By the way...I prefer Tricia

My roommate and I were recently discussing our personality types.  We generalized ourselves as the outgoing, confident type who rarely confront rude people and smile at everyone we see. We take on hefty challenges with the idea that we are pursuing a lifetime dream of childhood goals and aspirations. But we shortly realize that we are just overwhelming ourselves with stress that is both unneeded and harmful to our efforts of anti-aging and our goal to live to 100. We tend to plan plan plan but when it comes down to it, when we look the bottom-line square in the face, we are actually super anti-productive. It is the sad truth.

But it is this personality that has gotten me stuck right in between a rock... and shall we say a hard place? Yes, I will go the cliched road and say a hard place. 

The first 8 weeks in the ER has me working with Tricia, a 28 0r 29 year old (not quite sure because our conversations have never gotten that far) small and mohawked Chinese woman. There is nothing wrong with either a Chinese woman nor mohawked hair, in fact, I once liked both of them. However, now that I am 2 months into having the worst preceptor of all time, I can validly say I hate them when they come as a unit. 

Nothing short of smart, Tricia is an emergency knowledge phenom. I am sure she could recite every pharmacological concoction starting with generic name, brand name, mechanism of action and all the scary side effects...in English and angry Cantonese. No, actually. I think I know more Chinese then she does. She just looks mean enough that she could stand as a double in a Jackie Chan movie. She could guide a nasograstric tube (a nose hose) with one hand and most likely do it blindfolded. She has been working the tribulations at General Hospital for 5 years and I heard through the grapevine that she accelerated through her training 2 weeks faster then the rest of her cohorts. That's like skipping middle school and going straight into high school at the age of 11. If she were an animal, she would most likely be a lion, at the very top of the food chain.

But alas, she is a raging bitch. And in addition to the large gap that separates us intellectually, there is yet another enormous barrier that separates us socially. I am a butterfly and she is a vulture. I am human and she is some rare species of alpha female rodent who eats her young alive. For example: I enter the room, I smile and greet my coworkers. We discuss the happenings of the weather, the crazy weekend plans or the visits of friends and family. Tricia enters the room, smiles at everyone but me, answers everyones questions but mine, gives longer then one-word-replies to everyone but myself. From the moment I introduced myself to her I have gotten nothing but the cold shoulder that inconveniently is at the level of my 4th rib. I see her interactions with everyone else and it is nice and friendly. 

Personally? Why wouldn't I take it that way.

Circa my 5th day of work:

"Tricia, I like your (ugly) shoes. They are pretty funky (ugly)." This is me just trying to make small talk as we sit and wait for the crazy patients to pour in. Co-workers do this sort of thing right?

She rolls her eyes. "Thanks."

She proceeds to ask me questions about the Cushing's Triad and grills me on the three signs we note when this life threatening syndrome occurs with brain trauma. I am almost positive that no one in the room (attending doctors included) could answer this question to the degree Tricia is looking for. She wants perfection and I frankly am close to it, but where I really fall is somewhere in between amazing and compassionate. Just like the rest of mankind,  I get a little lost on the road to perfection. So my palms start to sweat a little and my answer comes out a bit jumbled. Somewhat accurate but not really medically precise. She rolls her eyes and walks away. 5TH DAY MIND YOU.

Circa 2nd week of work:

Tricia and I are sitting in the break room eating lunch. There are three other nurses as well and Tricia is asking all sorts of friendly questions about their kids and husbands and funny traffic confusion which all Asians tend to share. She is laughing up a storm! Glowing with light loftiness found only in the air of good friends. The three nurses finish their last bite and exit back to the chaos which is our job. Tricias' body turns away from me, the smile disintegrates and she grabs the JCPenny catalog that I note has been on the table since I started. We are alone.

"So, Tricia, are you from San Francisco originally?"

"Yes." She keeps her eyes at an angle and flips the page.

"Oh that's nice. So do you have some family near by?" Grinning. I take a bite of my apple.

"Yes." She puts the paper down and takes a bite of her lunch.

"Mmm, what did you bring for lunch today?" Digging pretttttttty deep now.

"Ravioli." She takes the last bite, stands up, throws her fork in the trash and walks out of the room. Absolutely no attempt for a conversation. Nothing. I chalk it up to perhaps a sad past family circumstance. Maybe she has no family. Maybe each time someone brings up the topic she is transported to the image of her arthritic grandmother who bears no teeth when she opens her lips because they could never afford proper dental care in rural China. Or maybe she just hates me? I fear the latter is more honest.

