Revenge is sweet. Just ask “Samantha”, a 2008 NYCOM graduate working at Nassau University Medical Center here on Long Island as we speak.
When Samantha started seeing “Andy”, I warned her: You’re not his type. He’ll never marry you. Find someone else.
I never liked Andy. We shared a house, once upon a time, Andy, Samantha and I.
Three’s Company
Sammi moved into my house when she started classes at New York College of Osteopathic Medicine – “NYCOM,” the medical school in Old Westbury, Long Island, run by New York Institute of Technology. Sammi moved into a guest bedroom on the 2nd floor.
There are no dorms at NYCOM. So students rent in nearby homes.
When Sammi was a second year student, her mother-in-law died. Sammi’s grief-struck husband begged her to come home to Albany for the funeral. Just one day, he pleaded.
She balked. Sammi, truth be told, didn’t even like her mother-in-law. The Dear, Desperate Husband dispatched a taxi to chauffeur Sammi to the services upstate, 150 miles away. The day-trip from Long Island took three hours.
Months later, divorcing him, Sammi would blame him when she failed her COMLEX boards, known in the business as “Step 1.”
Make no mistake, Step 1 is a big deal, the toughest test a med student will ever take. This is the “final exam” for the first two years of classes. Passing it gives you legal permission to work on real, live people instead of cadavers. No exceptions. It doesn’t matter if you go to Johns Hopkins, Harvard, or NYCOM. You must pass Step 1.
Not surprisingly, most students pass.
Future Shock
There’s another reason to do really, really well on Step 1: Hospitals use it to rank applicants.
Program directors don’t admit it, but everybody knows your whole future is riding on this exam. Step 1 is pretty much your only path to a high-paying, prestigious residency in ritzy places like North Shore Hospital and LIJ — or a low-paying public sweatshop for poor people, prisoners and drug addicts like Nassau University Medical Center.
Some hospitals even blacklist students who fail Step 1 the first try. There is a lot riding on this one exam. Especially if you are in this for the money, like Sammi.
Not everybody passes this exam. And that is what happened to Sammi. She failed Step 1.
This really screwed up everything. Sammi was already in trouble for failing Hem/Onc. Now she’d ruined her chances of working at North Shore Hospital or LIJ — which she dearly wanted. Plus, her residency start date was now delayed. Hospital residencies are on a schedule. You begin in July. If you don’t graduate on time, you miss the start date. You can’t start until next July.
And so, as Sammi wrapped up her clinical rotations at the end of 2008, this one blown test was still throwing her off a whole year. Sammi graduated five months late. Not so bad, really. Having no job left Sammi a whole, care-free year before her paid residency at NUMC began.
Sammi would spend her days boyfriend hunting.
Ain’t He Sweet
It was late summer when Andy arrived from California. Andy was about to start classes at NYCOM, ready to submerge himself in the merciless curriculum Sammi once aptly described as “dropping rocks on your head.”
At this point, Sammi and I had been housemates for 5 years. I called her “the sister I never had.” We talked about boys and shopping, complained about our mothers, gossiped about the womanizing NYCOM dean and what to make of his comment – “My wife has the same name.” Sammi had been through one divorce and two love interests by the time Andy moved in.
It didn’t take long to see Andy and I would not get along. Smooth, confident, and well dressed, he could be arrogant and obnoxious. He had an irritating air of entitlement. He was a light sleeper and a morning person; I do laundry at night and can sleep through anything. He was conservative; I was liberal. He watched Fox News and plugged in air freshener; I listened to NPR and planted flowers. We never got along.
To Samantha, however, Andy was her knight in shining armor.
Ten years her senior, he bought her groceries when she was broke, carried her Whole Foods shopping bags, picked up their Starbucks tab, called her “honey.” He paid for her study aids and her Sephora nailpolish. On sojourns to Costco, he dazzled her with vendor samples. They took carefree drives to nowhere in his sportscar. Against all my sisterly advice, Sammi fell hopelessly in love.
It Had To Be You
Then classes started, and Andy hit the books. Poor, needy Sammi, lady of leisure, felt the sting of rejection. Tears flowed. Andy was indifferent. I resented his heartless, cold focus on all things ocular, oncogenic and osteopathic. I reminded Sammi: I told you so.
Stubborn Sammi, however, was determined to make the good times roll, oblivious to Andy’s need for time and space. Four months later, a fed-up Andy was out the door.
