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Chapter Three It was one o'clock in the morning when I woke. I felt sick again. The food on the aeroplane had remained knotted in my stomach, unwilling to digest and travel down into my intestines. It was heavy and sore and I wondered if I should induce vomiting. But I feared that once I started I might never stop and then what would happen to us? Instead I tried to pass it the other way with little success. I drank cups and cups of water and then lay on the bed again. It was still too hot. "I can't sleep," Lucy said. "Me neither." And I broke down in tears. Thinking of home, wishing I was back in my house with my parents above me in their beds, safe in my basement where it was always cool and dark. Back in Britain, where at one o'clock in the morning it would be freezing and not like a sauna! "Please don't cry," Lucy begged, crying as well. "I can't do this," I said. If only I could have told her why. "I thought I could but I can't." Then came the weakest words I have ever spoken. "I just want to go home." Far from calling me a baby and a wimp, Lucy, sobbing uncontrollably, said she wanted the same thing. We stayed that way for a further two hours, crying on and off, begging each other not to and then joining in again. It felt as if our sanity's had broken simultaneously. We just couldn't stop crying. All we could think about was home, the horror of the hotel and how very far away from the people we relied on to make things better we were. Lucy fell asleep but I didn't. I stayed awake. I was awake from one o'clock in the morning right up until Lucy said, "Lets go home," four hours later. |
It seemed so reasonable. So easy. We wanted to go home and so we would. It wasn't as if we'd even unpacked yet. Neither of us thought about jet-lag, homesickness. This was what we wanted and so we went downstairs into the lobby and waited until nine o'clock with our suitcases packed and our key already given back to the man on reception. I still felt sick and the bin in the lobby looked very inviting. Knowing I was ill, Lucy took control of the situation. She talked to the owners of the hotel, spun them a line about needing to get home because of a family emergency and then got our money refunded. She even got us a taxi. And less than fifteen hours after arriving at the hotel we were in another taxi heading back to the airport. My first great big adventure, failed in less than twenty-four hours. I felt pathetic but even the thought of returning home to smug parents didn't make me want to turn back and try again. Unfortunately, at the airport things did not go as we first thought they would. There was in fact no way of changing our return tickets so that we could travel home on that day - we had to stay for a week before we were even allowed to leave the country! I felt trapped, I was back in that stationary aeroplane again only this time they were telling me I would have to spend a week inside it. My lungs restricted and I fell down into the very first panic attack of my life. It felt as though someone was sitting on my chest while simultaneously trying to suffocate me with a plastic bag. The airport staff unwilling to help, no way of getting home, no place to stay, running low on cash and now my lungs were being filled with water. I collapsed onto the floor by the payphones and Lucy did the only thing we had left to do - she called her father. They talked intermittently for over half an hour while I sat trembling on the airport floor, my eyes wet, not sobbing but crying because my body didn't know what else to do, my breath shuddering in and out of my lungs. It wasn't getting any better. I thought panic attacks only lasted for a few minutes - this one had last for an hour already. Lucy handed the telephone to me and pressed it against my ear. "Don't worry, Sean," Lucy's father said, the sweetest voice I had ever heard before in my life. "Everything's going to be okay. I've booked a hotel for you and Lucy. Just get in a taxi and all the rest is taken care of. Are you all right, son?" |