“MR. THOMAS SEARCY from deck seven, please find a passenger service
staff member immediately. Mr. Thomas Searcy from deck seven, please find a passenger service staff member immediately.” Did you know that the Oasis of the Sea, a cruise ship owned and operated by the Royal Caribbean Cruise line, is the largest in the world? It has over 3,300 cabins and usually has over 6,500 customers with a total of 9,000 people, including staff, on it at any one time. It operates 50 weeks out of the year. They plan their food needs out 3 weeks in advance and order all of their produce fresh. The staff live on floors 0, -1, and -2, below water and inaccessible to the customers. The staff have their own 3 restaurants and 3 discothèques for employee entertainment. They work for contracts. I could tell you about the ship, the staff, the commitment to an ecofriendly environment. I can describe the engine room and power structure. You should see the ship’s bridge! It wraps all of the way around the front of the ship and you can see from either edge the side of the ship, although it isn’t fully necessary because of all of the cameras. Its control system in every one of these areas looks like a NORAD computer system. There is so much data and reports and charts. It is amazing. I know all of this because right up until security hauled me away from the passenger tour of the entire ship, I was getting an unbelievable education. I knew they were security from the uniforms, pistols, the fact that there were three of them and that they walked one in front and one on either side as I followed them to wherever we were going.
Disconcerting phrases came from them as I was pulled away from the tour: • “Please come with us.” • “We have been calling all over the ship for you; haven’t you heard us?” • “Your room has been checked several times, and no one is there.” • “Where have you been, exactly, for the last hour?” These phrases were clear, although very few of the staff on the ship spoke English as a first or even second language, so I was hoping that I was just misunderstanding a few of the things being said. I took a quick inventory of my past potential illegal activities that might have gotten me arrested in international waters. OK, I’m sure everyone has rolled through a stop sign or two. That shouldn’t get me arrested, even though there are more CCTV cameras everywhere these days. I had owned an online casino once for a few months, but it didn’t make any money and I shut it down. Besides, that would have been a misdemeanor, tops. I had checked. I had been in the telemarketing business for twenty years, and although worthy of prison time just for annoyance, it was all legal and conducted almost exclusively for Fortune 500 companies. I had done some consulting in Jamaica for half a year in support of trade for the government, but they had changed governments and locked the old one up, so maybe… nah… that couldn’t be it. It had to be breakfast yesterday. I was getting arrested for yesterday’s breakfast. I knew I was right when they unceremoniously deposited me, not in the brig, but at the infirmary. The receptionist looked at me and said, “Why didn’t you come when we called your room, visited your room, or called all across the ship?” I felt like I was in sixth grade and my honest answer would be, “I was smoking under the bleachers at the baseball diamond.” I just answered, “I was on a tour through the ship and I didn’t hear anything.” I believe that the only thing that saved me from a stern talking-to
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and possible detention was the fact that I was a paying passenger and possible future customer. Money should have its benefits. Lest I should make a break for it, the security personnel stayed. The doctor checked my pulse, temperature, asked about my symptoms, signed me out and that was it. The whole process took less than three minutes. She did say, “Stomach flu on a ship is a very big deal. We take it seriously. Isolation for twenty-four hours means twenty-four hours. Enjoy your cruise.” My crime: Yesterday morning, I had woken up, and did the most important thing that I did every morning on the ship—I went two decks below to the main “boardwalk” and purchased coffee for Jen and me. After returning to the room, I started having a lot of stomach trouble. The night before I had eaten steak and lobster, not my usual meal. I figured I was paying for it now. My stomach kept hurting, a lot. As the girls got up and prepared for breakfast, I started to lean over and move around the small cabin in pain. It was as if there was a rubber ring around my lower mid-section, including my back. I could not get comfortable no matter how I stood or moved. We all marched off to breakfast with me moving and twirling like a marionette with two broken strings. I