This changed nothing so far as Samantha was concerned. She slept there every night, confident she knew the best way to a man’s heart.
Boy did it work. Soon I realized that Sammi was coming home on Mondays to change clothes. Now and then, I would find her sobbing in her car in the driveway, distraught that Andy wanted to be left alone: “Get out!” he’d growl, desperate for solitude. He doesn’t love me, she wailed. I hated him.
Finally, Andy got fed up. On an icy winter morning, after a sleepless night spent listening to Sammi’s loud and inconsolable crying, he ordered her to go and not come back.
“Leave your keys on the counter and take your things!” he snapped, rushing off to an exam. A hysterical Sammi bolted out the door after him and shoved her way into the passenger’s seat. Screaming all the way to campus, she yanked the steering wheel, crashed his car into a pole, and catapulted herself head first through Andy’s windshield in the NYCOM parking lot.
Forgive and forget
Sammi arrived home that night despondent. There was a scratch on her nose from the accident. She said she was now too ugly ever to be loved. Andy would never forgive her.
You’re lucky, I replied. You had no seatbelt on. This could have been much worse.
“Is it over?” Sammi tearfully asked. Wait and see, I said. Give it two weeks.
Sure enough, at the end of May, Sammi and Andy moved together into a real apartment.
It was springtime, and love was in the air. Andy bought the furniture. Sammi being broke as usual, Andy supplied the $3K deposit. A joyful, triumphant Sammi promised not to cling and fantasized about helping him study happily ever after.
Not so fast, I pointed out. It was she — not Andy — who signed this lease.
But Sammi could not see that Andy still had one foot out the door. She simply did not care. He was here now, and to Sammi, that was all that mattered.
Her $1,000-a-week 3-year Internal Medicine residency at the county hospital was about to begin. Life was lovely. Soon, Sammi would be ale to make her own car payments, buy her own gas, pick up the tab for her own food. Maybe she would even paying the seven months of back rent she still owed me.
2-BR Love Nest
True to form, two weeks later, lease or no lease, Sammi changed her mind. Throw $3,000 out the window? Sure! East Norwich was 20 minutes from East Meadow – way too far. She was always late to work. She had to live there, in hospital housing.
No problem, said Andy. They went together to the housing office and she filled out an application.
Now, there is a waiting list of years for these NUMC medical resident units. But with Andy in charge, this was not a problem. Miraculously, against all odds, the unwed couple with no children leapfrogged over the entire waiting list into a 2-bedroom apartment. I could only speculate, but it seemed that Andy’s way with words must have had everything to do with it.
Later, the East Norwich landlord would sued Sammi for breaking the lease. As usual, Sammi shrugged off the Small Claims Court summons. When the judgment arrived in the mail, she was unimpressed. It’s only money, she said. When I’m a cardiologist, I’m going to have plenty of that.
Andy was happy. He was thriving at NYCOM, sailing through the tests. No surprise there. He had prepared for this all his life. Oh… and … he was married.
Wedding Bell Blues…
Andy’s wife was a physician. They had wed suddenly, solving an urgent student visa problem. She was East European, svelte, lithe, toned, disciplined, a former gymnast in search of a U.S. residency, blonde and beautiful. Andy was a U.S. citizen. This was almost a marriage made in heaven.
It was a stable, drama-free relationship, and Andy loved her. Even his email address glued them together: [email protected] . His laptop password was the birth date of their Cocker Spaniel, Lilly. Her photos were everywhere.
Not that Samantha cared about this minor hurdle. She’d convinced herself Andy had no feelings for his wife. They hadn’t had sex in, what, 5 or 6 years, she said. Sammi insisted that Andy had married his wife as a “favor.”
To me, this was just another thing not to like about this sweet-talking two-timer. “Dump him!” I ordered. No!, she replied. I want to spend the rest of my life with him.
This, I understood. Who wouldn’t fall in love with a walking, talking ATM machine? Andy was now handing Samantha cash whenever she asked. God knows, she needed it. Banks had cancelled her credit cards. Payments on her personal loans were backed up for months. She still had no money for food, clothing, rent, utilities, internet, manicures or makeup. She could do nothing without him.
Can’t Buy Me Love
To keep his estranged wife in the dark about his hanky panky, Andy paid all Sammi’s bills in cash.
