Roskov, Book 10, page 1
Ricky Roskov
Book 10
Copyright © Geoff Wolak
This book is a work of fiction, technically accurate in the detail of geographical locations, and the time period history. It is young adult romance, conspiracy and murder-mystery.
A quiet flight home
Settled into my seat in Business Class, in the forwards middle section of this Pan Am 747, my air marshal was in the aisle seat, and I had boarded with a cap on my head and fake glasses on my nose, no one bothering me.
Sat, jacket off, I took off the cap and glasses, one woman doing a double-take at me. The man next to me seemed to recognise me but said nothing, the man being in his sixties and looking like a posh school teacher. He offered me a brief disdainful look.
Four hours or more later, the sun having just set somewhere behind us, west of us, we were now probably mid Atlantic – so I figured, chatting to my air marshal about his youth in Maine and the types of hotels and holiday resorts that the coastline offered to American travellers.
I heard a baby crying, and the man next to me let out an exasperated sigh; he did not seem to approve of babies on flights. The baby’s cries got louder, the mother struggling it seemed, so I had an idea.
Easing out past the long legs of my air marshal, Decker, I stepped back three rows as people recognised me, and to the bawling baby.
The mother, in her mid-thirties and sat with what appeared to be an eight-year-old girl as well as the baby, was shocked to see me. ‘You!’
‘Some of the world’s media outlets … have suggested that I have a good effect on babies, so … I’ll give it go if you like.’
‘Please do,’ came a complaint from an angry male passenger, getting a look from the mother.
The aisle seat was empty so I sat down, the crying baby girl handed to me, the little chubby lump red in the face. I placed her on my knees but with a hand behind her head, lifting her, and I placed my face close, so that she could see me clearly.
‘What’s the matter, eh, my little chubby lump?’
‘Chubby … lump?’ the mother repeated in an American accent.
The baby, perhaps as old as Katerina when I found her, studied me, and the shouting stopped as a hostess hovered, that hostess surprised to see me and seemingly on her way to offer assistance to the struggling mother. Or to take complaints from the disturbed and irate passengers nearby.
The red-face chubby lump calmed down, so my reputation was safe for now; I had expected to fail here and to be ridiculed for my would-be parenting skills in the world’s media.
‘You don’t mind me calling you a chubby lump, do you?’ I quietly asked the baby. ‘And let’s face it, with chubby legs like those you’ll not be popular with the boys in kindergarten.’
Passengers near me laughed quietly.
‘You have a way with girls,’ the mother quipped.
I told the baby, ‘But if you promise to be quiet for all the nice passengers I won’t tell anyone that mummy usually likes a nice white wine after you settle and go to bed.’
‘Shhhhhh,’ the mother issued, but with a grin as the passengers around me laughed.
‘Now comes the hard part, my bullshit reputation on the line here,’ I told the baby. ‘We’ll see if I can make you fall asleep, and not just by talking politics. And if you do go to sleep for me I’ll buy you enough ice cream to give you diarrhoea for months.’
I eased my groin as far forwards as I could as the laughter echoed around the cabin, and I placed the chubby lump on my chest, gently stroking the back of her head.
The airhostess eased down and bent over. ‘Oh my god,’ she whispered. ‘She’s asleep.’
‘Thank god for that,’ came from the complaining male passenger.
A few people stood and had a look, one lady with an expensive camera walking up and kneeling. ‘Can I?’ she whispered.
I nodded. ‘But you need to ask the mother, to photograph a minor.’
The lady photographer looked past me, the mother finally but reluctantly nodding, the mother now sat looking amazed. The photographer snapped away as I placed my cheek against the baby’s head and smiled for the camera.
With the curious passengers now all sat back down, quiet reclaimed the Business Class section, a few people heading to the toilet. But I had placed a hand on the baby’s back, and her breathing did not feel right. The chubby lump also seemed to be shuddering now and then despite her warm all-in-one.
