An emergency room physician at the hospital in Midland City. Dr. Ukwende is a black man from Nigeria, but since America doesn’t “produce nearly enough doctors for all the sick people it has,” they must bring in doctors from other countries to make up the difference. Dr. Ukwende is on Martha, the disaster response vehicle that responds to Dwayne Hoover’s public mental breakdown, but he also witnesses Dwayne’s mental health begin to unravel in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn. When Dwayne walks out into the parking lot and hallucinates that the concrete has turned into “a trampoline,” he goes “blooping” across the pavement, but all Ukwende does is comment on the weather. He completely ignores Dwayne’s behavior, which is evidence of his deteriorating mental state—in essence, “a cry for help”—and this echoes mainstream society’s tendency to avoid facing and dealing with mental illness. Ukwende is a doctor, the very person who is charged with the health and well-being of others, yet he does nothing to help Dwayne, who ultimately winds up hurting several other people during an episode of acute insanity.