The Snake, the Stick, and the Door

There are moments in life when a man’s entire education deserts him. Years spent acquiring degrees, mastering complicated subjects, and developing an impressive professional reputation may count for very little when Fate decides to place a snake in his path. At such times, the human brain, which has served its owner tolerably well through examinations, ward rounds, and professional conferences, may pack its bags and leave without giving notice.

The medical profession, naturally, is particularly vulnerable to this sort of disappointment. Doctors are accustomed to being regarded as sensible people. They are consulted on matters of life and death, expected to remain calm in emergencies, and occasionally addressed in tones suggesting that they possess knowledge of the universe denied to ordinary mortals. This can create a misleading impression that they are equally competent in every department of human existence.

They are not.

The events I am about to relate took place in the officers’ mess of a medical unit. The mess occupied a barrack containing six rooms, all inhabited by doctors. It was a peaceful enough establishment, where the occupants pursued the familiar business of service life, punctuated by conversation, professional concerns, and the occasional demonstration that a medical degree does not necessarily confer wisdom in domestic matters.

Room No. 6, the last in the row, was designated as a guest room and happened to be occupied by me. The other rooms belonged to the permanent incumbents of the unit.

Room No. 4 was occupied by Mr X.

Mr X was a gentleman of sociable inclinations. He enjoyed company, and he had a particular appreciation for the company of ladies. This was not one of those delicate preferences that a man keeps hidden behind a discreet cough and an innocent expression. Mr X was refreshingly candid on the subject. As he himself used to say, he liked being surrounded by girls.

It was a statement he made with the air of a man who had discovered a fundamental principle of human happiness and was doing his best to bring it to the attention of the less enlightened.

Now, by one of those happy arrangements which occasionally make life seem almost considerate, Room No. 3 and Room No. 5 were occupied by lady doctors. Mr X, stationed in Room No. 4, therefore found himself with a lady doctor on either side. His geographical circumstances could hardly have been improved without the intervention of a town planner.

Whether the two ladies regarded this arrangement as a blessing, a nuisance, or simply an unfortunate feature of the building’s architecture is not recorded. Mr X, at any rate, appeared content with the situation. One could almost imagine him regarding the layout of the barrack as a personal endorsement of his philosophy.

Life proceeded quietly. The doctors went about their business, the rooms remained in their proper places, and the barrack gave every appearance of being a respectable establishment in which nothing particularly dramatic was likely to occur.

This, of course, was precisely the sort of complacency that Fate dislikes.

One evening, at about seven o’clock, a shriek rang out from Room No. 3.

“Snake! Snake!”

A lady doctor came rushing out.

And with those two words, the peaceful officers’ mess ceased to be a residence for medical professionals and became a theatre of operations for which no one had packed the appropriate equipment.

Mr X was the first to respond to the emergency. Whether this was prompted by courage, curiosity, or a desire to demonstrate that the man who liked being surrounded by girls could also be relied upon when one of them encountered a snake, I cannot say.

Whatever the motivation, he decided to investigate.

He armed himself with a large stick and marched into the room.

The rest of us followed.

I should perhaps clarify that our idea of following was somewhat different from Mr X’s. He entered the store, stick in hand, while we remained in the main room and peeped through the doorway. Our heads were arranged one above another, forming a sort of human periscope. Each man wanted a good view of the proceedings, but none appeared especially keen to improve his chances of becoming part of them.

The room had a large main area, an attached bathroom, and a store measuring approximately 10 by 14 feet. The store had no windows and only one door. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, which was barely seven feet high.

It was a modest arrangement, but perfectly adequate for storing things. It was about to prove less suitable for hosting a dramatic confrontation between a doctor and a snake.

The snake lay in a corner of the store.

It was not charging. It was not hissing dramatically. It was not making any obvious attempt to disrupt the smooth functioning of the medical establishment.

It was simply lying there, watching the circus.

One can only speculate about its thoughts. Perhaps it wondered why so many large mammals had gathered to observe it. Perhaps it was impressed by the stick. Or perhaps, being a snake, it had no particular interest in the professional qualifications of the people surrounding it.

Whatever its thoughts, the snake appeared to be the most composed creature in the building.

Mr X, however, seemed determined to bring the matter to a conclusion.

Having crossed the threshold with the purposeful stride of a man who had decided that the situation required immediate and decisive intervention, he advanced into the store. The large stick in his hand lent him an air of authority, though whether it lent him any genuine advantage over a snake of unknown temperament and intentions is open to question.

The snake lay in the corner, apparently untroubled by the arrival of its visitor. It had neither retreated nor made any aggressive movement. It simply watched Mr X, while Mr X watched it. For a few moments, the two regarded each other across the floor—a curious stand-off between a qualified medical officer and a creature whose professional credentials were decidedly obscure.

Outside, in the main room, we watched the proceedings through the doorway, our heads stacked one above another in a vertical formation that would have done credit to a poorly organised viewing gallery. Nobody volunteered to join Mr X inside. We were all in favour of decisive action, provided someone else performed it.

Mr X, however, seemed determined to bring the matter to a conclusion. He moved towards the centre of the store, adjusted his position, and tightened his grip on the stick. There was something almost ceremonial about the moment. One could imagine that, in his mind, the next few seconds would see the danger eliminated and the evening restored to normality. He would have dealt with the snake, reassured the lady doctor, and returned to the main room with the quiet satisfaction of a man who had risen to the occasion.

He raised the stick high above his head, preparing to deliver what he presumably regarded as the final, crushing blow.

It was an impressive gesture, calculated to inspire confidence in the spectators.

There was, however, one small defect in the plan.

The ceiling was only seven feet high.

