Free Notorious D.O.C. (Hope Sze medical mystery) by Melissa Yi, Melissa Yuan-Innes

cane stumbled. The old man steadied her elbow.
    "Hey!" I called, but Jodi's
dirty blonde hair vanished after Reena. At that pace, we'd lose both of them
before I could dial 911. I backed into the psych room and reached for the phone.
    Nancy laid her hand on mine. "Wait.
She wasn't suicidal during my assessment this morning or when you saw her
yesterday."
    "Right, but—"
    "She's off hospital property
now," she repeated.
    Robert shook his head and shoved his
hands in his pocket. He wasn't getting involved.
    "What are you saying?" All I
could think was that my patients were literally running away from me. What was
worse, two code whites in two days or one code white and one taking off AMA
(against medical advice)?
    "I'll call Dr. Forbes," said
Nancy.
    I stepped back. She'd be better breaking
the bad news. She claimed the phone and spoke in muted tones.
    "It's not your fault," muttered
Robert.
    I rubbed my hand against my forehead.
Wasn't it? Should I have sent the medical student in solo, knowing she was
unwilling to see me, instead of going in myself to try and hurry up the cases?
    And why did Reena hate me so much? I'd
just met her.
    I'd heard of projection and transference
and vaguely understood the concept: patients had a lot of crap, and thought the
therapist was doling it out, when in fact it was their own fears coming back at
them. But I'd thought it only happened after long term therapy, especially
Freudian. Reena had hated me on sight. Why did I make her so nuts?
    She definitely seemed more unbalanced
today. Why did she think I wanted her to go crazy or kill herself? I didn't
even know her. I'd be happy if she stayed at home, eating Corn Flakes.
    Nancy hung up the phone. "Dr. Forbes
says there's nothing we can do. She's a borderline and a frequent flyer, and
now she's off the premises. He's not going to send the police after her. She'll
probably come back on her own."
    Yes, probably tomorrow afternoon, when I
was back on psych-emerg. My eyes ached with fatigue. This was supposed to be an
easy rotation, but so far, it was worse than straight emerg. The ER was
exciting. In, out. Boom, boom. Evening and night shifts took their mental and
physical toll, but you got bragging rights and you had a set time to go home.
At this rate, my next two months would be non-stop Reena Schuster refusing to
see me and making everyone else think I was incompetent.
    Nancy forced a smile. "You two
should go eat. I'll call you when someone else comes in."
    As we trudged up the stairs to the
residents' room, Robert said, "Are you okay?"
    Miniature golf face struck again. I
shrugged. "I don't know why she bothers me so much."
    "That's the borderlines' job, right?
They make you nuts, too."
    I hadn't even diagnosed her as a
borderline. I had no instinct for psych. She told me she was depressed, so I
went through the checklist for depression and thought about a few other
diagnoses like bipolar disorder or substance abuse. That was it. But it was
true, her chart was covered in borderline personality disorder.
    Robert punched in the code for the
resident's lounge and held the door open for me. "I knew someone who
worked with borderlines. She said..." He hesitated and lowered his voice.
"You can tell who they are because they make you so mad. If you want to
strangle them, they're borderlines."
    I half-laughed. "Yeah? The
psychiatrist I worked with said to think of Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction ." I passed through
the door. "Thanks."
    "That's good, too." He stood by
the fridge door, obviously mulling over Reena, but more like he was interested
instead of irritated. "I don't think she was typical, though. The scars on
her arms were old. I doubt she's slashed herself for months, maybe years.
Still, she was angry, and I think she had definite abandonment issues, so she
does fit the profile."
    He was going through the borderline
diagnostic criteria. Anger, fear of abandonment, paranoid or suicidal under
stress, a tendency to idealize or demonize