I Saved Her Mid-Flight Only To Be Cyberbullied Chapter 2

The atmosphere inside the airport police precinct was suffocating.

Because of this ridiculous disturbance, my connecting flight to the medical symposium was entirely ruined.

I sat at the mediation table, calmly providing the officers with the exact medical protocols and emergency procedures I had followed.

The head flight attendant sat beside me as a witness, truthfully recounting the terrifying moments when Sophie was literally dying in her seat.

Derek, however, acted like a brick wall. He refused to listen to a single word of logic.

"I do not care about your medical jargon."

"All I know is this creep took my wife's clothes off in front of fifty people and had his hands all over her body!"

Derek slammed his hand on the metal table, spit flying from his lips.

The exhausted detective sighed and pulled Derek into the hallway to try and calm him down.

A few minutes later, the detective had to step out to take a phone call.

Derek and I were left completely alone in the interrogation room.

The second the door clicked shut, the agonizing grief vanished from Derek's face.

He pulled out a chair, sat down across from me, and dropped the hysterical victim act completely. He leaned in, lowering his voice with a greedy, calculating smirk.

"Dr. Lennie, right?"

"You look like a smart guy with a lot to lose."

"An attending physician at a top-tier hospital. Bright future ahead of you."

"It would be a real shame to lose your medical license over a little misunderstanding like this, would it not?"

I kept my eyes fixed on the table and did not say a word.

He took my silence for fear. He planted both elbows on the table, his eyes shining with malice.

"A hundred grand."

"Just wire a hundred grand for 'emotional distress,' and this entire thing disappears today."

"Otherwise, my wife has two million followers on TikTok and Instagram. I will have her do a livestream dedicated entirely to you. Her fans will tear you to pieces and spit you out. Your career will be over by midnight."

Looking at his smug face, I felt a wave of genuine physical nausea.

"Derek, your wife was literally seconds away from a body bag."

"And the only thing going through your head right now is how to use her near-death experience for a quick payout?"

I stood up slowly and adjusted my cuffs, looking down at him with absolute contempt.

"You are not getting a dime. If you want to throw a temper tantrum on the internet, be my guest."

"But do not say I did not warn you. Defamation is a felony, and it carries real prison time."

"Fine! Do not come crying to me when your life is ruined!"

Derek kicked his chair back violently and slammed the door behind him.

That very same night, I booked the first available flight back home.

The next morning, the moment I walked up to the main entrance of Mercy General Hospital, I froze.

Over a dozen clout-chasing livestreamers and freelance tabloid reporters were crowding the hospital steps, shoving cameras and microphones in every direction.

"There he is! Dr. Lennie is here!"

"That is the creep who assaulted the pregnant woman!"

Someone screamed my name, and the crowd swarmed me like sharks smelling blood in the water.

The camera flashes were absolutely blinding. A barrage of malicious questions hit me like artillery fire.

"Dr. Lennie, do you have a fetish for pregnant women?"

"How do you sleep at night using your medical license as a cover to assault vulnerable women?"

The hospital security team had to physically drag me through the mob and lock the glass doors behind us just to get me to the administrative wing.

Inside the Chief of Medicine's office, the air pressure was practically nonexistent.

The Chief, his face pale with fury, slid an iPad across the mahogany desk toward me.

"Look at this mess, Lennie!"

"The hospital switchboard has been completely jammed since dawn. Our social media pages are being nuked by a cybermob!"

"Half of your current patients have called in demanding to be transferred to other doctors."

"We even had people show up at the front desk this morning demanding we delete all their medical records because they refuse to be in our system."

On the iPad screen was a video Sophie had posted late last night.

She was wearing an oversized hospital gown. Her face was makeup-free, her eyes red and swollen, and she was crying beautifully for the camera.

"Guys, I am so traumatized. I never imagined that just taking a normal flight could turn into a living nightmare."

"This doctor, Dr. Lennie, waited until I was unconscious from an allergic reaction..."

"And forcibly ripped my clothes off."

At this exact moment, she purposefully pulled down the collar of her gown, exposing a glaring red burn mark just below her collarbone.

It was the textbook erythema left behind by the electrical discharge of a defibrillator pad.

But Sophie looked right into the lens and sobbed uncontrollably.

"Look at this. These are the bruises he left on me from grabbing me so hard!"

"If my husband had not physically fought him off, I might have lost my baby."

"Please, girls, watch out for yourselves out there. Be careful of the monsters hiding in white coats."

This heavily edited, completely fabricated video had been brewing all night. The like count was already sitting at over two million.

The comment section was an absolute bloodbath. Thousands of angry users were doxxing my address and demanding the hospital strip my license.

Whenever a medical professional tried to leave a comment explaining that the marks were clearly from an AED and the clothing removal was standard protocol, they were immediately dogpiled by the self-proclaimed internet justice warriors.

"Anyone defending this pervert is probably a predator too."

"You doctors always cover for each other. We should report you to the police too and get you locked up."

"Cancel them all. Clean up the trash in this society."

The Chief let out a heavy, defeated sigh.

"Lennie, I know you followed protocol. I know you saved her life."

"But the court of public opinion does not care about medical facts. The public does not know how an AED works. All they see is a male doctor tearing the clothes off a pregnant woman."

He pushed a printed document toward me with a grimace.

"To stop the bleeding and calm the PR nightmare, the board has decided to confiscate your badge."

"You are suspended indefinitely. Go home and lay low."

I looked down at the suspension notice, silent for a long moment.

I calmly unclipped my ID badge from my chest and placed it on the desk.

The moment I set it down, my phone buzzed. It was a former patient of mine whose life I had saved during a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.

I still vividly remembered the beautiful thank-you basket and framed card she and her husband had personally delivered to my office after her discharge. I remembered how jealous my colleagues were of that card.

I thought at least some people would still believe in me.

But when I answered, she was crying on the other end.

"Dr. Lennie, I know in my heart you are a good man."

"But my husband saw the news, and he strictly forbade me from ever coming to your clinic again. I am so sorry."

My mind went completely numb.

Just as I walked out the back exit of the hospital, my phone screen lit up.

It was a text message from an unknown number.

"Still trying to play the noble hero?"

"Pay up, or I will make sure you never hold a scalpel again for the rest of your miserable life."

I stared at the provocative text, a cold, sharp smile creeping onto my lips.

I immediately dialed an international number.

"Hey, it is Lennie. I need a massive favor."

"Yeah, I need you to pull some data for me."

"Contact the airline from my flight yesterday. I need the raw EKG and electrical discharge data logs directly from the backend of the AED I used on that plane."