Aaron stared out the window of the helicopter at Cathedral Rock and wondered if he and the pilot would reach Sedona Airport before the storm. He knew the risk, but he didn’t care. His father Jim was deteriorating from Dementia and Parkinson’s in an assisted living home. He would argue with Fidel Castro at church in the morning and eat lunch with the Swedish cheerleaders on the patio in the afternoon. Something had to be done.
Two years earlier, Jim had told Aaron, “Son, sometimes I can’t tell what’s real and what isn’t. If I reach the point of no return, you’ll need to take care of business. You’re the only one in the family with the means. Promise me you’ll do this.”
“I promise, Dad. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
Now, Aaron wanted to take his father back home. He and his wife would help Jim pass away discreetly, without suspicion, and with at least a modicum of dignity. No one else in the family had the means or willingness to help Jim at this point anyway. They were too poor and distracted by their own emotional turbulence, too obsessed with their own petty concerns to care for anyone.
As the helicopter neared the airport, Aaron’s stomach tightened. The storm had arrived, and it was blowing debris across the airfield. He thought about how he had slipped Jim into an assisted living home as an act of convenience, veiling the process in a mantle of necessity. All the years Jim had poured into the family had gone to waste.
The pilot circled to the left and descended several hundred feet before approaching the airport from the southeast. As the helicopter rose to the lip of the plateau, it began vibrating, then shuddering, then shaking violently. From the corner of his eye, Aaron saw the pilot’s jaw tighten. Just before the helicopter reached eye level with the helipad, a wind shear jolted it violently, and it smashed into the side of the cliff.
Aaron and the pilot were killed on impact. Their lifeless bodies bounced like mannequins in their seats as the disintegrating chopper careened down the side of the mountain and finally came to rest in a gully. The dark wet clouds doused the bloody corpses in pulsating sheets of rain.
Back at the assisted living home, Jim rocked slowly in his favorite chair. He mumbled over and over, “He’s a good boy, my son. He’ll take care of me. I love my son. He’ll take care of me.”
