I saw the movie The Hurt Locker today. It is a film about the war-torn Middle East. Fanatical bombers run rampant.

While watching the film, I started thinking to myself that ALL the people from the Middle East are misguided lunatics. Stereotypes and predictable assumptions about people of certain religious affiliations and geographical areas are easy for all of us to make.

Then my mind and heart was drawn to a man from Iran I met in the middle of the night somewhere in Florida. Really, I still have no idea where I was that night. Or why.

I did know I was scared and felt very much alone. My mind was jumbled, and riddled with debilitating fear and anxiety.

But this Muslim man from Iran, on this frightening and atypical night, made a difference in my life.

I was on my way home from rehab at La Hacienda, outside San Antonio, Texas. It was my second “tour of duty” there. Dr. Phil had sent me back for a tune-up. I had relapsed on Ultram, an opiate-like prescription drug, after having experienced real back pain for over a month. After running out of Ultram and being in withdrawal, I bought and snorted heroin for the first time on Christmas Day 2006.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, I was used to being “institutionalized.” I am comfortable in rehab. I know the drill and find it agreeable after the detox is over.

Very simply, I feel safe there. But everyone must leave at some point, so I left San Antonio. After a brief stop in Florida, the plane was scheduled to go to Baltimore, my final destination.

The woman sitting next to me, a pleasing African-American lady, and I started a conversation. We exchanged the usual “What-do-you-do?” banter. She had recently graduated from college at the age of forty-something and was very proud of herself. Her trip to Texas had been for a job interview.

She was an inspiration. She had strong feelings about education and being a black woman in America. I listened closely. I felt privileged to hear her story and her cultural views.

She had also been addicted to crack cocaine as a young woman.

She recalled how in her addiction she would sit completely naked and paranoid in her hall closet for hours. Periodically she would sprint out of the closet to the closed blinds in her living room and peak out, looking for imaginary predators.

This paranoia and blind-peaking behavior is so common among cocaine users that it has been given a name: Window Ninjas.

It was during this part of her story that my first symptoms started to appear. Suddenly, the oxygen in the plane cabin felt as if it was diminishing. I could not breathe. I felt like I was in that closet.

Funny thing about having a panic attack—you know you are having one, but you are equally convinced you are going to die. My companion seemed unaware of my plight as she continued to tell me harrowing tales of drug addiction past.

I excused myself to go to the bathroom. I thought a bit of distance between us might help. It did not. While in the bathroom, I started to gag and dry heave as I sat on the toilet lid. I had had panic attacks in the past, but never this severe. I tried to take deep breaths to calm myself, but it did not work. I started to seriously fantasize about Valium.

Back in my seat, I was increasingly convinced there was something seriously wrong with me. I was slowly but surely losing my mind, and I knew it, but I could not stop irrational thoughts of my impending death.

I told my new friend I was not well. “Do you have a car at the airport?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said, slowly, and looking at me intensely.

“I need to get to the hospital, there is something wrong with me. Could you drop me off on your way home?”

Let me clarify something: I have never been severely mentally ill, other than around issues of addiction. This behavior was completely out of character for me.

She said that yes, she could take me to the nearest hospital.

Good, I thought, but then I realized this might not be appropriate, so I decided to get the flight attendant involved in my imaginary hell.

I had hyperventilated to the point that my stomach had blown up with air. I looked like I could be pregnant, or possibly suffering from some life-threatening ailment.

Showing the flight attendant my stomach, I declared myself to be critically ill. She seemed to believe me. Addicts are grand liars and manipulators, even when having the mother of all anxiety attacks. “OK,” she said, “we will have the paramedics pick you up in the terminal and take you to the hospital.”

When the plane landed, she announced that everyone was to remain seated. “We have a critically ill person on board who needs to deplane first.” With that, the paramedics stormed the plane with a skinny little wheelchair and took me off.

Even as I write this, I can barely believe it myself.

While I was at the terminal, they transferred me to a stretcher. I showed them my stomach, declaring this to be a new physical occurrence accompanied by nausea and vomiting during the flight. They immediately started an IV and agreed with me that it might be a bowel obstruction.