Sammi’s credit cards and her Hyundai loan – gone, saving her hundreds on car insurance.
When she overslept as usual for one 5:30 a.m. rotation at North Shore Hospital, it took a Sixth Precinct police roadblock in Manhasset to stop Sammi as she flew down Northern Boulevard at the speed of light, straight past the two NCPD officers breaking for coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts.
Not Sammi’s fault, really. She had headphones on. How was she supposed to hear the screaming sirens? And who pays attention to a speedometer at 5:30 in the morning, anyway?
22 points later, it was Andy who paid the lawyer and the tickets, certain the woman who adored him could be trusted to pay him back. He’d scold her harshly. She’d beg for forgiveness. I warned her: You’re not his type. He’s never going to marry you. Find someone else. Let him go.
Still refusing to be dumped, Sammi had a meltdown every time Andy uttered the words “That’s it! I’m leaving!” And now he said that frequently.
I Got You Babe
Frankly, Sammi is hard to live with. She’s messy, thoughtless, and irresponsible. She breaks things and never replaces them. She borrows without asking, apologizes vigorously, and borrows again. She was, as I said, the sister I never had. What normal, healthy man is going to put up with that?
But Sammi would not be left. Whenever Andy reached the end of his rope, Sammi would grovel and wail, convulse and cry. Worn down by Sammi’s steely will, he would stay.
Yet, there was also for Sammi an ongoing faith in the happy ending. Sammi truly believed that if she tried hard enough, Andy could forget he had a wife in California. She tried everything she could to show Andy what true happiness can be with a woman.
Not a bad plan. Let’s face it, a marriage in which the two parties have not had sex for “5 or 6 years” is, in all likelihood, kaput. They’re buddies. They’re not man and wife.
This was apparently the case with Andy, who had entered his marriage 10 years earlier with considerable assets and whose wife was very much OK with their platonic arrangement.
And if things were not working out now, Andy believed they would work out later. The two doctors might open a family practice together in sunny California. Andy’s vision of his future was with her.
Nevertheless, there is no question that this was not an “open” marriage. Andy’s wife never consented to a threesome. No matter how you cut it, Andy was cheating on his wife.
Addicted to Love
Samantha would now prove to Andy that she was the woman of his dreams.
When she found out his wife had a $1.5 million life insurance policy, Sammi signed up, too, listing Andy as the beneficiary. The message: Dump her. Marry me.
Sammi tried adding Andy to her hospital health insurance — a pathetic exercise, worthless to a man covered in full by his wife.
Then Sammi surprised Andy with a joint bank account. Somehow, she signed him up without his permission. Of course, when she told him about it, he stormed down to Bank of America and vetoed it with the bank manager. No one but an idiot would share a bank account with Sammi.
At some point she started doing Andy’s dirty clothes, a chore his high-income, working wife would never do. Naturally, she used my washing machine. Andy was unmoved.
“You’re supporting two women,” she nagged. “You knew the situation,” he shot back.
Of course, Samantha eventually dealt with “the situation.” Like clockwork, Andy’s wife dropped in from California unexpectedly. Divorce papers arrived a few weeks later.
Samantha was making progress. She relished the drama soon to unfold, this cat out of the bag, the betrayal of trust in this medical love triangle.
Alas, that was not the case.
Wasn’t Meant to Be
Poor Samantha. To her dismay, the broken-hearted ex-wife was not vindictive in the least. This was no War of the Roses.
Instead, the guilty, cheating husband felt deep remorse.
In a stroke of contrition, Andy handed over everything of value to his faithful ex-wife.
California law required that she send him five years of alimony. His wife’s lawyer pushed Andy take it. In a state known for girlfriends who sue for palimony, no failed marriage ever ended so gently.
Samantha was livid. “Screw her!” she screamed. Andy would not.
Truth was, Andy had other plans. First order of business: Dump Samantha, the destructive, irresponsible, clinging, self-absorbed, dysfunctional, house-wrecking, obsessive-compulsive Other Woman. He could not stand to spend another year living with her noisy, nosy, distracting, desperate demands for attention, her suicide threats, her abysmal credit rating and spending sprees, her drama, her insane jealously, her nasty, nutty parents.
His marriage had ended. The future was now. It was time to go.
Hell hath no fury…
Over the course of two years, Andy had tried leaving Sammi dozens of times. Now, with Sammi gainfully employed — a job, full title to her Hyundai, a zero balance on every credit card — leaving would be so much easier.
