From the movie, Apollo 13:
GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR - WHITE)
- One at a time, people! One at a time! One at a time!
EECOM, is this an instrumentation problem or are we looking
at real power loss here?
SY LIEBERGOT (EECOM - WHITE)
- It's reading a quadruple failure. That can't happen. It's
gotta be instrumentation.
JIM LOVELL
- Let's get that hatch buttoned. The LM might have been hit
by a meteor.
JACK SWIGERT
- Yep!
FRED HAISE (to LOVELL)
- The tunnel's really torquing with all this movement.
FRED HAISE
- Houston, we had a pretty large bang there associated with
the master alarm.
FRED HAISE (to LOVELL)
- Shit, it's main bus A!
ANDY (CAPCOM - WHITE)
- ... main bus A undervolt?
FRED HAISE
- Houston, we have a main bus A undervolt now, too... It's
reading 25 and a half. Main bus B is reading zip right
now... We got a wicked shimmy up here.
ANDY (CAPCOM - WHITE) (under KRANTZ)
- Stand by one.
FRED HAISE (under KRANTZ)
- (intermittent voice with static)
GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR - WHITE)
- EECOM, GNC. These guys are talking about bangs and
shimmies up there, don't sound like instrumentation to me.
Here is a link to the scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAmsi05P9Uw
Scenes and quotes from movies are often running through my head. They can help me deal with real life situations.
The above scene from the film, Apollo 13, came to mind last week when I was in the courtroom, in trial.
***
Things at trial unfold as I anticipate, and we have come to probably the single most important moment of the entire two day event. I can feel my heart pumping hard as I sit at counsel’s table. In another couple of minutes, I will need to address the jury.
It is not a pleasant sensation going on inside my chest. The intense throbbing and pumping actually feels isolated, like a singular small valve going crazy with a tickling sensation, and it also seems like that valve is about to explode. My arms go a little weak.
So I start taking deep breaths and keep my facial expression calm. When it is my turn to speak, I stand up, and everything is fine. The throbbing goes away, and I am able to perform like I want and say the things that I need to say in the way I need to say them.
***
In the 24 jury trials that I have done thus far in my young career, it was the first time that a feeling that intense came up on me. There are reasons I can identify for it, but I will not discuss those here...
One of my favorite comedic writers, Harold Ramis, died the same week that I was in trial. He was also the actor who played one of my favorite characters as a kid- Egon from Ghostbusters.
I probably already think about death more than most people, but Ramis’s passing combined with my experience in the trial made me realize that the odds of my own death coming by heart attack, and coming in the saddle, have increased significantly.
And there is nothing to be done about it, really.
I am 36 years old, so I trust that I have quite a few years left before my system gives out. But I have no misgivings- my system will give out one day. The pressure from this job will not decrease. I am preparing myself now to handle the murder cases and the worst of the worst crimes. In a county and office this small, I already am tasked with going to trial solo on first degree felonies punishable by life in prison.
Which is fine. I am good at it and ready for these cases.
If I have to work for a living, then this is a job that I want. The pressure that I feel is actually easier to handle than in the jobs I have held in the past, and the days fly by.
The other thing that I have been pretty good at in life and that was not too stressful was being a student. But unfortunately, I was never smart enough to be paid to go to school.
So, this is my lot. I can feel the roots in my brain sinking deeper into this job, to the point where if I was one day uprooted and forced to do an entirely different sort of work from criminal trial law, it would be an extremely difficult adjustment.
My brain can handle the stress and challenges of this career with no problems, but my heart might be another story. It protests at times with the shimmying and tickling inside my chest. I have no answer for it, though.
Two more movie scenes come to mind at this. One is again from Apollo 13, where Houston is trying to get the astronauts back home with a dying spacecraft:
GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR - WHITE)
- Hey, hold it. Let's hold it down. Let's hold it down,
people. The only engine we've got with enough power for
direct abort is the SPS (Service Propulsion System)
on the Service Module. What, Lovell has told us it could've
been damaged in an explosion, so let's consider that engine
dead. We light that thing up, it can blow the whole works.
It's just too risky. We're not gonna take that chance. And
the only thing the Command Module is good for is the
re-entry, so that leaves us with the LM... which means free
return trajectory. Once we get the guys around the Moon,
we'll fire up the LM's engine, make a long burn, pick up
some speed, and get them home as quick as we can.
RETRO - WHITE
- Gene, I'm wondering what the Grumman guys think about
this.
GRUMMAN REP
- We can't make any guarantees. We designed the LM to land
on the Moon, not fire the engine out there for course
correction.
GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR - WHITE)
- Well, unfortunately, we're not landing on the Moon, are
we? I don't care what anything was designed to do, I care
about what it can do. So, let's get to work. Let's lay it
out, okay?
Here is a link to that scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmLgi5mdTVo
***
The other scene is from the German movie Das Boot (The Boat), about a German submarine or U-Boat in World War II.
Shortly after going to sea, the captain commences a drill and submerges the U-Boat quickly under the waves, deeper and deeper into the dark ocean. As the pressure increases with the depth, the captain and the crew begin to hear the hull popping, creaking and moaning.
One of the crew looks to the captain in fear. But the captain continues the dive. He gives the man a wry smile and studies the space around him.
"Deeper... She must take this depth," he says.
Here is a link to the a dubbed over version of the movie, which is never as good as the original language with subtitles. The scene that I am talking about begins at 21:00
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iMWb8nEOG4
***
So my answer to that valve in my heart is, “I don’t care what you were designed to do, this is what you have to do. I will try to help by exercising when I can, cutting down on the cholesterol where I can, and getting rest when I can. But this other stuff- the hours that I put into the job each day, the intense trials and battles with the prosecutors, the rulings of the Court, and even the client at times- this is what I have to do to survive. So you have to take it, heart valve, you have to hold.”
All this is not any different from most people’s lives, I know, even going back to cave man days. It is also not on the order of what the crew of Apollo 13 or the German U-Boats had to face.
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