There is so much clear and evident neglect one can stomach until it starts to rip away dignity. I have really tried not to take her rudeness as personal assault but it is nearly impossible when I witness her go out of her way to avoid interaction with me. This job is challenging enough, I really shouldn't have to kiss major ass at the same exact time as trying to learn the quintessential pearls of life saving. People like me. Generally. I have never not gotten along with someone I work with. In fact, I was once told by a manager, when I was a hostess at the Macaroni Grill in high school, that if he were to ever have a daughter, he hoped that she would turn out just like me. (Awwww). And when I quit my job at Northwestern, I am quite certain that tears streamed from every nurse on that unit. And when I left my job in New York I was coined the "flyest travel nurse Methodist Hospital eva' has seen." So to feel this sense of "dislike" from Tricia has made me question her judge on character.

Like all names with more than one syllable, it is common for people to shorten them. It allows for smoother communication. For example: I know plenty of Josephs that go by Joe. Many Elizabeths that go by Liz or Beth (but the most important one hates that :) Some Sarahs that respond to Sar or even Dominics that answer to Dom. When I address my mom by her first name Julie, I more often than not shorten it to Jules. I think this ties to the evolution and efficiency of  the human brain as it is much quicker to call someone, "Trish" for example than "Trish-a". For "Trish-a" does not roll off the tongue as easily as "Trish."

And I really knew that Tricia hated me when this happened...

(I am walking over to the pediatric cart to pull a pulse oximetry sticker to check an oxygen saturation on a febrile and barfing child which means absolutely nothing to you who are reading this but just know that I was doing the right and perfect thing. Tricia is behind me, following, but I don't know this. I grab the sticker. I turn. AHHHH! She is right next to me.)

"When you go into the room, does the child always start crying?" She glares me down.

"No. She cries whether I am in the room or not." I know what you are insinuating, A-hole.

"Oh. I prefer Tricia, by the way."

 Well, Trish, that's about as non-sequitur as it can get.

I smile. "Of course you do."

Ten minutes later, Dr. G calls across the hallway, "Hey Trish! Can you help me move this Gurney?"

The next morning I hear Dell, the transport man, greet us in Zone 4. "Good morning Trish, how goes it?"

Just last week, the unit clerk gets on the overhead and pages ever corner of the unit: "Trish, you have a phone call on line 2. Line 2, phone call for Trish."

I better alert San Francisco General Hospital in its entirety that "Trish-a" is the new "Trish"...I clearly was the only one to get the not so friendly memo.

There are nights I wake up from tremendously vivid dreams and feel a pit in my stomach that burns like acid. (Some call this anxiety.) I hear her shrilling voice enter my ear, creep through my ear vestibule and end up in the confines of my thoughts. I then throw up a little in my mouth and have a hard time falling back asleep. I am literally losing sleep over how rude this person is. Does anyone else find this unfortunate? If school teachers can laid off for budget cuts and priests ex-communicated from the church for child molestation, then certainly Tricia could lose her job over this rare form of cruel and unusual hazing....right? 

The weird thing...I feel bad. I feel guilty to exploit her on Blind Karma like this...even though the anthology of her wicked behavior should warrant a citizens arrest. Trish and my time together has come to an end (woowoooo) and although I have not said a word to her (I returned that ball to her court the very first day when I said "Hi" only to have her ignore me and curl her lip in a funky direction...) I saw that she had a very nice shade of purple nail polish on today. Nice people like purple so I am sure somewhere under that thick layer of mean and her teenage mutant ninja turtle hairdo, there is a kindred spirit. Maybe even a comrade that, over time, I will be able to hand her an Auto-Transfusion tube and say "Hey, Trish, let's you and I go give that man 700 ml of his own blood together and then laugh about it later when we are giddily restock the trauma carts." Maybe one day, as we are getting off work and punching off the clock, we will walk outside...me to my bike and her to her car...and she will wave..."See ya later Jame. Hope that chain stops falling off! See you bright and early :)!" 

For now, I will take it for what it is. Tricia and I are not a thread that looks well woven into a common quilt. We are different. And that is OK. I see that I am learning more than just skills for a job. More than just skills that critical for the well-being complete strangers. I am learning that in order to have personal well-being I need to embrace the "Trish"-es that ebb and flow in my tide pool of reality.  I don't need a new friend. I have plenty of those. I need Tricia as an instrument to guide me in a direction that is beneficial for myself. 

So, instead of pondering emotions of complete agony in your presence, I want to thank you Trish, for being a bright compass that motivates navigation towards positivity. Right? Because it is easy to show compassion to what you like. What is life worth if everything was so easy. In trenches of negativity, this may be the blindest karma of all.