The stick struck the bulb.

There was a sharp crack, and the store plunged into darkness.

It is difficult to overstate the effect of this development. Until that moment, we had been spectators at a reasonably straightforward operation. There was a snake in the corner, a doctor with a stick, and a group of colleagues watching from the safety of the main room.

Now the light had gone out.

The snake was still somewhere in the store. Mr X was still inside. The stick had failed to achieve its intended purpose, and the only piece of equipment that had made the proceedings visible had been knocked out of action.

The situation called for a fresh assessment.

We conducted ours immediately.

We ran.

There was no conference, no discussion of alternative strategies, and no attempt to establish a coordinated withdrawal. The medical fraternity, which had moments earlier displayed considerable enthusiasm for the investigation, dispersed with a speed that would have impressed a military instructor.

In fairness, darkness does tend to simplify decision-making. When one cannot see the snake, one is at liberty to imagine it almost anywhere. The imagination, as every doctor knows, can produce a much worse prognosis than the facts warrant.

The door between the store and the main room shut.

And Mr X was left inside.

The door deserves a word of its own, for it played a role in the affair out of all proportion to its humble position in the building.

It opened inwards.

This meant that anyone unfamiliar with it, on finding it closed, would naturally attempt to push it open. The correct procedure was to pull.

It was an elementary matter. A child might have mastered it in a few seconds.

Unfortunately, Mr X was now in a dark, windowless store with a snake whose whereabouts were uncertain. Elementary matters tend to become rather less elementary under such circumstances.

He made for the door and pushed.

The door did not open.

He pushed again.

Still nothing.

He tried harder, as if the door might be persuaded to reconsider its position by a sufficiently forceful argument.

It remained unmoved.

At this point, Mr X appears to have reached a conclusion. It was not the correct conclusion, but it was an understandable one.

He believed we had locked him inside.

From his point of view, the evidence was persuasive. The light had gone out, his colleagues had vanished, the door was shut, and his attempts to escape had been unsuccessful. The possibility that the door simply needed to be pulled was evidently not the first hypothesis to present itself.

He began shouting.

He pushed and shouted, shouted and pushed, while the door continued to display the sort of calm indifference that one normally associates with an experienced bureaucrat.

Outside, the rest of us were no doubt relieved to be on the right side of the door. Whether we were also feeling guilty about our sudden disappearance is a question I shall leave to the reader.

Inside, Mr X had a more immediate problem.

There was a snake somewhere in the dark.

There was a door that would not open.

And there was the growing suspicion that his colleagues, rather than coming to his rescue, had chosen to imprison him with the creature.

It was not, one imagines, the sort of situation in which a man’s fondness for being surrounded by girls offered much consolation.

After some time spent shouting and pushing, Mr X finally remembered the one fact that could have saved him considerable anxiety.

The door had to be pulled.

He pulled it open and emerged from the store.

He was scared stiff.

The man who had entered armed with a large stick, apparently ready to deal with the snake, had come out thoroughly shaken by the experience. The transformation had been achieved without the snake doing anything particularly dramatic. A broken bulb and an uncooperative door had accomplished what the animal itself had not.

The snake, meanwhile, had escaped.

We never discovered where it went.

It disappeared without leaving an address, a forwarding number, or even a note explaining its sudden departure. There was no further encounter, no triumphant capture, and no opportunity to establish whether the creature had been as frightened of us as we had been of it.

Perhaps it found its way outside. Perhaps it discovered a hiding place elsewhere in the barrack. Perhaps it remained nearby, observing us from a discreet distance and wondering whether all doctors behaved like this.

We shall never know.

Looking back, the incident offers a few lessons that extend well beyond a snake in a store room.

First, expertise has its limits. We may become highly accomplished in our chosen professions and begin to believe that competence in one field somehow equips us for every situation. It does not. Life has a delightful habit of presenting problems for which our degrees, experience, and professional reputations offer little assistance. Humility is not an admission of ignorance; it is an acknowledgement that there will always be things we do not know.

Second, courage can be surprisingly dependent on circumstances. Mr X was ready to take on the snake while the bulb was glowing. Once the light went out, his confidence appears to have gone with it. Perhaps courage is not always an absolute quality. Sometimes it depends on how clearly we can see the danger, how much control we believe we have, and whether events are proceeding according to plan. The real test comes when the familiar disappears and we must face uncertainty without the comfort of favourable circumstances.

Third, never mistake your interpretation of a situation for the situation itself. In the darkness, Mr X concluded that his colleagues had locked him in. The actual problem was much simpler: he was pushing a door that needed to be pulled. How often do we make the same mistake in life? We blame people, circumstances, institutions, and fate for keeping us trapped, when the solution may lie in reconsidering our assumptions. Sometimes the obstacle is real; sometimes we are simply approaching it from the wrong direction.

Fourth, panic rarely improves a difficult situation. The moment the bulb broke, the doctors ran. Mr X shouted and pushed. Nobody paused long enough to assess what was actually happening. Fear is natural, but when it takes charge, we may turn a manageable problem into a crisis. A moment of calm reflection can sometimes achieve more than a great deal of frantic activity.

Perhaps the greatest lesson is that life has little regard for our carefully cultivated image of ourselves. Mr X set out to be the hero of the evening and became its most frightened participant. The rest of us, who had gathered to watch courage in action, contributed chiefly to the art of retreat. And the snake, without a plan, a stick, or a medical degree, managed the cleanest exit of all.

So the next time circumstances conspire against you, remember that confidence is useful, expertise is valuable, and courage is admirable—but none is a substitute for keeping your head when the lights go out.

And, of course, for knowing how the door opens.