Minutes passed, and I was sure that babies were not supposed to do this. I had held Katerina often enough, and had felt Katerina breathing. This particular chubby lump seemed to be having trouble breathing as she slept, the cabin lights now down low.
With my face close to the baby ten minutes later, the sleeping chubby lump burped, the smell being horrendous, and not at all seemingly normal for a baby burp.
Turning my head to the mother, she was asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her, so I sat for a few minutes, wondering what I should do, if anything. Keeping the baby asleep for the next few hours seemed like the best thing to do.
For a moment the panic set it, because here I was holding someone else’s baby, and thinking that the baby was sick. I felt the eyes of the world on me.
Decker walked back ten minutes later to see where I was, a smile at me as he saw the sleeping baby. But then he pointed at my chest, then at his own chest, his shirt. I looked down, and my eyes widened, spots of red blood on my white shirt.
My face fell, and Decker moved in and knelt.
I whispered to him, ‘That’s not my blood. The baby is breathing oddly, and when she burped it smelt bad, now blood.’
His face said it all; we were in the shit at forty thousand feet mid-Atlantic.
As he stood I waved my free hand to the hostess, and she came and knelt, Decker moving his big frame out the way. Whispering, I began, ‘Check the passenger manifest … and see if there’s a doctor on board, please. Fast.’
The hostess’s face fell, and she could now see the blood.
‘I’m a doctor,’ came in a female voice form behind. Decker moved back with the hostess, and the lady doctor, perhaps forty years old, knelt in the aisle next to me, seeing the blood.
‘Put your hand on her back and check the breathing,’ I whispered.
The doctor did as asked for thirty seconds, and her look said it all.
I turned my head and woke the mother. ‘Wake up,’ I whispered.
The mother clocked the worried doctor, the worried hostess and a worried Decker. ‘What … what is it?’
I asked, ‘Do you have stomach ulcers?’
Her eyes widened. ‘How the hell did you know that?’
‘Your baby has them as well, she’s sick, and struggling to breathe.’
‘I’m a doctor,’ the lady doctor whispered. She waved us out, and without waking the sleeping chubby lump we all moved to the central food galley and out of view of the passengers, the mother remaining oddly calm but now looking concerned.
The doctor faced her. ‘You have a family history?’
‘Yes, I follow my mother and grandmother, they had stomach ulcers.’
I suddenly resented this, because I was the one left holding the baby. Literally. I faced the doctor as Decker and the hostess listened in. ‘Can an ulcer affect a baby’s lungs?’
‘The ulcer can grow and penetrate the lung wall in an infant. The baby has fluid in her left lung, and we need a hospital … right now.’
I faced the hostess. ‘Time to London?’
‘Three hours, I think.’
‘That means that we’re south of Iceland, half an hour away or less.’
‘We can’t wait,’ the doctor insisted. ‘To land in London and get to a hospital could be four hours, and her lung will stop working.’
The mother stood stoic. Which was odd.
I noted, ‘You’re not a blubbering wreck…’
‘State Department,’ she bluntly told us. ‘And … I nursed my mother for decades till she died - of stomach ulcers.’
I turned my head to the hostess. ‘Get the captain on the phone, tell him that I’m on board, baby is very sick, doctor is here, and that I request a diversion to Iceland. And that I’ll pay all of the passengers return fares for their inconvenience. Quickly please.’
She grabbed the wall phone and hit buttons, waiting ten seconds before gushing out the situation. After waiting, she handed the phone to the doctor.
‘… I’m Doctor Elizabeth Harley, Queens Medical Centre, New York. The baby has an ulcer that looks to have penetrated her lung, the lung filling with liquid … Roskov is holding the baby … and every media outlet in the damn world will be looking at what you do next with a microscope, Captain.’
That last part sounded like a threat.
She finally placed the phone back into the wall socket. ‘He’s going to contact Iceland.’
