Trapped in the Airport

Recently, my husband Doug and I flew from California to JFK on Delta Airlines red-eye flight. Our schedule was cutting things pretty close. We were to land at 8 AM, and his connecting flight would take off at 9 AM. He would go on to visit friends for a week in Virginia, and I would take an Uber to Connecticut to spend a week with my son and his baby while Mommy was going to be away at a family wedding along with her mother in Paris. The first part of our excursion went as planned. Doug was taken by an arranged wheelchair from check-in in SFO through security, and on to our gate, with me trying to trot along next to the quick-paced wheelchair pusher. I had taken a spill two days before, injuring my right knee, (a bad abrasion of the skin), and wondered at times if I should have asked for a wheelchair for myself, since it was so far to the gate. One good thing about needing a wheelchair is that you get to board first, and we got settled in for our 5 and a half hour red-eye flight, leaving at 11 PM, California time. Soon after we took off, Doug realized that he had left his cane on a luggage trolley back at SFO. "Darn! That was my new one that had shock absorbers. It's a good thing that I brought my old one in my suitcase!" I can never seem to sleep on planes, but made the nighttime reservation with the hope that I would. We both took our nighttime pills,and Doug promptly dozed off at take-off. I thought I'd play with my iPhone or listen to my Calm app to relax, or if that didn't work, I'd listen to the end of a Louise Penny, Inspector Gamache book on Audible. Then I discovered, to my dismay, that my phone was in near death mode, and the cord I brought with me to charge it was one of the newer, smaller models, and wouldn't work with the bigger socket on the back of the seat in front of me. I had the old-fashioned one in my checked bag. So much for the new earbuds that I had bought for the trip. I put them back in my pocket. I hadn't brought headphones with me, since my new phone doesn't have a place to plug them in, so I couldn't plug into the entertainment right in front of me on the seat. Finally, the attendant came by offering free headphones! I attempted to amuse myself with a couple of games, occasionally watching Doug peacefully sleep with his head on his chest. He's very talented that way. He awoke in time to have the offered applejuice and cookies, but dozed back off again shortly afterward. I ended up watching 2 and a half movies on the back of the seat in front of me with the earphones that the steward provided. I almost thought I'd see the end of the last one, since we kept on circling around New York, perhaps because of the turbulence we were experiencing. I grabbed Doug's arm as we bounced around, and he drowsily said, "Hmm? Oh, we'll be all right", and went back off to dreamland, to my envy. Time was passing, and I started to worry about Doug's connecting flight. We landed at 8:40, and though we usually stay seated to be one of the last ones off the plane so we don't hold everyone up, we tried to get up with our backpacks and stand in the aisle. Being at the middle of the plane didn't help, since everyone ahead of us was already crowding the aisle, pulling down their carry-ons. I had half-expected the flight attendants to announce that everyone should let the folks out first who had a connecting flight...but no. A young woman next to me in the aisle commiserated that she was in the same boat. Her phone was working, and she said her flight had been changed to 2:57! I recognized that as the other option I had when making our reservations. My son Lucas texted me wondering if we had landed yet. He said that he and the baby could hardly wait to see me. Hmm, I thought. We wondered if there were any earlier flights that Doug could take. Doug got a message that his Virginia friends had already arrived in DC, and to let them know when he landed there so they could pick him up. Uh-oh. When we finally reached the front of the plane, there was a nice man from Portugal waiting to pick Doug up in the wheelchair. He tried to figure out if we could still make it to our flight, but it was taxi-ing away. Uh-oh. We wondered if Doug's luggage had gone with it. The wheelchair man left us at a very far away gate, where he thought another flight was leaving soon. He strode away with the wheelchair, leaving us at a desolate gate with no one in sight. He said someone would be there in about an hour. I plugged my phone into a charger next to the seats, and then I walked around to find a restroom and look at any board I could find with lists of flights. I couldn't find the one he talked about at 10:30. I reported back to Doug, and we agreed we shouldn't just sit there, but without a cane, he couldn't walk far. We spotted one of the wheelchairs abandoned near the escalator, and there was a ramp going up to the next floor near it. Doug encouraged me to abscond with it, saying, "Go ahead! Be bold!", even though they're only to be pushed by the official pushers. The