The Surrogate

Chapter Two: Expect the Unexpected

I woke to my alarm before it even finished its first cycle, disoriented for a second the way you always are in a lounge chair in a foreign hour, not sure which country's morning I was supposed to be having. It was just past 6 a.m. — enough time to splash water on my face in the lounge washroom, brush my teeth with the travel kit I'd packed for exactly this purpose, and make my way to the gate for my 8:40 flight with time to spare. I even stopped for a coffee I didn't really want, just for something to do with my hands.

By 7 a.m., the boarding time hadn't been called, and the screen above the gate still read the same as it had ten minutes ago. I didn't think much of it at first — flights run late, that's just weather or some invisible bureaucracy of runway slots I'd never fully understood. But the silence went on a little too long, no scroll of "Now Boarding," not even a "Delayed." A ripple went through the seated rows — that specific unease that spreads through a gate lounge before anyone's actually said anything, just people glancing up from their phones at the same time, checking each other's faces for information.

Then someone stood and walked to the counter. Then two more. Within a minute, half the gate was on its feet, and I found myself walking there too, less out of urgency and more because staying seated suddenly felt like being the last one in on a joke everyone else understood.

Flight cancelled.

Not delayed. Cancelled. I heard the word pass through the crowd before I even reached the desk, in the tone people use for words they don't want to be the one to say first.

I want to say I panicked. It would almost make more sense if I had — first time flying alone, first real leg of a trip I'd planned for months, stranded in an airport at what was now something like 5 a.m. with nobody I knew within a thousand kilometers. But what I actually felt, standing there at the back of a fast-thickening crowd, was something closer to okay. What next. Like my body had decided panic was a luxury it didn't have time to process and skipped straight to logistics.

Which, it turned out, was the more useful response, because logistics were about to become a full-contact sport.

The counter dissolved into something between a queue and a crowd within minutes. A woman near the front was crying, actually crying, mascara running, telling the ground staff she had a wedding — her own sister's — in fourteen hours and she needed to be rebooked immediately, no matter the cost. Another woman, further back, went pale and swayed and had to be caught by the person next to her, fanned with a boarding pass while someone shouted for water. A man near me kept repeating, louder each time, that he had a board meeting, that people were waiting on him, that this wasn't just an inconvenience, it was his career. Someone else said the word "interview." Someone else said "funeral," quietly, almost apologetically, like even in crisis she didn't want to make a scene of her own grief.

I stood there holding my boarding pass and my one carry-on and felt, absurdly, like the least justified person in the room. What did I have? A group tour. A w******p chat full of strangers I hadn't even met yet. Nobody was waiting for me at the other end with a wedding mandap or a hospital bed or a job on the line. I couldn't bring myself to push forward and demand priority over a woman who might miss her own sister's wedding. It didn't feel like my crisis to escalate.

So I stepped back, out of the thickest part of the crowd, and called Ravi.

Ravi was my travel agent — had been for three trips now, ever since a cousin recommended him for being unusually responsive at odd hours. He picked up on the second ring, voice rough with sleep but immediately alert once I explained.

"Okay. Okay, listen to me." He said it the way you'd talk someone down from a ledge, except I wasn't on one, and I think that surprised him a little. "Don't leave the airport. Don't cancel the ticket yourself, don't let them push you into anything without asking me first. You're traveling alone, first time — that's actually something you can use. Tell them that. Ask them directly for rebooking, tell them you have a group waiting for you in another country, ask what their responsibility is under the rules. Be calm, but don't be quiet. The quiet ones get sorted last."

"There's a woman here who might miss her sister's wedding," I said, not sure why I offered it, except that it felt important to say out loud to someone.

"That's not your job to solve. Yours is to get to London. Stay polite, stay firm, and call me back the second they tell you anything."

I went back to the counter with his voice still in my ear, and when it was finally my turn — nearly forty minutes later, my legs stiff from standing — I did exactly what he'd said. I explained I was traveling alone, joining a tour group in Europe, that I had connections and a schedule that mattered even if it wasn't a wedding or a funeral. The ground staff, visibly worn down by an hour of raised voices, looked almost grateful for someone who wasn't shouting.

The first offer was tomorrow afternoon. A full day lost before the trip had even properly begun — a day I'd already mentally spent in London, and now wouldn't get back. I didn't want it. I asked, instead, for a full cancellation and refund, so I could book myself onto a different airline entirely rather than wait out someone else's schedule. It took another round of calls — Ravi coordinating quietly on his end while I stood at the counter, the manager eventually pulled in to authorize it — but by the time the sky outside had gone from black to the flat grey of early morning, I had a new booking. A different airline. A 2 p.m. departure. Still today.

I don't know if it was luck or the manager taking pity on the one traveler who hadn't cried or fainted or invoked a family emergency, but when I boarded that afternoon, I had the entire row to myself. I put my head against the window somewhere over land I couldn't identify and slept through nearly the whole flight, waking only when the food cart rattled past, and even then only enough to shake my head at whatever they were offering before drifting straight back under.

I landed in London twelve hours behind my own plan, and somehow, for the first time since the curb outside the Bangalore airport, the static under my excitement had gone quiet.

The queue for immigration curled long enough that I had time to rehearse answers to questions nobody had asked me yet. An Indian passport isn't the kind that sails through — I'd read enough forums and heard enough stories to know I should have my hotel bookings, my return ticket, my bank statement all ready on my phone before I even reached the counter. I stood there patiently, running through it all one more time, bracing for a grilling.

When my turn finally came, the officer was a woman, early thirties maybe, and I noticed her before I noticed anything else about the booth — her makeup was flawless, lashes curled just so, her hair impossibly straight in a way mine never quite managed even though mine is straight too, her lip gloss doing exactly what lip gloss promises to do and rarely does. Her nails were done in a neat, unchipped shade that made me briefly forget I was mid-immigration-queue in a foreign country.

"Hi, how are you?" she asked, smiling like she meant it.

"I'm fantastic, thank you. How are you?"

"Doing well. Purpose of the visit?"

"Tourism."

"And how much money do you have on you?"

"Around four thousand pounds," I said, already reaching for my phone to pull up the bank statement I'd prepared exactly for this moment.

I never got the chance to show it. She scanned my passport, took my photo, and — thud — stamped the page before I'd even finished bracing for the next question.

"Have an amazing stay. Bye-bye!" She waved, still smiling, already looking past me to the next person in line.

That was it. No interrogation, no doubting look, none of the scrutiny I'd steeled myself for through an entire queue's worth of anxious rehearsal. I don't think I'll ever forget her — not because anything remarkable happened, but because of how unremarkable she made something I'd built up into an ordeal in my head.

And then, just like that, I was in London.

I found a bench out of the flow of foot traffic and connected to the airport WiFi, and there it was — a message from Ravi, already three lines deep, telling me the driver was waiting, describing what he'd be wearing so I wouldn't waste time scanning name boards. Black t-shirt, black pants, a puffer jacket zipped to the chin. I spotted him near the barriers a few minutes later, exactly as described, holding a small printed sign with my name slightly misspelled.

I checked the time — close to 9 a.m. — and the cold hit me properly for the first time since stepping off the plane. October was supposed to feel like this, I told myself, though nothing quite prepares you for it the first time your body actually registers it, not in theory but in the sting on your face the moment you step outside a terminal. My jacket held, though — thick enough, finally justifying the space it had taken up in my suitcase — and I pulled it tighter as I followed the driver out toward the car, London grey and indifferent and entirely real around me.