Yesterday was my last day on Geriatrics. My last day with my senile Attending, my last day on floor eight, with its green walls and lives slowly ending. My last day with the Lebanese Princess who, by no small miracle, I didn't push out a window. It's a day of goodbyes and thank yous and written evaluations. Most Attendings sit down with you, ask you how the rotation went, how they could do things better, what we liked, what we didn't. Sometimes they offer you a job or a reference or an extramarital affair.
The Princess, whom I at once loathe for reasons that betray the inner school marm in me ands slack-jaw marvel for her audacity, makes the following proclamation, "I'm not going to ask (Dr. Attending) because he doesn't like me and he won't give me an A and I need all As because I'm Going To Medical School".
Right. Medical School. I forgot. You're Doogie fucking Hauser.
She continues, "all my Attendings have given me 100% because I asked them to. I've gotten 100% on every rotation this year".
Because that's something you really want to admit in public. To someone who openly wishes a a pack of feral pigeons will peck off your earlobes. Then I stood there, with my mouth open, aghast and astonished, as she proceeds to tell the Senior Resident that he HAS to give her a 100%, the best possible evaluation you could give anyone, the kind of grade you'd give Watson or Crick or maybe that guy who wrote the program for the Human Genome or something. If you were feeling generous. Not someone who has difficultly pronouncing pancreas.
And he did it. He did it. It was really quite something actually. I was completely and utterly amazed. Astonished really.
My hospital: medical integrity at its finest.
