Epilogue Episode 1.4: The Dying Man

Epilogue is a series of short stories following the final moments of different people in a singular location at the end of the world. Season one follows the passengers on a plane travelling from Brisbane to Hobart.

In this episode, we see how a man who was already doomed to die faces the crisis.

The plane shook and rattled as it dropped, passengers being pushed deeper into their seats by the growing G-forces. The plane wasn’t nose-diving, but it was clearly going to crash. Flight attendants shouted at passengers to brace themselves over the eardrum-shattering noise. All around Tana, people were assuming the crash position. All around him, there was screaming, shouting and fear.

Tana was not among the frightened. Not because he was unnaturally brave (or foolish). He didn’t imagine himself invincible or have some extreme faith that they would somehow all be saved. He was sure they would all die. Even if they survived the crash, they would bleed out or drown in the water below. But a looming death wasn’t an unfamiliar experience to Tana.

In fact, Tana had only a short time left to live before boarding the doomed flight anyway. Tana had cancer. Specifically, he had multiple myeloma. It was in his blood. He was just a few years shy of 40, young to receive his diagnosis. He had been told he wouldn’t reach his next birthday.

So, Tana had decided to live the cliche. He packed his bags and set out to see as much of the world as he could before he wasn’t able to move around anymore. Every day was agony and he was constantly exhausted, but he pushed through it anyway. Exploring Tasmania was meant to be the last thing he did before leaving Australia and flying back to Auckland.

While everyone else was screaming, he almost laughed. It was comical really. He had laughed when he had been told about his disease too. The idea that it was his blood - symbolic of life - that was going to kill him was hilariously ironic. Now, he had been living his last months with an expectation of what his death would be like and suddenly he found himself in the midst of an imminent plane crash. 

Tana couldn’t help himself, he laughed. He must have looked like he had lost his mind and succumbed to some sort of panic-induced mania. However, Tana felt quite calm. There was just something deeply funny to him in having spent all that time preparing himself to die a certain way, only for fate to pull the rug out from under him and kill him differently. The ridiculousness of it all was riotous. 

“You need to brace!” the man sitting next to Tana shouted at him. “Do you want to die?”

Of course not. Tana didn’t think anyone truly wanted to die. He was of the opinion that even the suicidal were less eager for death and more desperate to escape whatever was making them miserable. He’d had a long time to make himself ready for this eventuality. He was at peace with his mortality. His family and friends were prepared. All that was left for him was to make the most of the time he had left and go without regrets.

He wished everyone else on board could be so lucky. To die without regrets or unfinished business was a truly rare thing.

Tana assumed the position. He didn’t think it was going to make an ounce of difference really, but he did it for the man next to him. If he was truly going to have no regrets, he couldn’t let his final moments be spent making the stranger at his side feel even more fearful.

Tana wasn’t the only one who’d that idea. It occurred to him, now that he wasn’t lost in his thoughts, that he had seen people all around him offering comfort to each other even as they fell. Encouragement shouted over the sound of the vibrating cabin, hands held across chairs, parents setting their arms over children as they braced - as though the limb of a parent could shield them from any harm. Somewhere not too far from himself, Tana heard the sound of someone reciting scripture to those nearby.

He felt a strange flickering of pride in the man to his side and his other fellow passengers. To be facing one’s death and still prioritise the comfort and protection of those around you was a wonderful thing.

Tana wanted to go out like that too, he realised. He’d had a mantra for the past months that he was going to leave nothing unfinished. That he was going to die with a smile and regret nothing that had come before. He was someone who liked to make others laugh and grin. How could he claim to have lived up to that mantra if he didn’t do something to bring comfort to those who didn’t have the time to prepare that he did?

“You know,” Tana began, speaking loudly over the noise, “Most crash landings are survivable. Most people make it.”

He wasn’t sure if that was true. He doubted it was. He had made the statistic up. But everyone had heard the often quoted fact that air travel was safer than taking a car or bus. He figured there had to be a grain of truth to it. Or, at the very least, it had to sound at least a little believable.

“Really?” Someone asked from nearby.

“Of course,” Tana said. “Traveling by plane is the safest travel there is, you know. There’s hardly ever any fatalities. Just stay braced for the impact and everything will be fine. Just think of it as the wildest roller coaster you’ve ever been on.”

Tana wasn’t sure if he was really helping or if it was just his imagination, but hearing how genuinely calm about the whole situation he was seemed to be helping. He thought maybe there were fewer screams in his immediate vicinity.

“Why were you laughing like a madman then?” The question came from the man directly next to Tana. The person who had been yelling at him to get into the crash position. 

“That’s easy,” Tana said, “This is my second crash landing in two months. What are the odds?”

The lie came surprisingly easy to Tana, and the lack of fear in his voice lent it legitimacy. As far as the other passengers were concerned, Tana was living proof of what he had said earlier. He was an example of why there was nothing to be afraid of. The landing would be rough and they’d get wet, but they’d make it.

“Shit,” the passenger next to Tana said. He couldn’t manage anything else in response.

“Yeah,” Tana said. “But if I can make it once, I can do it twice. Everyone here can make it too. This is going to suck, but we’re going to be okay.”

There was still a nervous energy to the people around him, but Tana was sure it had helped. There was less screaming and hyperventilating. The passengers in Tana’s vicinity had switched from blind panic to nervous acceptance of what was coming. They prepared themselves mentally for the dramatic and unpleasant conclusion to what would become one hell of a story they could tell later.

Tana smiled to himself. Now he could truly say he had lived his life to its fullest and that his final chapter would come to a satisfying conclusion. They were all going to die. He was sure of that much. But now, they would die with a measure of peace and a sense of hope. He had been able to give them a fraction of what he had.

The 747 struck the ocean and shattered like a model striking stone. The plane and everything and everyone contained within was scattered across the waves under a deep red sky. There were no survivors. There could never have been survivors. But, at the end of his life - and the end of the world - Tana died as he wanted to: with no regrets and a smile on his face.