“I want the flight to depart safely,” he told her. “I also want an accurate record, including what Malik Foster and the witnesses saw before the video started.”
“Already arranged.”
“Please make sure the crew understands nobody is being asked to change a statement.”
“Of course.”
He returned the tablet to Morrison and sat down. From the opposite aisle Anthony Price spoke, his tone softer than before. “Mr. Williams, I'm sorry I was pushing for this to end without asking what happened. I just wanted to catch my connection.”
Marcus considered him for a moment. “I understand wanting to get home. I wanted that too.”
“I should have listened sooner.”
“Most people should,” Marcus said. “That includes me.”
The remark caught Emma's attention. She had expected a victorious speech, perhaps a public declaration that everybody involved would be fired. Such endings worked well online. Instead Marcus appeared troubled by the fact that his title had done what his valid documents could not. She began to wonder whether the video would be useful if it became only a story about a powerful man humiliating workers who had humiliated him.
A new gate manager arrived and quietly asked Jessica to step onto the jet bridge. Malik was instructed to take temporary responsibility for the forward cabin while a reserve flight attendant traveled over from the adjacent concourse. Morrison returned to the cockpit, where his first officer had been managing the delay and completing operational checks. The captain did not come back out. He had been told to concentrate on flight safety and to give an account of his decisions after landing.
Jessica followed the manager through the doorway. For the first time, nobody addressed her as the person in command. She walked past the gate scanner, past a row of passengers waiting for the next flight, and into a quiet office where someone offered her a chair. Her legs trembled once she sat. She had imagined that the chairman would erupt, threaten her, and perhaps expose himself as the kind of unreasonable passenger she had claimed he was. Instead he had asked her a question she could not answer, and the restraint of that question left her nowhere to hide.
“Am I fired?” she asked the gate manager.
“I'm not in a position to tell you,” he replied. “You're being removed from this assignment pending an initial review. Human resources will contact you.”
“I've worked here eight years.”
“I know.”
“I've never had anything like this happen before.”
The manager looked down at the written account he had received. “Jessica, that may be true. But we need to find out exactly what happened today.”
She remembered the word normal. Normal premium passengers. She could hear herself saying it, and she could not make the sentence mean anything except what it had meant. She wondered whether her mother would see the video. Whether Elena's teacher would. Whether the school parents who already judged her for working irregular hours would decide she was a terrible person instead of a tired woman who had made a disastrous choice.