GABE
Holy, holy shit. We were doing it. She was doing it. Markowitz—who might have even been more excited at her saying yes than I was—booked a direct flight for Lily and me from Atlanta to London that evening. The next morning, we’d take the train north to Scotland. We’d decided to drive to Atlanta and fly straight from there rather than making another connection; even though the drive was a hell of a hike, I was more than glad to do it, because it meant one less flight for her to worry about. As fast as I could, I packed my stuff and locked up the Willows, and we headed over to her apartment to get her packed up too.
She was a bit of a mess. An adorable mess. A lovely mess. But still, a mess. Totally understandable. I just wanted to do whatever I could to help her. I was so damned honored that she was even willing to try to go with me that I’d have done anything to make it easier. But helping her pack, as it turned out, really meant me just getting the hell out of the way; she whizzed around the apartment like a tiny tornado, leaving a mess of charging cords and ziplocks and rain jackets in her wake. Then she lugged an enormous suitcase out from the closet and asked, “What about this?”
It would’ve been just right if she were trying to get rid of a body in the ocean, but for a quick trip to Scotland it was, you know, kind of big. Still, though, I didn’t want to burst her bubble. For as hard as she was trying, I’d have lugged the thing anywhere for her, even if I put my back out doing it. “Perfect.”
“’K,” she said, and gave it a two-handed shove back toward her bedroom, like she was moving a minifridge.
On her desk in the corner of the living area she’d placed the envelope that contained her passport. I slipped it into the outside pocket of my bag, where I kept mine, and looked outside at her sister playing with Ivan next to an old and faded plastic play set. From the bedroom I heard nervous huffs and puffs, followed by annoyed and frustrated grunts. I could solve a lot of problems, but helping her face down her fear wasn’t like a fixing a stuck tent zipper. She was up against herself on this, and I was worried that whatever I did to help might end up hurting more than anything. I needed information, and I needed it quick.
“I’m going to go say hello to Ivan,” I called out to her.
She popped out of the hallway with her hair in a high ponytail and rain galoshes on. “OK. Tell Daisy I need her to look after the General. Also, should I bring these?” She lifted her toes, and the soles made rubbery crackles as they came off the hardwood.
“Definitely. Any chance you’ve got fly-fishing waders?”
She gave me a big blink. “No chance whatsoever. Closest I’ve ever been to fishing is standing at the fish counter at the grocery,” she said and squeaked off back into her bedroom.
Whatever she didn’t have I’d buy for her when we got there. Her, me, a camping outfitter. Game on. But before any of that could happen, before I could get her geared up in Gore-Tex and beanies and buy us a sleeping bag for two, I needed to make sure I got her there with the least amount of trauma and upset possible. So I headed down her back steps into the yard, where I joined Daisy.
“Well, hello.” She shaded her eyes with her hand. She glanced back behind me at the open door to the balcony, as if expecting to see Lily. When she realized she wasn’t behind me, she asked, “Everything OK? I heard a lot of racket from downstairs.”
“Sort of,” I said, coming down into a crouch beside her. “She’s decided she wants to try flying with me.”
Daisy sucked in a breath between her teeth. “Oh jeez.”
Her reaction didn’t exactly fill me with a ton of hope. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d been expecting—a slightly more optimistic cringe, maybe. But Daisy looked anything but optimistic. It didn’t dissuade me, though. “Two things. Can you look after the General?”
Daisy clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Are you kidding? He’s a nanny, a music box, and Sesame Street rolled into one. Obviously that’s a yes!”
“Second, I need to know what’s helped her in the past. If anything.”
Daisy squinted a little bit and took a second to answer. “If I remember right, it seemed like the virtual-reality stuff helped the most. When we did it, it was pretty new, pretty wonky, but she said it really helped. It takes a long time, though. Little doses.” She hoisted Ivan up into her arms. “Baby steps, as they say.”
We didn’t really have time for baby steps. Lily was up there taking a giant leap with an equally giant suitcase. Time was not on our side. “Has she ever flown at all?”
She shook her head. “Almost, once. We were going to Philadelphia for a conference for my job about seven or eight years ago, maybe. It was bad, Gabe. We got onto the plane and they were just about to shut the doors, but she couldn’t go through with it. She was absolutely exhausted afterward. We never tried it again.” She sighed and glanced back at Lily’s balcony. “It’s really, really hard to watch someone you love be so terrified.”
The very idea made me feel sick. But if she wanted to try it, I sure as hell wasn’t going to stop her. All I could do was be there for her. I’d never been anyone’s rock. Now might just be my chance. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure she’s OK.”