Sammi now owed Andy $35,000. But Andy still believed that this adoring woman would still be thrilled to pay that money back. He trusted her. And why not? This woman, wrapped around his finger, was desperate to live under his thumb. Loan payments were just another excuse to be with him.
But needy, greedy Samantha had other plans. Weary of her role as the Other Woman, she proposed to Andy.
“Will you marry me?” she asked the man of her dreams one romantic night, kneeling sweetly as he sat at his desk studying the glycolysis cycle. He ignored her.
She asked louder. And louder.
“Go!” he barked, swatting her away as though she was a buzzing mosquito. “Go study! Leave me alone!”
Not the words Sammi wanted to hear. This was payback time.
That evening, Sammi decided to tell Andy she was going to “study” at her parents’ home in Connecticut.
A good sign, thought Andy. With Sammi far away, he could focus on schoolwork.
Don’t get mad…
Later that week, a sympathetic NYCOM administrator handed Andy the envelope. It had been hand delivered by messenger, addressed to Andy.
Inside, a summons ordered him to Samantha’s first hearing for a Connecticut Restraining Order against him.
This made no sense to Andy. He called Sammi’s cellphone for an explanation. She let it ring. He called again. Her Russian mother answered.
“Where’s Sammi?” he demanded. “What about the money she owes me?”
“Sammi out of country,” the mother hissed before slamming the phone down. Andy was stunned.
Andy furtively packed his things up and sent them into storage, quick as you can say “arrest warrant.”
As far as he was concerned, Sammi could keep the money. It would be a pleasure to leave. A relief to be rid of her. It’s so easy to move in August.
He could be gone that weekend. Free at last.
Unfortunately, Sammi was just getting started.
Settling the Score
Sammi approached her boss, Dr. Prachi Anand, at the hospital. Months later, she would brag about her scheme: “I told my Program Director that Andy was stalking me.” (Stalking? Really, Sammi? In your dreams.) Sammi and her Andy-hating mother had handed out copies of Sammi’s “order of protection” around the hospital.
OK, this was not exactly an order of protection. But to me, and to everyone else, it could be an order of protection. After all, that’s what Sammi says it is. I assume that’s what it is.
Her con was sickening: her insanely jealous boyfriend had “forced” her to get a $1.5 million life insurance policy and name him as beneficiary. To collect on the policy, he tried to poison her.
He controlled her finances.
He stole from her.
He cancelled her car insurance. He isolated her from her family and her friends.
She needed the judge to issue this order of protection or Sammi would die.
Within hours, Andy’s med school was alerted.
Down and Out…
NYCOM Dean Thomas Scandalis summoned Andy to the meeting in the library building. Associate Dean Mary Ann Achtzinger sat waiting. Dr. Kurt Amsler, Dr. Claire Bryant and other over-educated strangers were gathered for Andy’s “disciplinary hearing.” Stalking? Poisoning? Order of Protection? Life insurance?
Andy corrected Scandalis. There was no order of protection.
Andy handed Scandalis the Connecticut legal papers. The judge had denied Sammi’s application. The decision — “Denied. No immediate threat per statute” – was written clearly across the first page by the court clerk. They examined it quietly. Strangely, no one said a word.
“None of this is true,” said Andy. “She owes me $35,000. This is all about the money.”
The dean smirked.
“Sounds like a bad investment,” he sneered at the poor student across the table. Achtziger and the others chuckled at Scandalis’s little joke. Scandalis held what he said was a “complaint from NUMC.” The meeting was over. They went to eat lunch.
NYCOM sent Andy an email the next day: You have been dismissed.
Plenty of Nothing
Now Andy had a problem. The once-wealthy two-timer had two months’ worth of rent left in the bank. Massive payments on $150,000 worth of student loans were now due, and Andy didn’t have a job. His only income was alimony. That wouldn’t last forever. Suddenly, life was looking very, very bleak.
Worst of all, who was ever going to hire Andy to do anything with a red flag like this from NYCOM? What other med school would even consider him? Who would even believe this was happening?
More urgently, where was Andy going to live now that he had to leave the hospital apartment?
Andy rented a bedroom on craigslist from an elderly couple. A few weeks later, he did the math, and said goodbye, assuring them he was headed back to California.
