Page 83 of The Devil You Know
I could write a novel about that woman.
Alyssa was my senior resident during the first month of my intern year of residency. That meant she was in charge of training and supervising me during the very firstmonth that I was a physician. Instead, she nearly made me quit. Over and over.
Okay, to be fair, I wasn’t the most knowledgeable intern on the face of the planet. But no matter how much I studied, there was no way I could automatically know that ordering an echocardiogram at County Hospital inexplicably requiredtwoforms instead of one. There was no way I could round on ten patients in sixty seconds. There was no way I could have every lab ever ordered on a patient over their lifetime at my fingertips while presenting a patient.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg of what Alyssa expected of me. Her favorite phrase was, “How could you not know that by now?” She used it on my second day.
By the end of my month with Alyssa, I hated her with every fiber of my being. I hated my life, and the only thing that kept me going was the sexy surgery resident who used to make visits to my dorm room. Then I moved on to a new rotation and had a new senior resident named Lily who was… lovely. Inexplicably lovely. If I didn’t know a lab value when I was presenting a patient to Lily, she would say, “Don’t worry! We’ll look it up together.” Then we’d skip off to the computer together. Lily covered a patient of mine once so that I could have an extra day off. She even bought me lunch on two separate occasions!
It was something of a vindication to discover that there were plenty of other interns who didn’t like Alyssa,but nobody hated her quite as vehemently as I did. But that’s okay—every intern seemed to have an Alyssa of their own. My best friend during residency Nina had it out with her senior resident right in the middle of the ICU when the resident repeatedly undermined her and badmouthed her to their attending physician.
When I became a senior resident, I remembered the way Alyssa was and tried to be the opposite, even when my interns turned out to be grossly incompetent. No matter how much they baffled me with their stupidity, whenever they did anything right, I would reward them with an enthusiastic, “Good job!” The truth was, I didn’t have it in me to treat an intern the way Alyssa did. It’s probably the same reason my daughter didn’t get potty-trained until she was nearly four years old.
After Alyssa finished her residency, she impossibly did a fellowship in hospice and palliative medicine. Of all the fields I imagined Alyssa doing, hospice would have been my last choice. It seems like by definition, hospice medicine calls for a physician who is remarkably kind and caring—everything Alyssa was not. Unless it was one of those things where after dealing with Alyssa, you’re just kind of glad to die. That was probably it.
I’ve run into Alyssa a handful of times since then. You’d think after all this time, my memories of her would have faded—and they have. I don’t stay up at night thinking about all the things I wish I had said to her. Buton the rare occasions that I run into her, I sort of want to punch her in the face. And by “sort of,” I mean “desperately.”
So when Dr. Kirschstein tells me that I have to show her how to use our AV equipment or just even be within arm’s length of her, I want to throw up. I’m not even joking. I feel this instant, dizzying nausea that takes me a few seconds to recover from.
“Alyssa and I were in residency together,” I explain to him.
“Is that so?” Dr. Kirschstein smiles in amusement. “You are certainly quite well-connected, Dr. McGill! It seems like you know everyone. Next you’ll be telling me that you know Benedict Cumberbatch.”
Benedict Cumberbatch? That’s such an odd choice of someone a well-connected person might know. Why didn’t he say, “Next you’ll be telling me that you know the President”? Or even, “Next you’ll be telling me that you know Kevin Bacon.” WhyBenedict Cumberbatch?
“Well,” Dr. Kirschstein says, “I expect you’ll make Dr. Morgan feel at home here at the VA. She’s a quite well-respected physician.”
Is she? Damn. I was hoping she’d been discredited and disgraced.
After Dr. Kirschstein leaves, my fingers start itching to send Ryan a text message. He’s the only one around who truly knows how much I hated Alyssa. Ben has heardthe stories, but he wasn’t there when it happened, so he doesn’t reallyknow. Of course, Ryan could match Alyssa shot for shot with being cruel to his residents. But Ryan was actuallytryingto make his interns cry—Alyssa just did it because it was her personality. Now that I think of it, I’m not sure which was worse.
Before I can stop myself, I retrieve my phone from my purse and shoot a text message to Ryan:Alyssa Morgan is giving grand rounds at the VA next week!
I must have caught him between surgeries, because he responds after only a few seconds:The devil returns.
I smile. That’s the great thing about Ryan. Even though he barely had any interaction with Alyssa during residency, he still remembers her on my behalf. I write back:Maybe she’s nice now.
Maybe. Just don’t strangle her to death. You’ll be the first suspect.
Chapter 32
Tonight Ben and I have special plans. We’re going to a peanut butter tasting. Don’t laugh.
This is part of our marriage counselor’s directive that we spend more nights out as a couple. Ben is obscenely excited about the whole thing. He discovered it about two weeks ago, and it’s practically all he can talk about. He’s been texting me about it all day. They’re promising several dozen varieties of peanut butter and unlimited milk to go with them.
It’s an event for adults. I swear.
We have a babysitter booked. Ben has agreed to pick Leah up at preschool so that I can make one final stop after my clinic ends and still get home in plenty of time to taste twenty-seven different varieties of peanut butter. After I conclude the note on my final patient, my phone buzzes with a text message. It’s Ben.
Do you think they’ll have samples we can take home?
I smile at the phone. I imagine the two of us leaving the tasting with a dozen little containers of peanut buttersamples. I don’t think he was this excited when we got married. And he wasn’t exactly casual about us getting married. He was shaking so much during the ceremony that he dropped the ring while trying to get it on my finger. Twice. One of his buddies posted a video of it to Facebook under the title, “Ben’s epic wedding fail.”
Don’t you have enough peanut butter?I write back.
Ben replies:No such thing.
I glance at my watch. I have just enough time to pay a quick visit to Mr. Katz’s hospital room before I have to take off.