So now I was in an ambulance. Finally I was given oxygen via nasal prongs, and I was hooked up to a cardiac monitor and an IV with 5 percent dextrose. With sirens blaring and at high speeds, I was taken to a hospital somewhere in Florida, late at night on my way home from rehab.

And I was finally calm. Institutionalized once more, I could breathe.

The emergency room was packed. I was quickly processed and told to wait in my wheelchair in the waiting room.

I called Brian and told him not to expect me home that night. I think at this point in our marriage, Brian expected the unexpected, but he still wanted to know what had happened.

“Not sure what happened,” I said, which was the truth, “but I had a strong urge to not board the plane for Baltimore. I think I might be very sick; I will let you know what they find out.”

“Do you think you will come home tonight?” Brian wanted to know.

“Not sure; I will let you know.”

God only knows what he was thinking about me at that point. I have never asked him. Some things are better unknown.
Wheeling myself over to the vending machine, I got some snacks and a bottle of water. I had a vague thought that I should not eat if I had a life-threatening bowel obstruction, but I was hungry, and by the looks of the waiting room it might have been a long night.
I snacked and make casual conversation with others waiting to be seen. A sick child with a high fever and an elderly woman with flulike symptoms were closest to where I was parked. Considering that they might have been contagious, I moved on.

It was cold. Wheeling myself back to the nurses’ desk, I asked for a blanket. I was quickly obliged.

Finding the quietest spot with low lighting, I propped my feet up on a chair. Covering myself with the blanket, I closed my eyes and slept deeply. As I drifted off, I could hear the reassuring noises of the ER that are so familiar to me. I had worked in hospital nursing for over twenty years.

I wasn’t sure how long I slept. As an orderly woke me to take me to a room to be examined, I had to remind myself where I was, being somewhat disoriented from sleeping so soundly.

In the exam room, I put on a gown and waited for the doctor. A physician assistant came in to do my exam and interview. I told him my theory that I had a bowel obstruction. He lifted my gown to have a look, poking and probing my abdomen.

Looking at me disgusted and with disdain, he said, “You are not distended. You are a nurse; this is not distended.” I look down. During my long nap in the waiting room I had deflated. The PA was looking at me like I was just another nut job in the ER on a Friday night.

I insisted on X-rays to make sure. He obliged me, no doubt thinking this would be the quicker way to get rid of me. For good measure, I asked for a chest X-ray too. Just radiate my whole fucking body, there is surely something WRONG with me!

So they X-rayed the hell out of me, and did blood work.

After the tests, a gentler, real doctor came in. No doubt the PA could not deal with me. Some practitioners just do better with the psych patients. I appreciated this man’s softer style. I had fallen asleep again, and he was empathetic as he woke me up.

“You were sleeping so peacefully,” he said, “that I did not want to wake you.” He added, gently, “There is nothing wrong with you. I understand you were on a flight on your way home from rehab.”

“Yes,” I said, and then I started to cry. “Could I have a Valium, please?”

“I don’t think that is a good idea for a drug addict on her way home from rehab, do you?”

“Probably not,” I replied.

Whoever this doctor was, you have to give him HUGE credit. How easy it would have been for him to tranq me up and get me the hell out of his ER. He took the harder, longer road, and continued to talk to me.

“What do you want to do?” he asked. “Stay in Florida, go back to rehab, or go home?”

Relocation to the Sunshine State was not in the cards, I could not just show up back at La Hacienda, so it was door number 3. “Home,” I said, weakly.

He patted my shoulder and said, “Good luck.”

I shuffled out to the nurses’ station. With my arms on the desk and my face cradled in my palms, I looked at the nurse. Defeated, I said, “There is nothing wrong with me.”

“We know,” she responded, not unkindly.

“Can you call me a cab to take me to the airport?” I still had no idea what airport it was!

“Sure, sweetie.”

With the IV out and under my own power, I walked out of the ER into the darkest night I can recall. It was maybe 4 a.m., that moment when it is pitch dark before dawn starts to creep in.

Two cabs were at the curb. One of the drivers instructed me to get into his cab, when the second cabbie blared his horn. They were fighting over the fare. The first driver immediately backed down, and I ended up in the second, horn-blaring cab.

The driver informed me he was the one who got the call, and the other guy was trying to steal his job. “OK,” was all I felt obliged to say.

