As a Nurse, I Was Assigned to Treat the Woman Who Made My Teenage Years a Living Hell – When She Recovered, She Told Me, ‘You Should Resign Immediately’

But by the third day, she started watching me like a hawk.

I was scanning her meds one afternoon when she looked at me a little longer than usual.

“Wait,” she said with a smile. “Do I know you?”

She started watching me like a hawk.

My stomach dropped.

I clicked the scanner onto the workstation. “I don’t think so.”

But it was too late. I watched in horror as recognition spread across her face.

“Oh, my God.” Her smile widened with cruel delight. “It’s YOU. Library Lena.”

Just like that, I was 16 again, standing in a cafeteria, staring at the lunch she’d just tipped out of my hands, while her friends laughed.

And that smile told me she hadn’t changed a bit since that time. She wasn’t going to let this go.

I watched in horror as recognition spread across her face.

I didn’t answer. I just held out her medication cup. “These are your morning meds.”

She took them without looking away from me. “So, you became a nurse, huh? Strange… you spent so much time in your books. Why not a doctor instead? Could you not afford med school, Lena?”

I hated how she could find the truth, after all these years, and cut right into it with just a few words.

“What about your personal life?” she continued, studying my hands. “Husband, kids?”

Another question I didn’t want to answer, but I’d have to say something.

“Could you not afford med school, Lena?”

“I have three kids,” I replied. I was definitely NOT going to tell her I was working myself to the bone to raise them alone after my husband left me for his younger colleague the previous year. “What about you?”

“I have a daughter. I feel that having more than one child divides one’s attention too much. Makes it harder to be a really good parent.”

She smiled at me.

I wanted to frisbee my clipboard at her, but instead, I smiled back and left as soon as I could.

After that, it became a game for her.

I wanted to frisbee my clipboard at her.

Little comments. Tiny cuts.

When I adjusted her pillow, she said, “Can you not tug like that?” even though I barely touched it.

When I flushed her IV, she flinched before I even connected the syringe and sighed like I was rough with her on purpose.

If anyone else was in the room, she turned sweet as pie.

Then the door would close, and she’d look at me with that same old lazy cruelty.

And I started to realize — it wasn’t random. She was building toward something.

If anyone else was in the room, she turned sweet as pie.

One afternoon, a CNA named Marcus came in to take her blood sugar.

As soon as he left, she looked me over and said, “That scrub color really washes you out.”

I kept adding notes to the chart. “Do you need anything else?”

“You know, I always wondered what happened to you.”