ramp was longer and steeper than we realized, and as I got toward the top, pushing him, with him holding our backpacks, a Jamaican woman dressed in a uniform called out, "You can't be pushing the wheelchair yourself! It's not allowed!" I huffed and puffed and said, "Just let me get to the top! I can't stop now!" "Okay, but you really shouldn't have done this!" She was nicer after she heard our story, and called around to find out if there was an earlier flight. She even had the manager of the wheelchair team come down, and some other Delta higher-up. They all did their best, but Doug just ended up being pushed what seemed like a mile, with me trying to keep up alongside him, occasionally hopping on a people mover to get a bit of a free ride. I waved as I went by. We ended up near the gate where he would leave from at 2:57, and they brought us to the restaurant nearby so we could have breakfast. They took away the wheelchair again, saying we could call someone to take him over to the gate later. We ordered one breakfast to share, and Irish coffees, with an "it must be 5:00 somewhere" attitude. With our phones plugged in, I contacted my son and Doug's friends with the update. His friend Sarah had decided to visit her sister in DC, so that was lucky, and I told Lucas I would try to figure out how to get an Uber to Connecticut as soon as I could. After breakfast, it struck me that I had never picked up my luggage, and we wondered where Doug's suitcase was too. I said I'd go try to find out, and he agreed, with the caveat that I try to find him a Wall Street Journal, since he was going through withdrawals from his daily printed paper habit. A Hudson News store was right across the way, and I got their last copy, so he happily sat esconsed with his paper in the restaurant. I walked and walked, following the signs pointing to baggage claim, making a call to Lucas as I went. My knee started hurting a bit, and I coveted any wheelchair I saw along the way. Finally, I'm almost there, and as I took one step through a door, I realized that there was a sign that said "No Return" that I had just passed. I turned around to be approached by a very officious looking security guard who told me in no uncertain terms that I couldn't come back in! I tried to explain what I was doing, and that "I'll be right back with our suitcases", and "look, just let me come back through the door, and I'll go join my husband again!" "No!", he said, pointing to the ceiling,"Cameras would see you. I would get in trouble! Just go to the office at baggage claim and they'll give you a pass to come back in." The baggage claim lady had a line of tired looking passengers, some with small children, and even though I hadn't slept all night, I felt blessed to be alone. I also felt proud of myself to find our baggage claim receipts in my pocket, and when she checked them on the computer, she said they were still circling around waiting to be picked up! It was hard to believe, but there they were, two lonely bags going round and round! She told me to go over to Delta on the other end of the airport to try to see if they could give me the pass to get back in to Doug.I walked another long way, pulling both of our suitcases, thinking that my Apple watch would be very proud of me for all my steps. When I finally reached my destination, however, getting a pass to re-enter the airport is something that, I was told, can't be done. They said that because I didn't have a ticket to go anywhere, I wasn't allowed to go through security! I had Doug's suitcase with his cane and meds in it. I told my sad story to the people that were in charge of wheelchairs, and by the time I talked to the third person, I got the manager. He reassured me that he would get someone to go to the restaurant to get Doug, (which he wouldn't be expecting), they would bring him out through baggage claim, and over to Delta check-in, where he could go through security once again with his suitcase that I had for him, but without me. I tried to call him to give him the heads up, but of course, as usual, his ringer was off on his phone.... I sat, wringing my hands for over an hour, and finally, he wheels up, furious that they wouldn't trust little old me to come back to get him myself. "Did they think that you looked like a terrorist?" I asked if we could sit together for a while until he calmed down, because then he would be taken over to check-in and we would say our good-byes for a week. We promised to keep in touch (he would keep the ringer on on his phone), we would call most days to try to do our Wordle game together, he would have fun with Tom and Sarah in Virginia, I would have fun with Lucas and Thea, and then we'd meet after that for Thea's baptism. After a tearful good-bye, I pulled my suitcase along with my backpack on top of it, and walked outside to order an Uber. Once settled in, I tried to spot familiar New York City buildings as we drove along, but then discovered that somehow, falling asleep in an Uber was much easier than on a plane.