“How long is our drive to the airport?”

“Forty-five or so minutes,” he said, with a heavy Middle Eastern accent.

Quiet at first, I gazed out the window.

Every night at La Hacienda I used to look at the North Star. Big skies and star-filled nights were one of the many blessings that rehab offered me. The North Star always caught my attention. Being from Maryland, north of Texas, it represented home to me. And home meant my children, my babies I had left behind at the tender ages of six and four.

It being early morning in Florida, the skies had shifted dramatically as the world rotated. About the only prominent star left in the sky was the North Star as I gazed out the cab window. It was a light-bulb moment for me. My thought was this: The North Star that had become a symbol of comfort and hope for me at La Hacienda in Texas will always be with me! I started to feel calmer.

As is my nature, I started a conversation with the cab driver. I have a bit of Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, in me. I have a natural curiosity about others’ lives and experiences.

He told me he was originally from Iran and was a Muslim. “Are you Christian?” he asked in turn. “Yes,” I mildly declared. “Organized religion leaves me cold,” I added.

I asked him if it has been difficult for him since 9/11, a Middle Eastern man living in the United States.

“No,” he said. “I think people sense the goodness in others, and I am accepted here.”

“Why are you coming from the hospital to the airport in the middle of the night?” he asked.

Finally, for the first time on this long night, I verbalized what was at the bottom of my heavy heart. With sudden tears that rolled down my cheeks, I told this stranger from Iran that I was afraid to return home.

“I got off the plane on my way home from rehab. You see, I am a drug addict, I have been in over a dozen rehabs and have come home over a dozen times, and I have relapsed and gotten sick over and over and over again. I was convinced there was something wrong with me, so I had them take me to the hospital. It was a fucking anxiety attack. I am a drug addict who cannot get well, that is what is wrong with me,” I said loudly. Then, quietly, “And I am so tired of trying.”

He was quiet as he handed me a tissue over the seat. A smart man knows when his silence is all that’s needed. After a time, and as my crying ended, with equal quietness he said, “I am sorry you are in pain.”

Rapidly, the airport appeared. I fished out the money to pay him.

Getting out of the cab, I stood on the curb as the driver got my bag.

Then the briefest of moments changed everything for me on this strangest of nights.

He was extremely tall, and he loomed over me on the curb. He was Iranian dark, with a huge amount of thick, brown hair. Taking both of my hands in his, he gently said, almost in a whisper, “I sense goodness in you.”

Looking down, I avoided his gaze. I felt like shit about myself for having to go away to rehab again. He lifted my chin, looked me right in the eyes, and repeated, “I sense goodness in you.”

I bit my lower lip, trying to control my crying. Then, holding both sides of my face, he gently and firmly added, “Go home and live your life as God intended you to, live your life in God’s grace.”

He walked back to his cab. He turned toward me, and we both wave good-bye. I stood on the curb and watched until his cab was out of sight.

Lightness of being is how I felt after my encounter with the man from Iran. I never knew his name. He was not a fanatical bomber. He was a peaceful, generous man, and he was from the Middle East.

I walked into the airport. Getting one of the worst lattes of my life at the Starbucks, I sat down by a fountain. As I sipped my shitty coffee, I could hear the rhythmic tinkling of the water. I remember feeling grateful for the girl who worked the night shift at the Starbucks at the airport. In spite of the bad coffee, my heart was joyful; I was relieved of my intense fear of returning home and I was happy. I watched a family walk in with all the usual Disney World sweatshirts and hats on, and I could not wait to see my own kids.

And I was at peace. I had the courage to return home and give recovery another chance. I was no longer afraid.

Was this a chance encounter with this Iranian man? Probably. But there is a part of me that feels the whole night; the entire sequence of events was leading up to meeting this man and hearing his words. It was a spiritual experience for me.

When I landed in Baltimore, I had to find my bags, which had arrived much earlier than me. With my back turned, and looking for my luggage, I heard the familiar squeal of two little kids: “MOM!” I turned and saw my two children running to greet me. I knelt down as they ran into my arms.

It is going on three years since that night. That is the longest I have been sober since I started trying to get clean twelve years ago. A Muslim man from the Middle East gave me the courage to return home.

Thank you, whoever, and wherever, you are.