But Andy didn’t have the money to drive to the West Coast. He was going nowhere.
Broke, homeless, unemployed, depressed, in debt up to his ears, his marriage a sad memory, Andy packed his stuff and moved into his car.
Alas, hell hath no fury. Andy was blissfully unaware that Sammi had already requested another order of protection. A hearing was scheduled in Nassau County in mid-October. He wouldn’t hear about it for almost a year.
Winter sets in
I saw Andy at Starbucks one day. He had the gall to come over and ask, nonchalantly, if he could move back in. I im-politely declined.
But I kept running into Andy in parking lots. I began to wonder when he went to classes.
In December, Sammi came over for a friendly chit-chat. She dropped a bombshell: “Andy was stalking me,” she said, “so I got an order of protection against him.” I congratulated her. This ditz had finally stood up for herself. Then Sammi told me the rest of the story.
“I told my program director,” she said, trying not to burst into laughter. “They called the school and he was expelled.”
I realized Andy had been living in his car for months. After she left, I went to find him.
There he was at Starbucks. Dressed in Ralph Lauren and Gucci, a gold bracelet gleaming on one wrist, a Movado watch on the other, he was staring straight ahead, silent and stoic. We sat in his car and talked.
“I can’t believe she did this to me,” he said quietly. I couldn’t believe it, either. And to think I didn’t even like the guy.
Andy met with my child support lawyer. I assured him the school would straighten out this misunderstanding. But NYCOM ignored the phone calls; the lawyer got nowhere.
A blizzard, then a snowstorm, then another blizzard wracked Long Island through the Winter of 2011. I thought about Andy in his car, waiting for the hopeful phone call, buried under drifts and ice, curled up with his comforter and pillows.
Andy? After he had given her so much? He asked me: Why?
Over the next year, Sammi would apply for three more orders of protection.
‘We’re sorry. Please come back.’
Andy is no killer. He just wants to go back to med school. He doesn’t want to sue anyone. He’s waiting for NYCOM to call him and un-do what they never should have done: We made a mistake. We’re sorry. Please come back. Sort of like Duke University did after they put their accused lacrosse players on leave.
Yes, Andy could be heartless. I saw that side of him many times. Sammi cried real tears.
But Andy could be selfless, generous, focused, and responsible. This is a man who loves medicine and patient care.
There is a monster here. But it is not Andy.
In 2011, NYCOM announced that Dean Thomas Scandalis, who giddily expelled his 2nd year medical student, would be “retiring” at the end of the 2011-12 school year. Most NYCOM students were puzzled.
But thrice-divorced Scandalis’s dismissal had nothing to do with expulsions. It was his other mistakes that spurred their decision to sever this relationship. Whereas Duke University apologized its innocent Lacrosse Team players after they were expelled and charged with rape, NYCOM was indifferent. And no one has shown a trace of concern about bashing the college’s Code of Ethics. Go figure.
That includes Barbara Ross-Lee, D.O., who is known across the campus as “Diana Ross’s sister.” It includes the icy Associate Dean Mary Ann Achtziger, who is supposed to run fair disciplinary hearings. Then there’s the deposed Scandalis. Maybe he was looking to replace Dr. Ross-Lee on NUMC’s Board of Directors. See no evil, hear no evil.
So sue me
Andy wanted to be a doctor. Not a plaintiff. But if he doesn’t litigate, he’ll be answering one question for the rest of his life: If it’s not true, why didn’t you sue? As it is, this man will be lucky to work as a janitor in Sammi’s hospital.
Sammi cannot help that she is a flake. She is who she is.
Scandalis? Achtziger? Ross-Lee? NYIT President Edward Guiliano? There’s no excuse.
By now, they all know Sammi sold them the Brooklyn Bridge. This was a big, terrible mistake. A mean thing to do to someone. Evidently, they’re not the mea culpa types. At least the Duke Lacrosse Players got an apology.
‘Sounds like a bad investment.’
Ever hear that definition of “integrity?” What you do when no one else is watching?
Where is the moral compass at New York Institute of Technology?
As their arrogant, sadistic senior colleagues ambushed and then kicked, and kicked, and kicked this poor, bewildered student out the door, what went through the heads of the silent observers at the table in the library building? Kurt Amsler? Claire Bryant? Did they care?
How do these people sleep at night?
NYCOM, do you hear me?
First, do no harm?
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