I had a somewhat eventful flight over…I was just drifting off into a alcohol/exhaustion/drug induced slumber. My eyelids had almost fully drooped when my conscience became aware of the third, and now a more desperate tone in the overhead paging system looking for anyone on board with medical training. Assuming it would either be to hand someone a motion sickness bag or perform CPR, either activity promising not to take too long, I signaled via the call button that I was eager to assist in any way that I could.
I think that was mistake number 2, in this case I am going to count mistake number 1 as intentionally overdosing myself on sedatives. The flight crew pulled me aside, along with another lady who volunteered (she was a guidance counselor from Tacoma ???) and explained that we had a “situation” on board; specifically a "level one, close to a level two security risk". This sounded dire, we were apparently close to needing to make and emergency landing – considering we should be about to enter the Canadian Territory of Nunavut I thought this should be a decision that we make soon, say before we entered the Arctic Circle. Apparently a passenger was having some sort of psychiatric break with reality and tried to strangle a fellow passenger. I interrupted the flight attendant then and inquired as to what on earth it was they expected me, a simple ER nurse to do? It seems the solution that they came up with was to rearrange to the seating on the plane so I would be near the women and ready to intervene, maybe talk her down with my experience in dealing with mentally unbalance people.
Considering I was about 5 seconds away from a coma, I was unable to protest. We tried to stealthily make the seat changes so as to not alert the disturbed passenger as to our cunning plan. It was then that I got my first look at the passenger in question. The “almost level two” security risk that was about to bring down our A330 on Santa’s doorstep was a 4’8 Greek speaking women with dementia. What the hell was I supposed to do with this woman? She didn’t need a verbal intervention from an English speaking ER nurse. She needed to be sedated with some sort of tranquillizer dart, taken to a long term care facility and forced to wear oven mitts everyday to avoid hurting herself.
I spent the next 9 hours of my life peeking at her every 10 min or so (I had to set my watch alarm to keep waking up) and watching her bizarre behaviour. I did wake up at one point to find my ‘thank you’ present from Northwest Airlines – a gift certificate for the Amsterdam airport, enough to purchase a small soda! I was half dreaming and half on guard as I watched this Greek troll like creature talk and laugh to herself. I ensured the flight crew left her garbage at her seat because I had watched her place the contents of her wallet into an empty pretzel bag. I pondered it giving her a shot of ouzo would make this situation better or worse. All was going smoothly; we were on a final decent into Amsterdam, a fairly uneventful flight when she snapped. I have no ideal what set her off – one minute she was in her seat, next she was gone a small blur of crazy running down the aisle. As per our “plan”, I was dashed after her, grabbed her to attempt a “verbal intervention” to lure her back to her seat. Well, she would have none of that evidentially as she whirled around and slapped me across my face.
The rest of the landing was a blur, the women was restrained in a seat. We landed and I waited for security to come and haul this nasty little woman off to some sort of Dutch prison. No one came. The women just got up and walked away! I confronted a member of the Northwest Flight crew, I wanted to let them know that this hardened criminal who had just assaulted me was walking away! I was told that things were different now that we were in Europe and that I should just go about my business. Apparently assault is tolerated more openly on Dutch soil. The sad part of it all, as angry as I was the women needed help – I was fairly certain that Amsterdam wasn’t her final destination. I deduced this while watching her try to determine the location of the next flight based on a dry cleaning stub in her hand. (April 2009)
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