The woman from seat 4D counts to three and then begins pointing at individual passengers, declaring their predicted cause and age of death. Leo Vodnik watches as she first points at the man in her own row's window seat and announces "catastrophic stroke, age seventy-two." The man, absorbed in his laptop, is confused and briefly exchanges a bewildered look with Leo before shrugging it off and returning to work.

Leo initially assumes the woman is suffering from dementia, drawing on his experience with his grandmother who had vascular dementia. He recalls being advised to play along with her alternate reality, and he resolves to do the same for this woman. He thinks she may be a retired medical professional, remembering a story about a retired doctor with dementia who diagnosed fellow nursing-home residents.

The woman then points at Max and predicts "heart disease, age eighty-four." Max and Sue are confused and try to engage with her, with Sue gently suggesting the woman might need the bathroom before landing. When Leo realizes the woman is not diagnosing but predicting causes and ages of death, he decides to engage directly and asks her to give him his prediction straight. She points at Leo like a gun and declares "workplace accident, age forty-three." Leo feels a jolt—he turns forty-three in November—but outwardly jokes about it, adopting a jolly persona to mask his unease.

Throughout the encounter, Leo reflects on his family: his mother's vanity about shoes, his father's post-9/11 bravado about crash-tackling suspicious travelers despite being a small, gentle jeweler, and his youngest sister's confidence. He also notices a silver brooch on the woman's shirt that feels strangely familiar, possibly connected to his parents' jewelry store, though he cannot identify it. After finishing with Leo's row, the woman moves on to the next row and tells a young woman in headphones and a headscarf that she expects "disease of the urinary system, age ninety-two." Sue, Max, and Leo watch in astonishment as the woman continues her predictions down the aisle.