Air Scare

An hour into my 2¼ hour flight from Houston to Phoenix, I was squirming in my seat fighting for my breath, and heard a man several rows back coughing through his wheezes.

Despite my 1A seat assignment, I rang for the flight attendant, “Please ask the Captain what the cabin pressurization is,” and she made me repeat the request before contacting the cockpit.

“It’s at eight-one hundred, just like usual; why, are you having trouble breathing?”

I explained that I was, as was the gentleman several rows back to which she replied, “Oh, he’s just coughing,” which I rebutted with the fact that there's a difference in sounds of coughing and coughing while wheezing.

I declined her offer of oxygen but accepted the glass of water, fully knowing my body only reacts this way at 9500-feet above sea level or higher.

Instead of passengers reading or watching the DirectTV, chatting or sipping drinks in the first class cabin as they‘d done earlier, they had all dozed-off except for me and the coughing man, and I felt fear, got goosebumps thinking of Payne Stewart’s death, and suffered the anoxic headache’s reminder long into the night preceding a 14-hour work day.