‘Keflavik Airport,’ I put in. ‘City is a forty minute drive from the airport.’ I turned my head a notch to the hostess. ‘Ask the captain to ask for ambulances with doctors on the tarmac, for them to ready steps to be in place, rear starboard exit, every second counts here.’
She got on the phone as the baby woke, coughing blood down me. At the sight of the blood the hostess let out a muffled scream, soon explaining that scream to the captain, followed by a shaky rendition of my message.
A minute later I felt the aircraft dip, and start to turn. The seatbelt sign came on. ‘What can we do to get the fluid out of her lung?’ I asked the doctor, now very worried at the accumulating blo
‘I’d need a paediatric set of tubes, but if she’s conscious she’d fight them, so we need a sedative. Only thing we can do is keep her calm, lower her pulse and breathing rate - no crying is best, and have her face down at an angle so that the blood will be coughed out.’
The hostess, who was not at all the calm professional, was joined by a colleague, white cloth found, the baby placed down where the food and drink was normally prepared, and I held her on her side, but where she could see both me and her mother – who was now talking softly to her.
A cough, and bright red blood spattered the white cloth and my hand, but fortunately the sight of it did not register with the baby. It did however, register with the shocked hostesses. And my stomach, it was turning, but I was putting on a brave face here.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a medical emergency on board and we’re now descending towards Keflavik Airport in Iceland, and we should be landing inside of twenty minutes as we dump fuel.
‘You’ll all be refunded the flight cost if we get delayed on the ground or overnight, hotel costs would be paid, but we should be able to continue our journey to London with perhaps a delay of one and a half hours.
‘I’ll update you when we have more information, and if there are any doctors on board please make yourself known to the crew or proceed to the central galley behind Business Class.
‘Thank you all for your understanding, there’s no danger to the aircraft, but we do have a very sick baby on board.’
I turned to the mother. ‘Go check on your other daughter.’
She walked off in no particular hurry. Thirty seconds later and, despite the seatbelt sign being on, a grey-haired old doctor walked up and introduced himself, a British man.
He pushed his face close to the baby as I told him, ‘The female line in her family all had chronic stomach ulcers.’
He glanced at me.
I added, ‘I noticed the erratic breathing, and when she burped it smelt terrible, then she coughed up blood.’
‘Burst ulcer, yes, rare in babies, they develop when the kid is a teenager normally. But how did you know?’
‘I had a friend in school do exactly the same thing, when he was … twelve.’
‘She should be screaming in pain,’ he noted as he studied her.
‘She was, then I comforted her.’
‘Well, bottle and sell that trick, Mister Roskov, we could all use some of that.’ He straightened. ‘Keep her calm, carry her off yourself, keep her calm as long as possible. If she starts screaming she’ll open up the ulcer more.’
‘I don’t need to be back in Britain yet, I can delay filming a day or so, this is more important than making a movie about a baby I saved.’
The doctor stood wide-eyed. ‘Second one you saved it seems.’
The chubby lump coughed up more blood.
‘How long does she have?’ I asked the man.
‘We need to drain the lung and plug the hole. If she’s at an angle she could cope a while longer, but she’ll lose fifty percent of her lung capacity which can lead to a lack of oxygen in the blood – which can lead to brain damage in babies.
‘She needs to be in intensive care inside of an hour. Or she needs a miracle.’
‘Well according to the bullshit reports in the media … I dispense the miracles, so we’ll see if they’re right.’
‘She should be screaming, but she’s focused on you, which is … very damn odd.’
The mother returned, Decker sent to watch the girl as I stroked the baby’s head.
The grey-haired old doctor asked the mother, ‘You have a genetic condition?’
‘They’re not sure that it’s a recognised genetic condition, but me, my mom and my grandmother all had stomach ulcers. My daughter is eight and … OK so far.’
He faced me. ‘How come you spotted it?’
‘The baby was crying, so to save the passengers the noise I offered to try and calm the baby -’
‘And he did, in seconds,’ the mother cut in. ‘I could never get her to sleep in just two seconds.’
