“I love surgery,” he said, a relaxed smile on his face. Our footfalls in the concrete and steel stairwell sounded like an uncoordinated horse galloping across an asphalt field—I was having a hard time keeping up with him.

“What do you like about it?” I asked, running my fingers lightly along the handrail. I felt the cuffs of my scrub pants occasionally catch on the heels of my clogs as we continued our descent.

“I love the operating room—I love the anatomy, the opportunity to see everything, the ability to fix stuff,” he explained. “It’s a great, great field.”

His enthusiasm was infectious—he never complained about floor work, the stuff that was preventing him from entering and enjoying the magic of the operating room. He greeted patients warmly, spoke slowly, and smiled—even when there wasn’t time to do so.

He told jokes and laughed at himself despite juggling a roster of close to twenty patients. With or without coffee (though usually with).

“Okay,” he murmured, focusing his tired eyes, supported only by the darkening bags underneath, on me. “The attending will probably ask you about the output from the two drains and whether they were serous or bloody. You’ll do great.”

Like the other surgery residents, he looked bored while I presented my patient to the attending surgeon. He, however, consistently prepped me prior to rounds and anticipated the questions:

“So, Doctor Maria,” the attending gruffly asked, “what much did the JP drain put out?”

“About twenty cc’s,” I answered with a confidence that I did not feel.

(”Remember to keep your answers short—surgeons never think they have time,” he had advised me.)

“Serous?”

“Sero-sanguinous,” I said. The attending grunted his approval and moved onto the next patient.

Across the circle, the surgery intern nodded and winked at me in congratulations.

Tom always made time to toss a teaching point at me as I trailed him around the hospital as his medical student. He introduced me to a variety of wounds, provided instruction in basic wound dressing techniques, and made every effort to make me look good during rounds. He actually read my notes (”they need to be shorter”), ran through algorithms with me prior to their use (”remember: airway, breathing, then circulation, okay?”), and bore no shame in telling me about the leather pants he wore to go dancing after working thirteen consecutive days.

“Do you have any questions about what you just saw?” she asked me, pulling the mask off of her face.

“No… not yet,” I answered, peeling the gloves from my fingers.

She tossed her long hair away from her face and smiled. “It’s pretty amazing, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, still recovering from the geyser of fluid that had spurted from the woman’s belly when she made the incision. I never knew that there was so much water involved.

“C-sections are fun,” she said. “They’re generally straight forward and, at the end, you get to pull a baby out! It’s a happy time.”

The night was busy; there were several births, one of which was complicated and ultimately resulted in a stillborn baby.

Irritable and bitter, the chief resident yelled at the OB-GYN intern in front of the entire team on the post-call morning. Looking cooly in the eyes of the chief, the intern said nothing and held her head up without shame. I, along with the rest of the medical students, trembled—both from fear of the volatile chief and lack of sleep.

“I’m sorry she yelled at you,” I said after rounds. The intern had not done anything wrong and there certainly wasn’t any reason for anyone to yell at any time during rounds.

“Oh, that’s okay,” the intern said, a tired smile on her face. “Sometimes people get totally stressed out. Now are you okay? Have you had a chance to eat yet? Are your notes done so we can get you out of here?”

Even on post-call mornings, she offered a few teaching points during rounds as we wandered about the ward. She insisted that I squeeze past her in the operating room to have front row seats to watch how and where the surgeons made their cuts; she then made excited eyes at me.

She actually read my notes and her addendums, in that neat and curvy penmanship, always started with, “Read and agree with excellent/outstanding/fantastic MS-3 note.”

“Do you have any questions before I send you home?” she asked. She never kept me in the hospital for longer than necessary and always made sure I was around for interesting events.

If Christine was ever anxious, she hid it well. Her manner was gentle, her smile was bright, and her enthusiasm for teaching was refreshing. She consistently made time for her patients and medical students and never transferred the angst she received from her superiors onto us.

None of the psychiatry residents I worked with as a medical student influenced me, for better or for worse, to become the resident that I am today. In fact, the only two psychiatry residents that I can recall from that time are The Man from the Banana Republic Catalog and The Woman Who Didn’t Intervene When a Manic Patient Wanted to Have Sex with Me. The former was this impeccably dressed man who wore crisp, white dress shirts, bold, colorful neckties, loose slacks, and shiny shoes. His goatee was neatly trimmed and chic eyeglasses framed his eyes. Everyone stared at him when he walked past—almost as if he was too beautiful to be a doctor. I can understand why the latter didn’t interrupt my interview with the hypersexual manic patient, but I wish she did—at the time, I didn’t know what to do (it was the first manic patient I had ever seen). I had hoped that speechlessness had sufficiently signaled my discombobulation. It apparently did not.

And that’s why I jump in and swiftly redirect any patients—manic or not—who solicit my medical students for sex. I hope they’ll do the same for their medical students in the future.