The Road to Hell
short story by Matthew de Lacey Davidson
Flight 2436, from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Washington, D.C. was scheduled to depart at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, due to inclement weather, it was delayed by almost an hour. As a result, the passengers started to become extremely impatient. At length, they were placated by Lauren Anne Thomas, a very thin (as required by company policy) and superficially pretty white airline hostess who was wearing far too much lipstick.
The rain dissipates, and the plane is cleared for take-off. It veers down the runway and flies off into the wind. The flight, on average, takes around two and a half hours.
This is a very unusual airline flight, because there are at least three highly-trained medical professionals on board. The first, LaShawna Johnson, grew up in the south side of Chicago in dire poverty. Fortuitously, her innate intelligence was spotted by a teacher early in her life. She was mentored, tutored for free, wound up doing pre-med at a prestigious university, and taking a medical degree at the University of Chicago. She became one of the top OB-GYNs in the Chicago region, and the author of several influential studies. On this day, she was visiting relatives in Louisiana before going to Washington D.C. for a medical conference.
The second, Tanya Robinson, came from an upper-middle-class background in New York City. Her parents lived in Sugar Hill, Harlem, in a beautiful old brownstone building, and were both college-educated professionals themselves. She was unsure what to do with her life for a while, and studied foreign languages in several European countries before changing direction and going to medical school. Thereafter, she went to Johns Hopkins medical school in Baltimore, Maryland, and graduated top of her class. She then joined Médecins Sans Frontières for two years and gave urgent medical care to some of the neediest individuals in the entire world. At length, she continued with her education and specialised in cardiac surgery, eventually taking a prestigious position as the youngest professor at an esteemed medical school in Pennsylvania.
Finally, there was Shraddha Murkute, who, although born in the United States, had parents who hailed from Mumbai, India. Suffering great prejudice against immigrants for most of her childhood, she threw herself into her studies, and, after taking a law degree, entered medical school without knowing exactly what direction to take. Eventually, she encountered a patient with motor-control issues, and decided at that point to specialise in Neurology. She got a job at the top hospital in Washington, D.C. as a Neurologist, and operated frequently on the most challenging brain surgery cases in the United States.
All three individuals — who just happened to be on the same flight together — had never met each other before. Nonetheless, all three intelligent, educated, young women shared one thing in common:
– brown skin.
Flight 2436 was about a third of the way on its journey, when one of the passengers, an extremely large white gentleman, started expressing distress: he complained of having an itching feeling in his throat and trouble breathing.
Lauren Anne Thomas, stewardess extraordinaire, with the permission of the captain, started walking through the plane, shouting, “Is there a doctor on board?”
Firstly, LaShawna Johnson jumped up, and was about to tell the stewardess that she was a board-certified OB-GYN, when Lauren turned and squealed, “Oh, Sweetie, please sit down — we need a real doctor.” Humiliated and upset, LaShawna sat down right away.
When no one else came forward, Lauren made the same loud request throughout the cabin a second time. This time, Tanya Robinson got up and shot over to the other side of the plane where Lauren was — only to be just as rudely rebuffed.
After a time, Lauren made a third request. At this point, Shraddha Murkute got up and said, “I’m a Neuro…”
“Sweetie, sit down!”
“But I…”
“Look, if you don’t obey the commands of the cabin crew, I’ll have the captain summon the armed U.S. Marshall, and have you placed under arrest.”
Fuming in silent outrage, Shraddha flounced down angrily into her seat. At last, a white gentleman of medium build, and wearing thick, horn-rimmed glasses, (and in his early fifties) came over. “You need me?” Lauren took him by the arm and showed him the large gentleman in distress, who, by this time, was silent and still. This latest volunteer took one look and hesitated, “Hey, it looks to me like he might have choked on something, but I’m feeling really out of my depth, here…”
At which point, all three women run over to the passenger in distress. LaShawna said she was an OB-GYN. Tanya said she was a cardiologist — and Shraddha told Lauren she was a Neurosurgeon.
“What are your qualifications?” LaShawna questioned the gentleman loudly. The man looked sheepish, and responded,
“Uhh…I have a doctoral degree in philosophy from Kent State.”
“A philosophy degree?!?” exclaims Tanya.
“Uhh…yeah…actually…I specialized in Hegelian dialectic.”
Shraddha fumed, “What…the…fffff…!” the expletive almost appearing, then dissipating into the unheeding air. “You’re saying that you’ve never even studied medicine?”
The man looked down at the floor of the plane, chagrined. “Ahh…all that was asked was if there was a doctor on board.” Clearly, natural-born common-sense and good critical thinking skills are not a requirement for those seeking and obtaining higher education these days.
Lauren looked desperately at the three women. “Can you please help him?” she insists.
Tanya sighs heavily; then responds, “Well — it looks like it might be anaphylaxis — he clearly has angioedema around the eyes; I don’t even see how he’d be able to open them.”
LaShawna agrees that it looks like it might be an allergic reaction, then pipes up, “…but I’ve been timing this incident since you called out the first time, Ma’am — and it’s been over twelve minutes since this man obviously stopped breathing. Even if we got his heart going again by some miracle, he would be brain-dead by now.”
Shraddha glares at Lauren. “His death could have been prevented were it not for your prejudicial dismissiveness!”
Leaning forward and placing her finger on the man’s neck to check for a pulse, Tanya concludes, “I suspect that rigor mortis will start to set in not too long after we land.”
Three pairs of brown eyes flash back and forth angrily. First at each other; then at the corpse; and lastly, they draw upwards towards Lauren — who — by this stage — is squirming, ringing her hands, and pulling her legs in, as if she has a bursting bladder. All she can do is stand there childishly — defensively — helplessly — while whining, “I’m sorry — no really — I’m so, so sorry — I didn’t intend any harm.”
