hi, my name is rachel

One of my favorite rotations in nursing school was my psychiatric clinicals at the VA hospital.

And not because I learned a whole lot, but man alive we sure had fun.

I was shaking like a leaf the first day thinking that I was going to be attacked or something crazy would happen. After spending a few hours on the locked down unit, I learned that even though there were some looney tunes, it was better to be their friend than to be scared.

There was one patient in particular who only took a liking to half my clinical group. And I was one of them. The first time he met me, he asked what my name was and acted super disappointed when I told him. I asked why and he said, "your name isn't Julia. It's Rachel and you're from the Biblical times, not the modern world".

And thus, Rachel was born.

I went by that name for the entire rotation, and even my fellow classmates called me Rachel. "Rachel, may you do this? Rachel, will you be on my team? Rachel, you're so Biblical. Rachel, Rachel, Rachel".

It was the funniest thing ever.

I wish these pictures from my phone were better but they were illustrations he drew for me. The message says "my little Indian girlfriend with the sky blue eyes".

If only I could have all the funny moments with him on video. He would do exaggerated tai chi exercises, stare at you to no end and say that if he couldn't touch, he'd have to show his love in another way (I know that one sounds totally creep worthy, but it was so funny). He also made a list of 8 girls (4 from my clinical group; 4 random names) paired with 8 people from the Bible (including him) and wrote 8+8= forever.

During graduation, we voted on senior superlatives. I was chosen "most likely to get hit on by a psych patient".

And I couldn't have been more honored.

Gotta love all my friends at the VA psych ward!