Something in me went very quiet and very awake at that, but I put it aside — one problem at a time, the airplane first.

I watched the instruments and listened to the pitch of the engines and let eighteen months fall off me like a coat.

This is the part civilians never quite believe: the training doesn’t live in your memory, where rust can reach it.

It lives lower down, in the hands and the inner ear, in a place words can’t get to and time can’t easily corrode.

I hadn’t strapped into anything in a year and a half, and yet the instant I started reading that panel, the old machinery in me came up to full power without being asked.