Lucy: What Does a PTSD Critical Incident Look Like? (Part 1)

Originally released 2020

In Episode 10, Part 1 of Our Stories, Lucy describes working as a federal officer with the Canada Border Services Agency, and an escort assignment into a tropical storm that became a critical incident. Part 2 continues with what came after.

Watch Episode 10, Part 1 on YouTube · See all episodes of Our Stories

Transcript

This transcript is lightly edited for reading: punctuation added, and “uh” and “um” removed where the meaning is unchanged.

I decided that I had had enough of being an artist, and somehow became an officer. I became a federal officer with Canada Border Services Agency, and my job was to escort people with violent criminality to their home countries on commercial air flights. I also did a lot of surveillance on people who were considered terrorists. I did a lot of investigations. I used to arrest people on a daily basis.

I had felt the pressure building. It had gotten to a point where every day, as I would drive to work, I would have to coach myself and just say, “Today’s… it’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. Today’s gonna be a great day. You can do it. You can do it.” And every part of me was screaming, screaming, because this had become so difficult. The work environment, as most law enforcement environments, is very toxic. We’re dealing with an immense amount of work, an immense amount of pressure, managerial staff who has no compassion whatsoever, and being put into very dangerous situations on a very constant basis.

I was sent to escort someone who had been convicted of a violent crime back to their home country, which was Saint Vincent in the Caribbean. And usually that kind of escort would be quite easy, and the person that we were escorting, the nature of his criminality wasn’t… was something I was familiar with, and it was fine. I had met with him. He was going to be fine.

When I checked the weather report, I saw something that I had never seen before, which was black clouds with angry red lightning bolts. The weather described it as a category 5 tropical depression. It was building up to be Hurricane Ernesto. So a category 5 tropical depression is the wind speed just below a hurricane. The hurricane was scheduled to go into full swing the next day, as we were flying into the islands.

I notified my superiors. I notified the health and safety committee. I notified everyone. And I got one response back, from one of the chiefs, which simply said, “Fingers crossed, Lucy.” And we were ordered to proceed.

We proceeded, and to my dismay, the flight left Toronto, because the pilots believed that we could circumvent the hurricane. But they were misled, because as we got closer, turbulence got really bad. We actually made it into Barbados. We almost crash-landed, but we made it there, and we made it to the island. We eventually made it to the island, but one thing went wrong after another, from missed flights to delays to horrible things happening on the islands when we got there, and more storms coming through.

By the time we were leaving from Barbados, we didn’t actually have a seat on the flight from Barbados to Toronto, and we waited for hours, hours, on standby. In the meantime, we were instructed to go to other airlines and ask them if there were any seats available anywhere off the island, whether it be to Europe or to the States, anywhere off the island. Because of the storms, and because there was a festival on that island that weekend, there were no flights for the next week. So if we didn’t get on this particular flight home, we didn’t know when we would get home, and there were more storms coming. So this, the situation had become very tense.

And 15 minutes before the flight was to depart, we got called by the airline, and they handed us two business class seats, because two business class passengers hadn’t shown up. And they instructed us to run, and we ran. We ran, and we were ecstatic, because we were getting on the flight. We knew we were getting home. We had big things to get home to.

As we approached the plane to get on, the Air Canada staff member took the tickets from my hand, and he said, “You can get on, but your partner can’t.” And it was because that business class passenger had arrived. And I remember very clearly looking at him and explaining that he could take my ticket too, because I wasn’t going to leave my partner on the island alone. And I said, “I’m just going to have to make a call.” And I grabbed the phone to call my chief, to tell her that we weren’t going to be able to get on the plane, and I remember very clearly…

Everything shattered.

I remember letting out a cry so devastating that I watched, from outside myself, everyone at the airport just take a few steps back, and everybody staring at me. And there was nothing I could do. This was beyond me. I was an incredible problem solver, but we had been so inundated with one catastrophe after another, after another, after another, that this broke me. The idea that we’d have to stay on the island, and more storms, and not being able to get off that island… I, I ran out of possible ways to problem-solve out of this one, and that was it.

Apparently my cry was so bad that the Air Canada staff looked at me, and they handed the boarding passes back to me, and they just said, “Ma’am, you obviously need to get home. We’ll take care of that business class passenger. Just get home safe.”

Read Part 2: Lucy on complex PTSD and recovery

About Our Stories

Our Stories is a 10-part documentary series from URevolution. In each episode, one person talks about their own mental health in their own words. See all episodes, transcripts and support resources.

If you need support, find free helplines in Canada, the US, Australia and elsewhere.

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