Saving Meghan(4)

“My daughter is in the hospital with a heart attack or something. Please … please … don’t do this to me. Let me go. I have to get to her.”

“Hey, let her go,” someone called out. “It’s her damn kid!”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” shouted another supporter.

“Sit down, lady!” This third voice, a female’s, called out. “I’ll kick your ass if you make me miss this flight.”

“Ma’am, if you don’t take your seat this instant, I’m going to have you forcibly removed from this plane,” Katrina threatened.

“Yes!” Becky cried out. “That’s what I want. Kick me off right now. I need to be with my daughter. I can’t fly to California, don’t you understand?”

Becky turned to see a large man approaching her from behind. He had a bushy mustache and thinning dark hair that gleamed beneath the cabin lights. As he flashed some sort of ID to Katrina, his fingers clamped around Becky’s left arm, which he then wrenched painfully and awkwardly behind her back.

“I’m an air marshal,” he gruffly announced to Katrina. “Please tell the captain we have a situation here, and we need to get this plane back to the gate—now. Ma’am, I’m taking you into custody for interfering with a flight crew.”

Becky heard some cheers mixed with plenty of boos. In her peripheral vision, she saw cell phones out, small lenses recording her meltdown for the whole world to see. Soon it would be all over Twitter, Facebook, maybe the news. The air marshal yanked Becky’s other arm behind her back with total disregard for tendons and range of motion. A second later, Becky felt the clamp of cold steel biting into her flesh as he secured his handcuffs around her delicate wrists.

She’d never done the “perp walk” before, and understood now the desire for a clipboard or hoodie to shield her face as the air marshal escorted her (and her carry-on luggage) off the gangway and back into the departure lounge. As a woman, she thought she knew what it meant to feel degraded when men groped her, touched her, approached her, catcalled her, but this was dehumanizing on an entirely different level.

It was a short walk from the departure gate to a waiting electric-powered cart that the air marshal had summoned on his radio. People gawked at Becky as the uniformed driver, an employee of the airport, drove her away. They were understandably curious. What could she have done? Even Becky could appreciate the odd sight—a tall, slender woman manhandled by a brute like the air marshal. It hardly made for a fair fight.

Becky tried to hold it together as the driver weaved the cart between clusters of airline passengers all making their way to gates or other destinations. She felt less conspicuous while seated, as nobody could see the handcuffs around her wrists. She was aware of the crime she’d committed, but not the penalties it might carry. All Becky wanted was to get at her purse, which held her phone. Meghan was still in the hospital. For all she knew, her daughter could be gone.

“Please, please,” Becky said, willing strength into her voice. “You don’t have to do this.”

The air marshal answered coolly, “You didn’t have to interfere with a flight crew.”

Some minutes later, Becky found herself in a stark room constructed entirely of gray concrete bricks located somewhere in the bowels of the airport. Overhead lights reflected harshly off a metal table positioned in the center of the room. She looked across the table at several members of the TSA, all dressed in crisp blue shirts pinned with gold badges. Their shifting glances and nervous looks told her they were not trained to handle a distressed mom in handcuffs.

“Dave, I think you may have overstepped your bounds here,” one of the TSA agents offered a bit apprehensively.

Dave.

At least now Becky knew her captor’s name.

Just then, the room’s only door swung open, and in stormed a strong-featured man in his fifties, with ebony skin and short-cut dark hair. He had on a charcoal-gray suit brightened with a bold red tie, which distinguished him as a person in charge. When he looked at Becky and saw the handcuffs in place, his stern aspect softened. His gaze shifted over to Dave, the air marshal.

“Unlock her,” he said. “You went way, way over the line here.”

“She interfered with a flight crew,” Dave protested in his defense. “She should be charged.”

“I can’t believe you blew your cover for a situation the flight crew could have handled. Just so you know, I spoke with the captain, who informed me that he would have willingly returned to the gate to let this poor mother off that plane. Now, let her go.”

Dave muttered to himself as he complied with the order. Becky rubbed at her wrists, which were ringed red in the matching contours of the handcuffs.

The man who’d come to Becky’s rescue pulled over a chair. He sat down beside her. “Ma’am, I’m Reginald Campbell, head of TSA here at Logan. I am so very sorry for what you’ve been through.”

Becky regained her composure. “I know you think I’m going to threaten you with lawsuits and whatnot, but I only want my purse with my phone in it so that I can check in with my husband and make sure my daughter is all right.”

“Of course,” Reginald said, retrieving the purse from the corner of the room where Dave had tossed it. “If you don’t mind, we just need to see some ID for the paperwork.”