got the girls seated and I had to get back to the room. I waited back there for the pain to pass, and after another twenty minutes, I finally went to the infirmary. I once watched a bootlegged copy of “Apocalypse Now,” but the sound was somehow a second or two off from the video. It was distracting to the point that I eventually shut off the sound and turned on the captions to follow. I wish I could have done that with the infirmary staff. They all spoke English, kind of. This delay of understanding seemed to be strongest in the physician. The language went through some kind of filter. In a very accented voice she would ask a question about my symptoms. I would respond. She would look me in the eyes very carefully, silently, and then without inflection would repeat back to me verbatim what I had said to her. This went on for maybe five minutes until I pronounced my own diagnosis: maybe stomach flu or a kidney stone. With her head now raised, eyes clear, and a nod of clarity, she walked out of the room. I saw her put a couple of checks on her clipboard, and I guessed the office visit was over. I was still standing up, bending over some and moving around the T e ar i n g Mat t ress Tag s
examination room from the pain. Only moments later, an intern came in with a bottle of pills and a syringe. He said, “This is for the pain.” He then gave me a shot in my butt.” He then said, “This is for your stomach. Because you may have a flu or a stomach contagious, you must stay in your room for twenty-four hours to make certain you are OK. You can order room service, and movies for your room are no charge. Taken off your bill. Don’t worry. Just stay in room. You can go back to room now.” It was only 11:00 am. I had the day ahead of me. I was already starting to feel better, only escorted by one security person (who I thought that if I had to, I could have taken to at least a draw in a fight). I went in the room, closed the door, and ordered room service. I started to feel much better and continued to watch movies and mess around with all of the stuff I had brought. Every three or four hours, someone from the infirmary would call to check on me. “How quaint! How sweet! This is good service,” I thought to myself. At dinner time, I felt like a new person. No symptoms at all. Jen asked me if I was coming to dinner or not, and I told her that I wasn’t really supposed to leave the room. I got this, “Really, you’re going to follow that bullshit?” look from her, but she took the girls to dinner. For me, room service, movie, and another check-in call from the friendly people at the infirmary. The next morning, Cate and I were scheduled for a full tour of the ship at 9:30 am. We left the room at 8:45 am, grabbed food at the breakfast buffet, and headed to the tour. I felt like a million bucks, couldn’t wait for this tour. This is revealing about how Jen and I think. I’m thinking that it’s the next day. I’m good to go. I’m outta here. When Jen is headed to a workout at 9:15 am and the phone rings, she notes that it’s the infirmary. It’s not for her. She doesn’t answer. When it happens two more times in the next five minutes, she doesn’t answer, because she knows it’s not for her. She walks down the hall and sees Karen, one of the friends we are on the tour with. Karen says, “The phone is ringing, it’s the infirmary.” Jen tells her, “Don’t bother answering, it’s just someone looking for Tom.” Jim, Karen’s husband, is outside with his son and there is an announcement you can hear over the PA system throughout this village of 9,000
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people: “Attention. Will guest Thomas Searcy from deck seven please visit the service desk immediately? Again, will guest Thomas Searcy from deck seven please visit the service desk immediately?” His son asks, “Isn’t that Mr. Searcy?” Jim says, “Yes, it is. I wonder what that’s all about,” and on about their business they went. Our cabin server told us later that evening that security had visited our cabin four times looking for me earlier in the morning. I came out of the examination room, and there was Jen in her workout gear. She was a little sweaty. She had her own security person. Security had fetched her as well. They had found her sitting in the little area just outside the Starbucks where she had used her cruise card three minutes before she was nabbed. Kinda creepy how fast they zoomed in on her. She asked me when they walked her to the infirmary, “Are you OK, baby?” I said that I was, and that if I had just answered a phone call about nine-ish I probably would have had been good to go. To Jen’s credit, there wasn’t a blink or even a blush of remorse. She just said, “I’m going to work out and I’ll see you and Cate after the tour. Love you.”
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