Darren Zastruga
Passing Through Terminals
I had just unwrapped my turkey sandwich when a woman informed me a man had had a heart attack. I twisted in my seat to look over my shoulder at the paramedics huddled over a gurney, blocking gate H4. On the gurney lay an unconscious elderly fat man in khaki pants and a Tommy Bahama shirt. So that was why they had changed my flight to gate H3. I bit into the sandwich as I watched the paramedics work. The paramedics calmly but quickly performed an intubation. Then they set in place an automatic CPR machine that pumped down on his chest in perfect rhythm. Each pump into his chest bulged his great belly out in a wave down to the waist of his pants, where it reversed back to his chest. I watched wave after wave crush his ribcage. I watched that big belly bounce back and forth as the man lay unconscious, and I resolved to take good care of myself as long as I lived in the hope that I could avoid collapsing in front of an audience. I glanced around at the other passengers seated around the terminal. A new year had begun the day before, and the terminal was packed with people waiting for their next flight. Some hadn’t noticed, or preferred not to. Others watched with grim expressions. The man and the paramedics working to save him were on the other side of a glass wall that separated the gate entry from the rest of the terminal. The ones in the seats closest to him stared through the glass like it was a hospital show on TV. No one else ate while they watched the man on the verge of dying. I wondered what that said about me. I finished the first half of the sandwich and picked up the second. The paramedics strapped the man’s limp arms to the CPR machine. Now it appeared at quick glance as though the man held this machine over himself as it crushed his rib cage and distended his abdomen every other second. Another man in a track jacket stood by, talking to one of the paramedics. Even from this far away, I could tell his hand was shaking. I wondered what relation to the dying man he was--brother, son, nephew? Or maybe he was just a colleague and the pair had returned from some conference or golf retreat together, which would explain the light clothing in the Minneapolis airport. It was impossible to tell how the two were connected, which nagged at me. “I think they’re going to harvest his organs,” the woman surmised to her husband, as he had just returned from the restroom. The last bites of the sandwich sparked revulsion in my stomach, perhaps due to the image of organs the woman had foisted on my imagination. But no, my sense of empathy had returned and watching someone die interrupted my appetite. I found that comforting; I was human after all, it seemed. But I had been more comfortable in the detached observer role.
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