24 hours after takeoff this story crossed the fine line between tragedy and comedy

If anyone asks you what M3 clerkships are like, you can tell them this story:

It’s December 20^th and you’re standing in front of the United flight desk in Dulles, almost in tears because you’ve missed your connecting flight. You have to correct the clerk: no, the plane was not late. It was on time. You tell them that you just made a mistake and try to laugh it off.

You were actually sitting two gates away because you’re an idiot who can’t tell the difference between the written numbers 6 and 8, and because you got heated over the broccoli-haired college-aged frat-boy who dramatically plopped himself across from you in the middle of the only three seats clearly earmarked for disabled passengers. He had immediately manspread to the fullest degree possible and thrown an arm over one chair like it was a girl he was trying to make a move on. The other seat he reserved for his phone, charge bank, and the family-sized bags of plain Lays potato chips and sour Haribo gummy bears that he immediately started double-fisting.

Last year your New Year’s resolution was to “mind your own goddamn business,” and distantly you wonder if this is Karma, or if God with a capital G (you are a second/third generation Chinese-American who was not raised with religion) is trying to tell you something.

You missed your flight because you are an idiot who can’t read. Departure (not boarding) was scheduled for 10:20 and you realized your mistake at 10:16. But the plane is gone. It has already left. You’re put on standby for a plane that leaves tomorrow at 6:30AM and are booked (confirmed) onto another one that leaves tomorrow at 7:30PM. It is now 10:25PM.

Different things can be true at the same time: If anyone asks you what M3 clerkships are like, you would tell them that this has been the most incredible (academic) year of your life so far. You’ve just finished your Pediatric Clerkship and are also pretty sure a child gave you something viral that might have become pneumonia. Earlier this rotation your grandmother took a turn for the worse so you flew to Boston, and two weeks after that there was a family emergency that continues to be unresolved. The rotation before that, one of your childhood dogs died. You tell yourself that if you had nothing else to worry about you would have studied more for the shelf exam; you like children and think you’d like to do something related to pediatrics— but you’ve spent four of the last seven days horizontal. You took a listen to yourself with a stethoscope and think you found focal right-sided crackles. Urgent care said, “That will be $180 out of pocket for this visit please” and you decided that if you were ever actually that sick you’d just go to the ED. Two weeks before this you got so tired on hospital wards that the transient stutter you got from your last concussion (gone for 3 years) made a temporary reappearance. You were horizontal 4/7 days this week; the other three were spent as follows:

(1) rallying for a day of clinic so your school doesn’t make you stay to make it up

(2) rallying for your shelf exam (that you haven’t studied for) so your school doesn’t make you stay to make it up

(3) OSCE (this morning) so your school doesn’t make you stay to make it up

Your one mission: get on the flight and get home. 

Your friends are also on the phone. They think this is hilarious, but are mindful that for you, this has not yet crossed the line from profound personal tragedy to hilarious personal anecdote yet and are trying their best to be kind. They’ve all done something similar, and they know how you are: If it would be anyone this break, it would be you. They’re advising you to just get a hotel and get on the 7:30PM tomorrow. Because you have pneumonia. You make a halfhearted petition to stay overnight on the airport chairs to try for 6:30AM. Because the suffering would probably make up for the mistake — your friends, who know how you are and like you anyways, let you know just how stupid that is.

It’s now 11PM and you have a 15-second cry. When you were in high school and were a rower, one of your teammates told you that you reminded them of a bulldog. You were a teenage girl then and, thinking you must have remembered wrong, looked up a picture of a bulldog. You were immediately deeply upset by how Profoundly and Irredeemably Ugly the bulldog is. You would have actually cried then if you were someone who cried easily. Now that it’s about ten years later you feel like it’s probably accurate: you’re as stubborn as you are stupid, and (currently) just about as snotty. 

You dutifully get up to search the terminal for another gate attendant who had the misfortune of being scheduled to the night shift. He says that if he was you, he’d stay overnight; you’re the only one on the list right now.

Earlier this evening, while you were waiting to board your first flight out of Roanoke, the desk offered “$1,000 to anyone willing to take a later flight… $1500…. $2000.” But YOU were on a mission to get home. It is now 12:30AM and because IAD has a personal vendetta against you specifically, they’ve turned the heat off to the entire building and it’s 24F outside. All of your clothes are in your checked baggage, blissfully on their way home without you, so you huddle under the halfway-done knit sweater you’ve been working on for the past three years and kick yourself. You could have had the exact same arrival time, had $2000 to spend with wild abandon on basic healthcare, and would also be in your (75%) clean apartment instead of lying sideways (the only way you’re able to fit) across the airport seating with pneumonia. There are others resting at the gate and you get up at 3AM to blearily search for the bathroom. You trigger the motion sensor activated lights, which come on with the Full Undiluted Force of The Sun. Somehow this is the worst decision you’ve made today.

Different things can be true at the same time. Clerkships have been the most fun you’ve had in school since your early elementary years and have more than made up for the incredible trouble it took to make it first to medical school and then through the first two years. And thank god — you’re going to get to do this for the rest of your life. Because you take after your mother, meeting people makes you happy and the meaning of your life is probably other people. Because you (fortunately and unfortunately) take more after your father, you could be pretty happy working yourself half to death—you’re not the kind of person who has to imagine Sisyphus happy, you’re the kind of person who knows he is. Because you’re an idiot and in another life you’d be a weird, ugly, wrinkly, asthmatic little working dog who takes great pride in Getting The Job Done Right.

It’s now 6AM: the airplane will seat exactly 250 people and there are now 20 people on the waitlist. You’d estimate the gate is packed with just about 250 people. You’re first in line because you’re a Premier Gold Member or something; last year your grandfather was first diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer and passed two months later, which meant you flew cross-country enough times to get priority standby.

It’s stupid

But it also means you just need one person to miss this flight.

You are a weird, wrinkly, ugly little dog who is beginning to understand why old surgeons are the way they are: What greater joy in the world is there than the work to be done? And if there wasn’t a family you loved or friends you cared about… If there was no life outside of medical school, you probably would be doing really well on your clerkship exams and would have made the first flight and would be arriving home. And your poor mother and your poor brother wouldn’t have had to drive out at 1AM to get your checked bag which (triumphantly) arrived without you.

The door closes at 6:30AM sharp. You squeak onto the airplane at 6:29AM and are so grateful to be seated that you don’t even see if the #2 passenger on standby made it on, and don’t even mind squeezing into the seat next to an extremely large man wearing a rancid, sweat-soaked jacket for the next six hours. 

You’re a weird, wrinkly, ugly little dog who is beginning to understand the appeal of just lying on the rug and “lifestyle specialties,” or of simply not pursuing a medical career. There’s a part of residency colloquially known as the “crying time,” and you wonder if other students also ask themselves when their lives are supposed to begin. You would have made the flight, but if there was no family you wouldn’t even have had a flight to make. It becomes easy to think that there would have been all the time in the world for Grandma or family emergencies or to spend time with friends you care about. 

But as a weird, wrinkly, asthmatic, ugly little working dog: you can’t imagine being happy any other way.