Brickman was big on asking questions that could never be answered because of his habitual interruption of any answer with the addendum, "And how does that affect the glomerular filtration rate of the kidneys?”
Twice a week, Ralph, Frankie and I met with Brickman, and twice a week, the three of us left Brickman's office more confused than when we had entered. Brickman fancied himself a great educator, and as any one of us would try to answer one of his questions, he would stare out into space, suck on a cigarette as though it was a soda straw, and habitually reach for hair that had long departed his dry scalp.
At the end of every answer, he would come out of his hypnotic trance, say, "Alright," and immediately ask, "And how does that affect …show more content…
Ralph was a proud man and a good student. He needed someone to understand why he was having a difficult time concentrating, and why his answers didn't always match their questions. Ralph needed someone to help him back up rather than keep him down, but that someone was nowhere to be found on Med-A.
In comparison to Frankie Moore, Ralph's problems were minimal. After the first few days on the rotation, we learned Frankie had missed six months during his third year because of a nervous breakdown. Frankie spent a considerable amount of that time in an inpatient facility in the southern part of the state, after which he started outpatient psychotherapy at Keystone before returning to his third-year rotations. Frankie still required hefty doses of major tranquilizers, but his psychiatrist felt he was ready to return to the battlefield.
I could only assume our team leaders were either unaware of Frankie's condition or unsympathetic to it because they seemed to go out of their way to make things tough for him. Frankie could do no right by Andy or Marc, and the harder Frankie tried to please them, the more miserably he failed. There was no question Frankie was insecure, and that insecurity seemed to bring out the killer instinct in other insecure