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This is my take on a short story exercise, in which a story contains three stories of three different people were struck by lightning.

1. The flight attendant. 

I was thirty thousand feet above Boston when the sky cracked open and found me. 

It’s funny because I never feared bad weather, I rather enjoyed it. I found thunderstorms and lightning cool, I love the rain when it comes pouring down, I actually find turbulence fun, when it is not dire of course. This makes five years flying for American Airlines, and I was lucky up until that day to say I had never experienced anything dangerous or life threatening as a flight attendant. Maybe I had it coming. 

I had just served a couple leaving for their honeymoon mimosas, their giddy happiness was palpable. Now I feel for them, knowing they likely never went and may not even think about going on a plane again for years, if not forever. We knew there were storms headed our way; we had a heat wave for the past week that was about to be cut by rain. Summer storms make the best thunderstorms, I was excited. From what we knew, we were safe to depart that day, June 20th. Flights get cancelled all the time for bad weather, if it wasn’t cancelled, I trusted their judgement. Then the flash came. A blinding white vein across the window, followed by a sound that I can still hear. My knees buckled and I folded to the floor; they went numb with adrenaline. That was lightning. Repeating those words in my head yet I still couldn’t believe it. That was lightning and it was far too close for comfort. 

Panic ensued on the aircraft of course. Flight 620 was struck at the nose of the aircraft, but I had been holding onto the metal cart. It eventually occurred to me that, yes, my adrenaline was taking the driver’s seat on my body, but my knees didn’t just buckle. What I remember most isn’t pain, it was the smell. The smell of burning metal filled the air and burned inside my nose. I should feel lucky, lucky that I am still alive, lucky that I escaped without major injuries. I have a tremor now; there is a chance it will go away with time but there is no guarantee. 

Somehow, I don’t fear flying. I still fly; I still smile as I do my job. But I now count the seconds between thunder and lightning. Because now I know how fast it travels, how close it can get, and what it feels like to be a conduit. What I fear is the silence that comes before the flash. 

I can’t go on, that’s all I can write today. I hope these journalling exercises work, I don’t want to fear the weather I loved the most. 

Sincerely, Arden 

2. The Veterinarian. 

I knew on June 20th that it was going to be a hard day at the emergency hospital, but not in the way I had expected. There are certain days of the year where we can count on the fact that there will be an influx of animals coming to our hospital; the 4th of July as animals get scared of the fireworks, Christmas Eve, and during bad weather. 

At Cape Cod Veterinary Specialists, we planned and staffed accordingly knowing that there was a big storm heading our way. Flood warnings, thunder, and lightning storms usually warrant for dogs that run away from home and get hurt, horses under distress, we even once had an alpaca come through our hospital. You name it, we have seen it all. The rain began around noon, and by 2pm we were already arms deep in patients that we would have to start diverting new patients soon. It was at that point that we had gotten a call for a golden retriever that had run out of the home scared of the thunder and lightning and was struck by a car. He was unresponsive but still alive and was in critical condition, he would need to be taken out of the owner’s car and carried to the back to be seen immediately. By the time they arrived, although we had plenty of nurses on, I knew I was likely the strongest and would be able to carry him in the fastest, so I went out there myself. I lunged out of the front doors and remember feeling the warm rain pelt my skin. Within seconds I was soaked. The husband and wife were frantic as they opened the trunk and can barely speak through their tears. We all felt the preciousness of time as the trunk opens slowly, each of us cursing the stupid electric opening trunks.

Time is of the essence, and in hindsight, that feels all the more true. Not only for that dog, but if it had opened any faster, perhaps I would have had the dog in my hands and through those doors. As soon as the trunk was open enough for me to get my body hunched inside to reach for the dog, I was numbed with a zing of pain the entered and spread throughout my body. 

They said I screamed. I don’t remember that. I don’t remember much of what came after that, my mind likely erasing the horror of those moments. I had burns on palm and a tremor in my right leg for months. The dog unfortunately didn’t live, and I don’t know how to live with that. I have been in this career for 25 years now, and I have lost many patients. Working in an emergency hospital, you are faced with many sad losses, but for some reason this is that hardest one. All that I can live with was that I didn’t send out one of the nurses. 

3. The Psychologist.

I was on sabbatical visiting family in Massachusetts. After my divorce, I needed time to make sense of what my life had become and everything it wasn’t. Being around family might have been a bad choice, but I thought at first that their support would help. Instead, I have unwarranted opinions and the expectation that I am supposed to know how to handle the mental load since I am a psychologist. I need my own psychologist because of them. 

Since I couldn’t meet my therapist this week, I went hiking instead to get away from them. The sky was clear when I started but it wasn’t when I reached the ridge. I remember thinking, this is what grief feels like. The clouds rolled in fast, like a mood swing. I didn’t hear thunder, I just saw white. Then black. 

I woke up in the hospital with an unfamiliar face and my mother. They say I was unconscious for seven minutes. The unfamiliar face was a camper who found me twitching beside a scorched tree.

The recovery has been slow; it has been a few weeks now that I have had what’s called aphasia. I can’t find words for simple things, so I began recording myself and listening to the gaps in my own cognition. I find it both terrifying and fascinating. Terrified that I will always be this way and fascinated by what that means for the connections in my brain; that’s part of why I fell in love with my career. I don’t know when I will go back to work and it hurts that I couldn’t escape the pain, that it only got worse when I didn’t think it could get any worse. But if there is one thing I have learned, it is that the brain is a forest after lightning. Some trees die, some grow stronger, and some bloom in ways they never could before.