Page Utilities
Jackie Nink Pflug, with Peter J. Kisilos, Hazelden Publishing (page 10 of 11) Page 10 of 11
I continued talking to the psychiatrist for a few more minutes. He said it was okay for me to cry.
When we were done, I walked back to my room. Scott was waiting there.
“Hi, honey,” I greeted him.
I got back into bed and looked over to see how Scott was feeling. I thought he would be mad that I didn’t ask to see the psychiatrist when he was there. I wasn’t honest with Scott about why I waited for him to leave. I didn’t tell him that I didn’t want him to see me cry.
“You weren’t here and I needed someone to talk to,” I said.
“Sometimes, that just happens,” he said. “You have to do what you have to do.”
I felt better. Scott seemed to understand.
Going to the psychiatrist’s office that afternoon was a small step toward naming, accepting, and releasing the pain I’d stuffed down for many years. At that point, however, I had no idea of how much I stuffed and held back — toward the hijackers, Scott, my parents, and others in my life.
* * *
Shortly after Scott and I arrived in Germany, a drove of journalists descended on us. They had been working on the story for U.S. and foreign newspapers, magazines, and television stations and were following up on the human interest angle of my story. They were panting for juicy details of my life and the hijacking.
We turned down all the interview requests. I was still in shock and had no desire to meet the press. I needed to focus on recovering in quiet. I spent most of my time sleeping.
Yet one reporter managed to get past the head of army public relations. He claimed to be with a respected daily newspaper in New York City. The reporter offered to pay Scott two thousand dollars for his version of the hijacking. Scott and I discussed the offer and agreed that Scott would talk to the reporter. We were both concerned about my mounting medical bills; we thought doing the interview would help us meet some of our expenses.
Scott gave the interview, including his chronology of the hijacking and how we had both spent the previous two years in Stavanger, Norway, and Cairo, Egypt.
But the story did not go according to plan. The article appeared in a big, sensationalist tabloid newspaper. And we never saw a dime of the money that was promised.
* * *
I was in Germany for about a week. I spent most of that time sleeping, hobbling around the hallways, and slowly starting to realize what I’d been through.
The first days and weeks after the hijacking were hard on my family and friends back home. They felt helpless to do anything but pray for me in those dark hours of the hijacking. I couldn’t be reached by telephone for about a week after I was shot.
On Friday afternoon, November 29, my parents got two pieces of news: a letter I’d written from Cairo, telling them about my upcoming trip to Greece and Thanksgiving plans (including a picture of me riding on a camel near the Pyramids) and a phone call informing them of my transfer to Germany.
Then, one day, a phone rang at the nurse’s station of the VA hospital. A nurse at the switchboard interrogated the caller asking to speak to me. “Are you a relative?” the nurse said.
“Yeah, this is her sister Barbara,” Barb said.
The nurse came to get me out of bed. I got up, dizzy, and she motioned for me to come over to the phone. “It’s your sister Barbara,” the nurse said.
I don’t have a sister named Barbara, I thought to myself. Who could this be?
I put the receiver to my ear and heard a familiar voice.
“Hello, Jackie?”
“Barb?”
It was my friend Barbara Wilson. She told the nurse that she was my sister because the hospital was only allowing me to receive calls from immediate family members. I was glad that Barb had exercised a little ingenuity to get around the bureaucracy.
I met Barb shortly after I started teaching special education in the Baytown School district, a few minutes west of Pasadena, Texas, the Houston suburb where I grew up. Barbara was also a teacher, and the two of us hit it off immediately. We hung out with the same crowd, went to the same parties, took trips together, and got to be like sisters to each other.
It was five o’clock in the morning Texas time when Barb found out what hospital I was in. She still didn’t know how badly I was hurt and wanted to hear my voice. Barb was thrilled when the nurse said I was walking down the hall to get the phone.
“I thought, God! She can walk!” Barb later recalled. “I didn’t think Jackie would be able to get out of bed because of the head injuries. It was so good to know she could get around on her own.”
For the first few minutes on the phone, we both just cried. Then there was a long silence. We didn’t need words to communicate our feelings or how much it meant to hear each other’s voices again.
When we finally started talking, I told Barb about my out-of-body experience. I also talked about my vision problems and how I thought they would clear up when I got a new pair of contact lenses.
It was so good to hear Barb’s voice. She and her husband, Wayne, wanted to fly to Germany to visit and support me. But the doctors said I’d be leaving in a few days anyway, so I didn’t think it was worth the expense. Barb told me that she and Wayne, along with my parents, my friend Debbie Reno, and others had held an around-the-clock vigil for me in the hours and days during and after the hijacking.
Simply talking to Barb gave me a big boost. I didn’t feel quite so alone anymore. At least not for a while.
After about a week in Germany, doctors thought I was ready to go home. Before leaving the hospital, a woman gave me a scarf to put over my bald head. Scott put some makeup on my face. I couldn’t keep from laughing while he put it on. The makeup looked kind of blotchy, but at that point I really didn’t care.
Scott and I flew back to the United States. The government flew me in a huge, old, dark green army transport plane. The plane carried medical equipment and other sick passengers from the VA hospital in Landstuhl. Again, I was lying flat on my back. A kind serviceman came back to visit and check on me, and snuck me some fruit juices.
It felt good to be going back to the states. But the prospect of living in a new place and making new friends was scary.
Excerpted from Miles to Go Before I Sleep by Jackie Nink Pflug, with Peter J. Kisilos, published by Hazelden Publishing, www.hazelden.org. Copyright © 1996 by Hazelden Foundation. Used with permision. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission from the publisher. To learn more about the author, go to: www.jackiepflug.com.
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