Miles To Go Before I Sleep (13 page)

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 going 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 previous 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.