The longest flight home

November 2007.

It’s 4:00 a.m. in Tokyo. Yesterday, we finished our Asia roadshow. We celebrated. I had a few drinks and went to bed late. My head hurts.

Now I’m in the back of a black sedan headed to Narita Airport. Tokyo is still dark. The driver wears a black suit and white gloves. His posture is perfect. The car is spotless. The city slides across the window in silence.

I need sleep.

But the next twenty-four hours will become one of the most intense experiences of my life. Sleep will stay out of reach for weeks.

On the flight to Dallas, the turbulence hits hard. The plane drops, lifts, and rattles. Flight attendants stay seated. I sleep through most of it.

The plane lands. As we taxi, I pull out my BlackBerry. This is reflex now. Every time I land somewhere, I mindlessly reach for my BlackBerry.

There’s a message from my wife, Anne.

“URGENT, call me!!”

A shot of adrenaline goes through my body. My headache disappears.

Anne is at Mount Auburn Hospital in Boston. I need to get there immediately.

“Is there an earlier connection to Boston?” I ask the flight attendant. “This is a family emergency.”

“You might be able to get on the next one,” she says, “but you’ll have to go to the gate agent.”

I run through the terminal. My heart is pounding. I’m scared. I have never been this scared.

At the gate, the agent looks at me.

“We can’t let you in,” she says. “It’s too late.”

I beg. I explain. I must look unhinged. She studies me for a second, picks up the phone, says something I can’t hear, and opens the door.

No gate agent has ever done that for me again.

The flight feels interminable. After landing at Boston Logan, I grab my Tumi roller bag and the smaller bag on top. I run to the taxi line and jump into a cab.

“I’ll give you $200,” I say. “Mount Auburn Hospital! Drive faster than you’ve ever driven in your life!”

The driver doesn’t ask many questions. We shoot out of Logan, through the tunnel, into Boston traffic. Horns. Brake lights. Hard lane changes. The Charles Hotel flashes past the window. I’m gripping the seat and checking the time every few seconds.

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At the hospital, I’m still carrying both bags. The roller wheels clatter across the floor as I run through the hallways.

I get to Anne’s room.

I’m about to become a father.

She has been there almost twelve hours at this point. The monitor has been showing contractions that whole time, but she hasn’t been feeling them.

The very moment I drop my suitcase on the hospital room floor, the contractions become painful. (Later, Anne will say that she believes her body, or our son, were waiting for me to arrive).

But something feels wrong. Anne is in too much pain. She calls the nurse to get checked, but the nurse says everything is fine. “The labor just started,” she says. She’s the expert. Anne defers to her.

My mother has driven down from Sherbrooke to support Anne.

Anne tells her the pain is unbearable. In a pivotal moment, my mom looks her in the eyes and says: “Trust YOURSELF, tell the nurse something’s wrong. Don’t take no for an answer.”

She’s right to advise Anne to speak up. After reluctantly agreeing to a basic exam, the nurse admits that yes, something is quite wrong. They bring the scan. Legs are first. The baby was breech this whole time.

“This is going to be an emergency C-section,” the doctor says.

A few minutes later, our son, Charlie, is born.

“What’s wrong with his legs?” I ask.

They’re crooked, folded into an impossible position.

“That happens with breech babies,” someone says. “They’ll go back to normal.”

Charlie is here. Anne is safe.

I feel joy. Guilt, too. Why did I travel through Asia this close to Anne’s due date?

It was a bad decision. I made it for at least three reasons.

The first is deference to experts. The doctor had said that since I was coming back a little over two weeks before Anne’s due date, I was okay to travel. He knew the pregnancy. He had experience. He gave me a reasonable answer. It was also the answer I wanted.

He said I could come back on November 10th. My flight was scheduled to land at 4 pm. Anne’s water broke that day at 2 am.

Expertise is often the best input we have. But it involves human judgment –a lot more than people think. For example, depending on when you talk to an expert during the day, you may get a different answer.

In one anesthesiology study, the predicted probability of adverse medical events rises from about 1.0% for cases starting around 9 a.m. to 4.2% for cases starting around 4 p.m. The authors point to workload, fatigue, circadian lows, and care transitions as possible explanations.

Another study in the field of law finds that favorable rulings fall from about 65% early in a decision session to nearly zero before a food break, then rebound after the break. Expert decisions can depend on fatigue or even hunger.

Ancient experts described the Earth as flat. Doctors treated patients by draining their blood. Tobacco companies used physicians in cigarette ads to reassure smokers. Lobotomy won a Nobel Prize. History piles on the evidence that expertise is overrated.

The second reason I made the bad decision to travel close to Anne’s due date is obvious: I misjudged the probability. I evaluate probabilities for a living. I should have asked better questions. What is the probability of early labor? How often does this happen? I didn’t ask.

The third reason is goal-induced blindness. In The Psychology of Leadership, I explain that goal-induced blindness happens when you become so focused on a goal that you stop seeing the non-goal consequences. You lose sight of the big picture.

At the time, my goal is professional advancement. The Asia roadshow matters. The doctor’s answer gave me permission to do what I already wanted to do.

Back at Mount Auburn, I go to the nursery.

Charlie is about ten minutes old. He is furious. Red face, tiny fists, full-volume scream.

“Ouch!” The nurse pulls her hand back, genuinely surprised.

His tiny hand has clamped down on her wrist, pinching hard. For years, Charlie and I will retell that story. In his version, he is ten minutes old, furious at the world, and already making his position clear.

I crouch next to him.

“I’ll take care of you,” I say. “I’ll always be there, no matter what comes. I’ll never let you down.”

Some of that is guilt. I almost missed his birth. Most of it is the shock and overwhelming emotion of becoming a father. It’s hard to describe. Two of you go to the hospital. Three of you come home.

A little under three years later, Charlie is a toddler.

I’m at the mall, waiting for Anne.

Charlie is wearing a new T-shirt. It says: “Big Brother.”

She smiles.

It takes me a second.

“Really?”

“Yes,” she says.

We hug and cry in the middle of the mall.

Olivia’s birth story is for another day. But let me emphasize: I won’t travel for several weeks before the due date!

Fatherhood begins with hospital rooms and promises made to people too small to understand them. Then you spend the rest of your life trying to live up to those promises.

Buy The Psychology of Leadership here.

Endnotes

Wright, M. C., Phillips-Bute, B., Mark, J. B., Stafford-Smith, M., Grichnik, K. P., Andregg, B. C., & Taekman, J. M. (2006). “Time of day effects on the incidence of anesthetic adverse events.” Quality & Safety in Health Care, 15(4), 258–263. The study reports the 1.0% to 4.2% predicted increase and discusses workload, fatigue, circadian lows, and care transitions as possible explanations. (Quality & Safety in Health Care)

Danziger, S., Levav, J., & Avnaim-Pesso, L. (2011). “Extraneous factors in judicial decisions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(17), 6889–6892. The study reports that favorable rulings decline from about 65% early in a session to nearly zero before a break, then rebound after the break. (PNAS)

Nobel Prize. “The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1949.” Egas Moniz received the 1949 Nobel Prize for the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses; the Nobel site also describes prefrontal leukotomy as the operation later called lobotomy.