“When are you leaving?” Daisy asked.
“Tonight. My producer booked us on a direct flight from Atlanta to London. Flight leaves at 5:53. She said she wants to get there by lunchtime—said she’d rather wait at the airport than wait here. We’re leaving as soon as she’s packed.”
“Yikes.” Daisy pried her sunglasses from Ivan’s hand. “The Philly flight was only going to be a few hours, and that was terrifying enough. Across the Atlantic is going to be really tough. But if you really do want to help, hold her hand. Tell her she’s safe. Try to distract her.”
“I will.”
“She’ll probably start asking about if all the bolts are going to fall out of the fuselage on takeoff. Completely normal. Just keep on holding that hand.”
“Absolutely. Anything else?”
Daisy’s eyebrows furrowed and she nodded. “Yes. There is something. She used to have a specialist who tried to come up with a treatment plan. He was super nice. Looked just like Mr. Rogers. He explained to me that it was important to engage her . . .” Daisy squinted again. “It’s a long word. Kind of complicated. Some part of the brain.”
I was no neuroscientist, but I did know a thing or two about how the brain dealt with suggestion, fear, and belief. Score one for having a made-up pseudoscientific job. “Amygdala,” I said.
Daisy snapped and inhaled when I said the word. “That’s it. Engage her amygdala.”
Armed with that little bit of key information, and Daisy’s phone number, which she insisted I take in case there was anything we needed, I thanked her and headed back up to Lily’s apartment. I woke up my phone and went over to Google Scholar, where I typed in “fear of flying” and “amygdala.” Mindfulness, virtual reality, even knitting came up as possible activities that might help, but most of those citations were from papers that were a decade old at least. What I was looking for was cutting-edge info—anything that she might not have tried yet.
That was when I landed on a recent citation from earlier this year from the New England Journal of Medicine. The article was entitled “Mobile Gaming and Aviophobia: Breakthroughs in Amygdala Engagement and Fear Response.”
I read through it. The particulars of the neuroscience were Greek to me, but I got the general idea. Researchers had discovered, much to their surprise, that those suffering from severe fear of flying were helped most not by medication, not by mindfulness, not by talk therapy, but instead by video games. Of all things. Angry Birds was good. Tetris was better. And Bejeweled was the gold standard.
For the first thirty minutes of the drive to Atlanta, she held on to my hand so hard that my fingers went completely numb. She hadn’t said very much since we’d left, and the nervous energy radiated off her like heat from a sunburn. All my efforts at any sort of conversation were met by gulps and one-word answers. Occasionally, she’d break the whooshing air-conditioned silence with nuggets of admittedly terrifying airplane trivia such as, “Did you know that it only takes three full-grown geese to destroy the engine of a 747?”
Jesus. Enough facts like that and I’d be the one who needed the Valium. “Will you just give Bejeweled a try?”
“Did you know that jet fuel is the ideal ingredient to use for napalm?”
“Lily.”
“Did you know that eighty percent of plane crashes occur within eleven minutes of takeoff?”
“Seriously.”
She glanced at me, looking stern and skeptical, with her lips pursed. It was the closest she’d gotten to her sister’s sternum-punching glare yet. “There is no way that a game on my phone is going to do what a maximum dose of tranquilizers cannot.”
I lifted my eyebrow, taking my eyes off the road for just one second to glance at her. “Just try it. For me. It can’t hurt.”
“Finnnnne,” she huffed and slipped her phone from her purse. She let go of my hand, and I flexed my fingers to get the blood to go back into them. She tried typing in her pass code, but her phone rejected it three times. Then she wiped her hands off on her leggings and tried again. I noticed her finger trembling over the screen before she clenched her hand into a fist.
For the first few rounds, she still sat ramrod straight with her toes slightly curled against her sandals. But as she got more and more into it, I watched her whole body begin to relax and her breathing become more and more regular. She was actually relaxing. Holy shit.
After a minute or two, I decided to test the waters. “It really is going to be fine. It’s the safest way to travel.”
I expected her to reply with something like, Ninety percent of near midair collisions go unreported! But she didn’t answer me at all. Instead, she made a happy gasp as her phone made a series of celebratory dings and bings.
So I kept at it. “We’ll have dinner, we can watch movies all night. It’ll be like a sleepover. I downloaded all of Westworld. You’re going to love it. You won’t even know we’re flying.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she answered, totally absently. “Oh man!” She tapped away at her phone. “I keep missing the rhinestones!” The game reset to another round, and she looked up from her phone. “Did you say something?”
“Nope,” I said, smiling at the road. She was gonna be just fine. I hoped.