winced at how cold and dry it was.
“You’re always keeping my bad dreams away, but who keeps away yours?” she said, a melancholy smile touching her pale lips. “Ok. Let’s go.”
*****
Hank felt the 757’s airspeed drop and the aircraft began a sickening spin. Under the din of vibrating metal, passengers sobbed and prayed. The flight attendants were strapped in their jump seats, holding hands.
He pulled his wife closer, their heads pressed together. The window behind Elizabeth showed nothing but confusion, and Hank shut his eyes to it.
“Elizabeth, we’re here,” he said, his own tears mixing with hers. “We’re flying above the canyon. Oh, look at the sunset! The colors!”
“I see it,” Elizabeth whispered. “I love you, my dreamcatch—”
Category: Competition, Featured, Short Story, SNHU Student