More Cruel Resident Stories

For all of you who have been reading Cruel Resident Stories, you already know that my very first senior resident Jessica was, like, my archnemesis. I really, really hated that woman. And I hated her even more when she was assigned as my resident again during my first week of ICU. I was really being punished.

After spending a week of ICU hell with Jessica, I ran into one of my co-interns named Nancy on the wards. One thing I loved about Nancy was that she was very honest about herself and about others. I told her that I hated the ICU, but I didn't hate it as much now that Jessica wasn't my resident anymore. Nancy nodded knowingly.

I was encouraged by this, because I was beginning to think I was all alone in hating Jessica. Especially after the last ICU intern, Connie, had seemed to like her. I grilled Connie about her, and Connie had absolutely nothing bad to say.

Nancy told me that when she was doing cross-cover, there had been an incident and Jessica told Nancy flat out that she had "dropped the ball." Nancy, not being the sort of person who takes shit (unlike me), had shot back that she didn't drop the ball and that she had done everything right and the outcome couldn't have been avoided. Apparently, according to Nancy, Jessica apologized after that. Nancy also told me that she had heard Jessica mumbling about interns not dictating discharges when they knew they had a day off coming up.

“So how come Jessica was so nice to Connie?” I asked.

“Well, they’re both new moms,” Nancy said. “So they relate to each other. It’s a mother thing.”

I told Nancy that I used to go home crying after practically every call with Jessica, and Nancy said, "I'm sure she knew. And that's why she treated you the way she did."