OK so here is what happened. I got to Indy airport with plenty of time and had no problems (although they did search my hand luggage because it "looked dense" on the scanner. I'd say it looked dense, it contained 40lbs of textbooks. The woman searching it was very friendly though). Then I sat at the gate for hours and we finally were allowed to board at about 3pm - an hour after scheduled take off. At 3.30 we were updated by ATC that we might be able to take off at half past four. So we waited for another hour and I think we did take off then. When we got near Newark we were put into a holding pattern for an hour, and the pilot said "we don't have enough fuel to hold for an hour" so we went to Hartford instead.
The landing into Hartford was very turbulent, and I passed out.
When I came to, I discovered that the man across the aisle from me had a doctorate in nursing, which was rather handy, and he took care of me until we finally landed (to applause from the rest of the plane). Once everyone was off the state police turned up, for some reason, and took my details down. Then the airport fire service arrived and took my blood pressure, my blood sugar, my blood electricity, and probably some other things too, both sitting and standing. The numbers were sufficiently similar, and sufficiently close to normal, that they said I didn't have to go to hospital if I didn't want to, and I certainly didn't want to. So I signed a medical waiver stating I had refused medical advice (I'm not so sure I did - if they had said "you need to go to hospital" I would have gone).
Then we all got off the plane, after I'd cleaned myself up and changed from my urine-sodden skirt into the pyjamas I'd luckily packed in my carryon bag, because my bladder couldn't cope with the landing either. The nice airport man prioritised sorting out what I was going to do, and got me on a flight via London back to Manchester on Wednesday night. There were earlier flights to London, but there was nothing earlier to Manchester so I'd have been stuck somewhere whatever I did. He also made a note on my file that I was to be comped a hotel room.
So then we all got back onto the plane, which a team of efficient cleaners had already dealt with, and flew rather less eventfully to Newark. It still confirmed that I was right not to be flying across the Atlantic that night though, because I almost fainted again on the 30 minute flight and perfectly smooth landing. Once we got off the plane we all queued up to ask the woman at the desk where to go next. I was sent off to a different terminal by bus to speak to the customer service centre. The queue was nothing like as long as the ones I stood in when I was snowed in at Heathrow for five days - they weren't giving out bottles of water and sandwiches either. When I got to the desk I explained to the man what I needed and he checked me into the flights for Wednesday night and gave me my new boarding cards.
I mentioned the hotel and at first he started talking about me going to a different queue to talk to someone, and said "do you have a credit card? Because the hotel will need one". I told him I had exactly four dollars in cash, and an English debit card £400 into its overdraft. Then I said something about my itinerary, meaning that I needed a printed version so I knew what I was doing, but he said "oh, wait, was it already sorted?". He looked at my file again and suddenly became even more kind and concerned, and gave me a voucher for a hotel and three $10 vouchers for food.
I trekked off with my vouchers to the other side of the terminal and joined a queue to use the two working hotel shuttle phones (there were two out of order, typically). I never actually made it to a phone, because the woman in front of me had got through to the hotel we'd both got a voucher for and managed, after four different phone calls, to discover that they would be sending a shuttle for us soon. So we stood in a rabble of people as a dozen different hotel shuttles went past (some of them three times) before ours arrived. Twice as many people as could fit jammed into the bus and we rattled off to the hotel. Then we stood in another queue as a panicked and harassed-looking man tried to check us all in and get rid of the people who didn't have vouchers. I made it up to my room by half past eleven, and once I'd dumped my bags headed back down to buy a pizza from the 24 hour cafe. Thank goodness, because nowhere else had been open.
On my way back to my room a man in the elevator started chatting to me, and asked if he could come and eat pizza with me. In another life I might have said yes - he was quite attractive - but the new and improved May does not allow strange men into her bedroom at midnight and anyway I hadn't had a shower since the skirt-wetting incident and I didn't really want to be propositioned. So I ate half my pizza on my own, washed out my clothes in the hotel bathroom sink, and went to bed.
This morning I woke up to find a reply to my emails letting my friends and family who were expecting me know that I would be a day late. My mum's broken wrist has turned out to be worse than initially thought and she's going into hospital tomorrow morning for an operation. She might get home on Friday morning, but she might not. I'm going back to Cambridge on Saturday. So I will, all being well, fly back to Manchester and get the train straight back to mum's. Luckily the train station is very close to the hospital, so assuming that I can carry all 100lbs of my luggage across there I will go and see if I can see her. I won't have much else to do; my stepdad is visiting his mother and can't pick me up from the station until late afternoon.
Quite an adventure. Now I'm off to dry my skirt with a hairdryer and hopefully get it in a wearable state before I have to check out at noon. Then an exciting six hours in the airport before (please!) my flight leaves and gets to England uneventfully. Touch wood.
