I’m awakened by the familiar short screeching of rubber to tarmac. Instead of a refreshed body, mind, and spirit with the usual excited anticipation of arriving home from a tropical holiday, this time the sound irritates me and fills me each moment with overwhelming anxiety.

Cathy touches my arm.

“Marisha, we’re home,” she whispers into my ear.

I’m the first to deplane. Standing up, pain cascades from face to my toes. Painstakingly, I hold onto each seat I pass. Slowly, I move with my head bowed towards the stewardess leading ahead of me. Each passenger’s stare burns through my wounded face. I’m dazed and unable to see clearly through the unbandaged swollen eye. Cathy reminds me of what I must do officially.

“As soon as the captain hands him over to the police,” she reminds me, “you must point at him and speak as loud as you can that you charge this man for assaulting you in Cuba!”

I gasp for air, desperate to get out of the aircraft to the place where I see a wheelchair. It is there; the stewardess helps me toease myself down into it. Cathy and Randolph are still beside me, standing on each side. The stewardess requests them to leave with the remaining passengers. I ache their parting from me. These two have become caring friends, even though they are only acquaintances, who exchanged vacationers’ stories with me, on the island. I beg them to stay, to keep their comfort around me. But the stewardess quickly pushes me in the opposite way, down the ramp, to another arrival hall, a darker one, and leaves.

I breathe a sigh of relief. There in a corner under what looks like a white-bluish spotlight. I see him surrounded. I hope that the Canadian authorities already have arrested him.

I raise my trembling hand and wave in his direction.

“I have charged Raffaele Grecci for assaulting me in Cuba!I charge him now in Canada!” A deathly silence stills the hallway.

“You cannot charge this man in Canada for an assault in Cuba,” one of the many officers replies.