‘You seem calm,’ the old doctor noted.
The mother took in the faces. ‘When I was ten I nursed a sick grandmother, then years later a sick mother. I’m … kind of fatalistic, waiting for my eight year old to wake with blood on her pillow and to start on the meds.’
‘And your husband?’ he asked.
‘In London, we’re both in the State Department.’
The baby coughed up more blood, my stomach turning again.
The old doctor noted, ‘That’s good, in a way, better out than in. If she keeps doing that, and not screaming, she could make it. Good luck.’
And off he went, the lady doctor hanging around as I held the baby, my legs wide because the buffeting was starting as we descended, my eyes locked with the baby, a comforting hand on her head.
The same lady with the camera appeared, shocked at the blood. ‘Sorry, but I’m Reuters…’
‘You can ask the mother, not me, but I plan on an awareness campaign for the condition, so … the publicity may help other babies and kids.’
The mother glanced at me for a second. ‘She’s in your hands now.’
It was an odd thing to say, a very odd thing, and I stared at the side of her head for several seconds. Finally, I turned to the snapper. ‘Come around this side and take a few snaps, on condition that I can use them in fundraising.’
‘Sure.’ She moved around and took several shots as I spoke softly to the baby, our eyes locked, but I was about to puke at the amount of blood on the white cloth. And the hostess was going green.
A few minutes later came, ‘Crew, prepare for landing. All passengers, please be seated and wait for the baby to be taken off before leaving your seats, we need the aisles to be clear.’
I faced the hostess. ‘I want to sit at the rear, holding her, exit jump seat. Get me a blanket, it will be cold when the doors open, freezing.’
Baby cradled, blue blanket around my shoulders and around the baby, Decker led the way to the rear as the aircraft bounced around, the passengers all focused on me and wide-eyed, some taking snaps – which I thought was damn rude.
At the rear I sat next to a door on a fold-down seat, the hostess doing my seatbelt, Decker sat opposite me and strapped in.
Out the exit door window I could see our aircraft’s bright lights against a black night sky, and I could see fuel pouring out as expected – and hoped for. I just hoped that we would be light enough to land, and that the leaking fuel would stop before we hit the runway.
I faced Decker. ‘I think this might make the news,’ I dryly stated.
He shook his head at me.
I could soon see the lights of houses below us as we bounced around, and we seemed to be circling the runway. We finally lined up, a loud clanking as the wheels came down and the flaps came down.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve dumped enough fuel and it’s safe to land, nothing to worry about.’ It was short and sweet, and to the point.
I faced Decker as I held the baby, the baby now starting to cry a little. I opened the blanket so that she could see me. To Decker, I said, ‘I guess you’ve seen your fair share of emergencies.’
‘A few yeah, a few diversions, two decompressions. The short local flights are the most dangerous. Long haul is normally safe.’
‘How many flights have you made altogether?’
‘This is … three hundred and twenty one.’
I smiled. ‘You keep a list?’
‘Got to, it’s the law. And for expenses of course.’
‘If we’re in Iceland a few days you’ll be well rewarded.’
‘Got nowhere else to be this week.’ He nodded at the baby. ‘She gunna make it?’
‘This time, hopefully, but in the future … the parents won’t be able to sleep knowing that she could choke on her own blood, she’ll need to sleep on her side somehow. But … the mother’s attitude is odd, very odd.’
The runway loomed large, and we touched down smoothly enough after a slight wobble, and as we slowed I could see the fire trucks and two ambulances, lights flashing.
‘Now we’re on the clock,’ I told him as a hostess appeared and unlocked the door.
‘Steps will come here first,’ she told me.
A look down at the baby, and the hostess burst out crying, a hand to her mouth, the baby’s face covered in blood, enough to make anyone wince. And it was turning my stomach as well, the dried areas of blood now turning black.
