»fight for s u r v i v a l;
“What’s going on?” a young female voice questions, leading you to turn your head and stare at the young woman that has been seated next to you for most of this flight.
“I’m…not sure.” You respond, sitting up a little and turning your head to your right, towards the aisle, watching as several of the flight attendants that had been going around and getting people drinks, head to the back or the front to sit down. You don’t have much time to wonder what is going on because the next thing you know, the plane is plummeting towards the ground and Judy, the young, pregnant woman sitting next to you grabs your arm, immediately panicking, just like everybody else.
When the plane crashed, it was like…it was like this indescribable feeling. You weren’t sure what you felt, or what you wanted to feel. There was a big part of you that wanted to scream and get lost in the fact that every single part of your body was in so much pain, but the stronger part of you – the doctor part of you wants to try and save as many people as you can.
In a plane crash, there is no stronger half and weaker half. There’s just you, in a lot of pain. This wasn’t you crashing a bike into a tree, or some small boo boo that you could fix – this was a lot of pain that you didn’t think you would be able to fight through. There was you, feeling as though your ribs were about to puncture a lung, there was you feeling like you’d definitely broken a few ribs. There was the fact that your head was spinning, your ears were ringing, and your vision was blurry. There was the fact that you had deep cuts along your face and other various parts of your body, and then there was the blood. The blood felt warm and sticky, yet there was that brief moment of cold rush that one gets right after a paper cut. It was a weird, indescribable sensation, that cold feeling of the blood. There was blood…in your hair? Or was it on another part of your body. In this moment, you were a civilian who had just been in a plane crash.
Your attempts to stand up prove to be useless and finally you lean to your left, placing both hands on the dirt ground, using your upper body strength to move towards other people. A loud roar of pain escapes your lips and although you want to let the pain take over, you try your best not to. The tears pool in your eyes and slowly descend your cheeks as you inhale as best you can, telling yourself to focus on other people’s pain – that, you could do. You were a surgeon, a doctor…you could try and help people.
In this moment, your only hope is that you and all the other survivors will be found soon. The other survivors tell you that there is hope, but you know better. You’re a doctor, and a realist – you know that you’re in the middle of the woods, and that the chances of anybody finding all of you anytime soon are very low. You don’t have the chance to lose hope because it isn’t long before you pass out due to all of your injuries. The last thing you remember is Judy holding her newborn baby in her arms, begging you to take him.
You are a Montgomery.
A Montgomery is never weak.
A Montgomery turns her head the other way.
You are a Montgomery and you have always been a rather proud person. You have your pride, your dignity, your reputation, and – you don’t want to be seen as weak, especially not in front of all these other people, not when you are the double board certified surgeon, the one who could continue to help save as many people as you can.
You’re alive.
You’re weak.
You didn’t turn your head the other way.
You allowed the pain to take over.
Bizzy would be disappointed in you.
You feel fragments of the now destroyed wine glass digging into the palm of your hand and you feel relieved every time you come to, because feeling that pain is the only thing that is keeping you from passing out completely or worse – dying. You curl your fingers into a fist, squeezing tightly to allow the glass to dig deeper into the palm of your hand. As you do so, your chest rises and falls, tears streaming from your eyes as you stare up into the sky, vision blurred.
“I can’t do this anymore. It hurts too badly.” You hear, and honestly at this point, you’ve lost track of how much time has passed. You don’t know what time it is, or what day is, or how to respond.
When you finally think of a response, everything is dark. You keep drifting in and out of consciousness, and you can’t feel any of your injuries – you feel completely numb and for once, it feels so good. Is this what death feels like? Numbness? You come to not too long after having felt the numbness. “If I…” you begin and pause. When you come to some time later, you don’t feel cold, and you still feel numb – you hear voices, but you’re not sure what’s going on. You just know that when you turn your head, you find Judy near you.
“If I die, nobody’s really gonna c a r e. They’ll care, but they won’t be b r o k e n.” You begin slowly, pausing to take a few short breaths. “If you die, people will. They’ll care. They’ll be…broken up. You have… to…” You begin, before drifting into unconsciousness yet again.
