It could’ve been worse, but the aftermath of that phone call was definitively not the way I wanted to start my residency. "I am sorry your case had to be canceled," is never the first sentence you want to come out of your mouth when you're meeting an attending for the first time. My English teacher in Nicaragua was right: "You'll know you've mastered English as your second language when you can fully understand a conversation over the phone," he used to say. “It’s hard to gauge reactions when you can’t see the speaker.” That one call made me realize how right he was. Despite many years of learning English, I still relied on non-verbal cues to communicate effectively. That moment made me realize I needed a strategy to safely manage my patients until I could overcome this challenge. I began by memorizing the phone numbers of every nursing station. Instead of returning calls when paged, I would walk down to the station and have face-to-face conversations with the nurses. I needed to “see” what they were saying, to capture those non-verbal cues I had taken for granted. I learned their names, speaking speeds and usual reasons they paged me. It didn’t always go smoothly, but during the initial weeks of residency, I steered clear of phone conversations. What I didn't anticipate was that my communication tactic would bring unexpected results. "You received very positive comments from the nursing staff," my program director noted during my first semi-annual evaluation.