Last Flight

I had just boarded the last flight back home and found myself seated between two passengers. I greeted the man on my left and he gave me a quiet response, but the woman on my right instantly picked up the conversation. She had a warm and lively energy about her.

The first thing she talked about was her sunscreen lotion. She went on about how important it was to wear one all the time and protect my skin. As she spoke, I could not help but think about my friend Lami. She had been preaching the same thing to me for years. I smiled to myself because I could not wait to see her again.

In fact, Lami was the reason I had cut my trip short and rushed onto that flight.
Before I travelled, she had complained many times about feeling tired. Her job was demanding and she was always moving from one place to another, so we both assumed it was stress, dehydration or maybe the weather affecting her. I advised her to take some time off work and rest and she said it helped.

Then a few days into my trip, she called me from the hospital. She had felt faint at work and had gone in for tests. The doctors had noticed that her heart looked weak and they wanted further scans to understand what was going on. They requested a CT scan and suddenly everything felt more serious than we had thought and she needed me around.
The moment I got that call, I lost focus completely. Nothing around me mattered anymore so I packed my bags and rushed to the airport.

The woman beside me interrupted my thoughts with another story. I had not even heard half of what she had been saying because my mind had been elsewhere. For someone I had just met, she was incredibly talkative.
Her name was Toria and she described herself as a traveller. She said that right now, she was on one of the most difficult journeys of her life. I did not really understand how travelling could be someone’s occupation but she looked like someone who enjoyed every part of it. I could not wait to tell Lami all about her.

My plan had been to sleep after takeoff but Toria made sure that never happened. Strangely, talking to her felt easy. She was funny and smart and her sense of humour was topnotch. I used to think Lami spoke very fast but Toria completely destroyed that record.
She talked openly about herself and mentioned a health condition she never knew she had until recently. She said that life was short and because of that she never took things too seriously.
Somehow I found myself opening up too.

I told her about my struggles at work and how I had been thinking about leaving my nine-to-five job and starting my own business. I even told her about Lami and how worried I was.
Toria listened carefully.
Then she gave me advice that felt far beyond her years. The things she said stayed with me. They were simple words but they carried a strange weight. Then she assured me that my friend was going to be alright. She spoke with so much certainty and I remember finding that comforting.

She held my hand gently and told me that everything was going to be okay.
Then she asked me to keep an eye on her bag while she went to the toilet.
I nodded.
I remember thinking that I would love to stay in touch with her after the flight.
Unlike the man sitting on my left. He had been staring at me almost the entire time and I found it annoying.

A few minutes before landing, the pilot announced that all passengers should return to their seats.
I waited for Toria. I looked back several times expecting her to walk down the aisle but she never came.

The plane landed and everyone got off.
Everyone except me.
I remained seated with the cabin crew while we tried to figure out what had happened. Toria was not in the toilet and she was nowhere on the plane.

They took the bag from me and promised they would contact me if they found anything. By then my hands were shaking. None of it made sense. I was terrified.

My driver was already waiting at the airport and took me straight to the hospital. I asked to see Lami immediately but the nurses said the doctor needed to speak with me first.
I sat there and listened as the doctor explained everything.

Right after her CT scan, Lami had suffered a heart attack caused by intense stress. She did not survive.
I could not hear anything after that.
The world around me suddenly felt distant.

The days that followed became the darkest period of my life.
I cried until I thought there were no tears left in me.
I slept and woke up with pain sitting heavily in my chest.
I stared at my phone countless times expecting to see her name appear.
Sometimes I would pick up my phone to call her before remembering she was gone. I stopped eating properly. I stopped caring about anything.
The silence became unbearable because every quiet moment reminded me that my best friend no longer existed in my world.

People visited me and offered comforting words but nothing seemed to enter my mind.
I felt empty. I felt lost. I felt like a part of me had died with her.

Then a few days later, the airline called me. They told me they had been trying to locate the owner of the bag Toria left behind. But they could not find any records of her. There was no passenger with that name. No ticket. No booking information. Nothing.
At first they thought there had been some mistake. Maybe I had mixed up passengers. So they contacted the man who had sat beside me. The same man that was staring at me throughout the flight. His response made my blood run cold. He told them there had only been two people sitting in that row. Him and me.
He said he remembered me because I had spent almost the entire flight laughing and talking to myself.

The airline was confused.
The man was confused.
I was confused.
I kept insisting that Toria was real.
I described her face. Her smile. Her voice. Everything. But nobody understood what I was talking about.

Then came the day of Lami’s funeral service. I sat there holding the programme with trembling hands.
My eyes moved slowly across the page.
Then I froze.
I read it again.
And again.
And again.

Lami Victoria Jackson.

Victoria.

Toria.

My body suddenly became cold.
A chill climbed slowly up my spine.
I could not breathe. Then pieces of the flight started returning to me. The way she spoke too fast. The squint in her eyes whenever she smiled. The strange feeling that I knew her somehow. And then I remembered her hand. That cold hand. I remembered exactly how I felt when she held me. Back then I could not explain it. But now I could.
I realised that during the entire flight something had felt familiar.
I started shaking.
Then another thought crashed into me.
Toria had known I was worried.
She had known what I needed to hear.
She had known my friend would be alright.
Because she already knew.
Because she was Lami.

Then another memory rushed back to me and my heart nearly stopped.
Toria had told me she was embarking on the most difficult journey of her life.
I had thought she was talking about a trip to a remote village. But I understood now.

My heart dropped.
The programme slipped from my hand.
I broke down completely. I cried harder than I had cried since her death.
I cried until I could barely breathe.
Because suddenly I understood.
My friend had come to see me one last time. She had come because she knew I would not make it through that pain alone. She had sat beside me through that entire flight while I worried about losing her even though I had already lost her.

Then I remembered something that made every hair on my body stand.
I remembered her last words before she walked away.
“Everything was going to be okay”.
For the first time since Lami died, I understood what she meant.
Because even after death she still found her way back to me.