January 15, 7:30 PM. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, USA. Fifteen airsick bags, and twenty hours later, I feel like a sack of flour, slightly emptied by a pinhole leak. Sea-Tac is clean and warm, a nice place to be whether you were caught in a snowstorm or not. Slumped on a suitcase, I’m still clutching two flat airsick bags, just in case. A friendly man approaches my sister and I and asks how we are. “We just arrived from Nepal, and my poor sister has been so sick,” Virginia tells him.
Five minutes later, two security guards escort us to an empty, glaring-white room. The friendly man is there with two unfriendly women. One guard and woman take my sister in one direction; the other guard and woman take me to a room in the opposite direction. The unfriendly woman accompanies me inside while the guard stands outside the door. I’m scared.
The woman instructs me to take my blouse off. She very carefully inspects the skin and veins on my arms, then tells me to take off my jeans and inspects the skin and veins on my legs. She is looking for needle marks, and seems unhappy when she finds nothing.
I pray I will throw up on her, and am deeply disappointed I don’t. She instructs me to get dressed and we walk back to the empty, glaring-white room, where Virginia is gushing, “This is so exciting! This has never happened to me before in all my travels. I can't wait to tell my kids!”
We walk back to gather our luggage. “Did they tell you to take your clothes off?” I ask her. “No!” she gasps. “I told them I was a health nut and pushed up my sleeves. They didn’t even look,” she says, disappointed. Just for an instant I picture throwing up on her as we make our way to the waiting area for our final flight home.
By Julie Ferro
