2007-07-15 - 3:48 p.m.
Much of this entry is perhaps a bit boring, detailing our arduous plane trip from Las Vegas to New York. But I�m sort of the hero of it, staying awake and maintaining rationality, and I don�t get many chances to be the hero these days. It also occurs to me that Nya�s irrational behavior might be taken as her being drunk and me simply denying it. But I assure you, this was not the case. She never even really had an opportunity to drink to excess. She was just incredibly overtired.
I passed out shortly after we got back to the hotel from the wedding, while Nya stayed up all night. So no, there wasn�t any wedding night nookie. But as Nya pointed out, we have the rest of our lives for that. (We�re already off to a good start!) She took advantage of our palatial room by inviting people back for an after-party. I believe after everyone else had left by like 7AM, she and her best friend (our male maid-of-honor) went for a morning dip in the pool. But I of course was dead asleep.
The next day, I barely saw Nya during the day. But that evening, she wanted to go to the Sahara Casino to see comedian/magician the Amazing Johnathan. We walked over with Nya�s friend; it was about a mile and a half down the Strip. On the way over, they got into a huge fight. Now, I don�t want to go into detail about it because ultimately it�s her business. But I do want to talk about it a little, because I feel like I was at least partly responsible. Nya has assured me that I wasn�t, but still.
We were going down the sidewalk on the west side of the Las Vegas Boulevard and I accidentally drove my wheelchair off the curb. I can�t really say just why it happened (there were no obstacles in the way or anything), but it�s going to happen occasionally. I spilled out of my chair, sprawling into the street. Fortunately, there was a break in traffic and no cars whizzing by. Some British tourists were walking behind me (Nya and her friend were ahead of me) and, after giving a start when I fell, picked my wheelchair back up on the sidewalk and put me in it.
Nya and her friend came rushing over.
�Oh my God! Are you all right? You�re bleeding! You have a big gash over your eye.�
�It�s just a flesh wound��
�Let me get you some bandages!�
Nya went into the mini-mart at the gas station we were next to and bought a box of Band-Aids.
She put one on me when she came out.
�We need to take him to an ER or maybe just security at the next casino to make sure he�s all right,� said her friend.
�Okay, but first let me put on one more Band-Aid. You can still see open wound.�
�No, we need to go now! Better safe than sorry. Come on, Geoff!�
Well, I guessed he knew from safety, having lived with HIV for 17 years (!) now. But it really wouldn�t be the end of the world to wait for Nya to put another strip on. Still, now that the adrenaline was wearing off, I was feeling a little worn out from the fall and didn�t have the initiative to do anything more than follow Nya�s friend to the Sahara. A medic at the security desk examined me and I was fine, just a bit shaken. Then Nya came in following us and had it out royally with her friend.
Their main point of spoken-out-loud contention was �I just wanted to put another Band-Aid on him!/I just wanted for him to be seen by a professional as soon as possible!� I felt terrible about this because I was the subject of the dispute. But of course their fight had to do with far more than was being argued about. They�d had like eight years of close friendship in Denver to build up resentments that got swept under the rug when they formed. Now that there�d been time since their closeness and they had distance separating them, maybe it was all coming out.
But like I said, ultimately it�s not really my business. I was sorry to see such a bitter quarrel, but I simply have to trust Nya�s saying I wasn�t at all the cause of it. We went on to see the Amazing Johnathan. I think he was pretty funny (and kind of more comedian than magician). But with the tension at the table between Nya and her friend and the fact that we were tired out from all the wedding stuff, it was hard to concentrate. We went back to our hotel after the show and I went straight to bed while Nya stayed up again, brooding. The next day, we had to fly out.
I had already changed our departing flight from morning to mid-afternoon. It was a flight back to Chicago, then we had a separate flight on then same airline in the morning to New York and our honeymoon cruise. Unfortunately getting a wheelchair cab to the airport took a bit longer than usual. So by the time we got there, our scheduled flight had already closed its doors and wasn�t boarding passengers anymore. They rebooked us on another flight in a few hours.
At this point, I was getting pretty worried about Nya. She�d been up straight through the past two nights and she was acting pretty sleep-deprived. Every time she went outside to smoke a cigarette, I was worried she wouldn�t remember the way back and would drift off lost. I get burned out myself in mid-afternoon and usually take a nap for an hour to recharge. But there really wasn�t time for that now. One of us had to be at least vaguely alert to keep on top of announcements and gate changes and stuff.
We waited at the gate for the late afternoon flight. Well like I said, I was at the gate. Nya sometimes wandered outside to smoke. They finally announced that the flight was overbooked so they wouldn�t accept any standby passengers. Great. We were at least guaranteed a seat on the next flight, but it was a red-eye at 11:50PM. Well, I figured. At least I can transfer from my chair to that bench over there and take a nap. Nya should get some sleep as well. At this point however, she wanted to get dinner.
The closest sit-down, non-fast food place was in another terminal. While taking the tram there, Nya realized she�d left her ID outside on one of her smoking trips. Now we�d have to find a security center and pray that somebody had returned the card. We found it (it was in yet another terminal, of course) and fortunately managed to retrieve the ID. When we finally went to the restaurant and got food, Nya promptly spilled over her dinner in her exhaustion. This was actually a refreshing change; usually it�s gimpy me who knocks things over.
We went back to our gate and got on a flight at last (only 10 hours late, but whatever). Now I had to figure some things out. We had originally planned to spend the night at our house and go back to O�Hare in the morning for our flight to New York. But now it looked like we were landing at the airport just a few hours before our next flight left. We�d just have to stick around O�Hare for a bit. As the Beastie Boys said: no sleep �til Brooklyn. Plus whatever Nya and I could catch on this flight here.
I drifted in and out of sleep on the plane. Nya would nod off and then jerk her head back up. Well, I figured, at least she�s getting something. When we landed at O�Hare it was like 5AM. Our next flight left at 9. Our baggage had been on the late afternoon flight that we hadn�t been able to get on and was currently locked up after going unclaimed so long. We had to find some sort of helper person, because Nya could barely push my manual chair at this point.
The two airport workers we found initially addressed Nya (as people often do when they see I�m in a wheelchair). But when it quickly became apparent that I was coherent while she was a complete mess, they asked if they should get a wheelchair for her. She shook her head. Although she later said that shortly after she did this she realized she should have accepted, as she could barely walk. The workers helped us get our bags out of storage and onto a cart they pushed. Then we had to exit and reenter the airport, as we had a separate flight, not a connection.
Fortunately, both of us slept hard on the flight to New York. Folks from the cruise company met us at baggage claim. Despite my having notified the line that I use a wheelchair and can�t climb stairs, the transportation to the ship was a bus with a very steep set of steps. We took a cab, which I can get into, to the cruise terminal (which is apparently now in Brooklyn!). We were pleased to find that our cabin on the ship was eminently accessible. But most important, it had a king-size bed�
I�m sure there was some kind of send-off ceremony when we sailed off that evening, but we were dead asleep.
� 2007 Geoff Gladstone
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