The Day After

This is the second post in a series about my experience in the immediate aftermath of the Flight 5342 tragedy (part one: The Night It Happened). Revisiting this period is helpful to me, but reading about it may not be helpful to you. Feel free to skip this one if you might find it upsetting.

Sleep never came on the night the Flight 5342 tragedy happened. Lying in bed, I felt some combination of despair, disbelief, and confusion. I had major decisions to make, but my brain was so numb that I didn’t trust myself to make them.

In the early morning hours, I finally gave up on sleep, got up, and took a shower. Not long after, my parents arrived.

I resumed my pattern of calling the American Airlines phone number for affected family members. The results were no different from the previous night. “Name?” “Best phone number to reach you?” “The care team will be in touch.”

Before long, a 7:30 a.m. briefing in D.C. confirmed what now seemed obvious from the images on TV and online: no survivors had been — or were expected to be — found.

My dad stepped outside briefly and encountered a few members of the news media who had arrived in front of my house. He came in to warn me. My parents reminded me that I was under no obligation to speak to them, but I decided to walk outside and face them.

I’m not really sure why I chose to do this. On the face of it, it was a terrible idea to speak to the media while still in shock. But it felt like something I could do at a time when I felt powerless in so many other ways.

I did two local TV interviews and also spoke with a reporter from The Boston Globe. It wasn’t a pack of vultures like you see in the movies. They were all empathetic, patient, and respectful. Back inside, I looked out the window and saw one of the TV reporters wiping tears from her eyes.

I refocused on how to do right by Christine and Spencer while also doing right by Milo.

After a couple more hours of not getting even the most basic guidance from American Airlines, and seeing that Milo was persevering well given the circumstances, I finally made the decision I had been laboring over all night and morning.

I needed to go to D.C.

I couldn’t fathom telling Milo that I was going to board a plane, so I booked two Amtrak tickets from Providence to D.C. My sister, Amanda — two kids and a complicated life of her own — drove down from the Boston suburbs to make the journey with me.

As I started figuring out what to pack and ordering train tickets, I felt like I had brain damage. I couldn’t think, and simple tasks that would normally take me 30 seconds felt slow and overwhelming.

I did manage to type out a short family statement about Christine and Spencer. Thankfully, a media-savvy neighbor, Ken, stepped in to absorb the onslaught of media requests that grew as the day progressed. I decided I was done talking to the media for the time being and provided him with the statement and some photos to pass along.

Another neighbor, Sham, dropped Amanda and me at the train station in the late afternoon. While we waited to board, I made one more call to American to see if there was any new information or guidance for family members. Same song and dance about the now-mythical care team.

I asked if there was a specific place at the airport I should go. She said that people would be on hand to direct me when I arrived.

The train ride was about six and a half hours long. During the trip, I received a flood of texts, emails, and social media messages expressing condolences and offering support. Despite the circumstances, it was genuinely nice to hear from people from so many stages of my life. Childhood. College years. Early career. The years when I met Christine. Our adoption journey. I passed the time by responding to as many as I could. Thinking about years and decades past was a welcome escape from the present.

Spencer loved trains. Even as a teen, he would spot and photograph them at every opportunity and play a train simulator video game. Several times during the journey I had the urge to snap a photo and text it to him. I never for a moment forgot why I was going to D.C. But my brain was still catching up to the fact that Christine and Spencer were gone.

It was after 11 p.m. by the time we arrived at Washington Union Station. Amanda and I jumped in an Uber to DCA. As we got closer, we could see flashing lights and activity by the Potomac. This hurt, but it also made me feel like I was finally getting closer to answers.

But when our Uber arrived at DCA at 11:44 p.m., it was a ghost town.

It was not surprising that flight operations had concluded for the day. But it was a gut punch to travel all that way in search of the answers I couldn’t get over the phone and find literally no one. No command center. No airline employees. No other family members.

The first sign of life was a member of the airport cleaning crew. We flagged him down and asked him if he knew where we could find anyone related to the plane crash.

Reading between the lines of why we were asking, he paused what he was doing and led us on a long walk to another part of the terminal. He knocked on a closed door, and an NTSB team member emerged. We told him why we were there, and he explained that the command center for family members had been relocated to the Hyatt Regency hotel in Bethesda, Md.

We ordered another Uber and sat in silence during the 30-minute ride to Bethesda. We arrived at 12:37 a.m., walked into the lobby, and asked the person at the front desk where the plane crash group was located. They pointed us to some escalators to the right of where we were standing, but said that they didn’t know if anyone was still there.

Amanda and I took the escalators down and once again found no one.

We returned to the front desk, and the employee booked us each a room.

Twenty-eight hours after the collision, I was pacing my hotel room. In all that time, no one from American Airlines had contacted me. Every time I called, all I got was another promise of a phone call that never seemed to come.

I still had no idea what I could actually do to help.

If you found this interesting or moving, consider making a donation to the Christine Conrad Lane Memorial Dog Park.