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From outside my office, I hear some commotion happening—it starts with some yelling, and then after one shrill scream, I get up from my chair, rush to the door, and open it up, nearly running right into someone.
“What’s going on?” I ask, grabbing a frantic-looking Evie by the shoulders, turning her toward me. I’ve never seen the woman so out of her wits. Her face is pale and her short, curly gray hair askew.
“It’s a rat!” she practically screeches, looking around the room, her eyes darting every which way. A bead of sweat runs down the corner of her forehead.
“A . . . rat?”
“Over there,” she says, squeamishly pointing toward the nurses’ station.
I walk over to the station to find Lucy on her hands and knees, her head under one of the desks.
“Do you see it?” a man says from behind the tall desktop bordering the nurses’ station. I recognize him—he’s the dad from room two, here with his daughter who’s had an anaphylactic reaction to cashews. I’d just checked on them an hour ago. What’s going on?
“I think he’s over here,” I hear Lucy say, her voice slightly muffled from still being under the desk. “Come out, little Cinnamon.”
“Cinnamon?” I ask Evie. “Who’s Cinnamon?”
“There’s a rat on the loose,” Evie nearly screams, placing her hands on her cheeks.
“It’s not a rat,” the dad says, his face worried. “It’s my daughter’s gerbil. She brought it in her backpack. I had no idea.”
“Come on, little guy,” Lucy says, burrowing farther under the desk.
“Get it out of here,” Evie yells.
“I’m doing my best—ouch,” Lucy says, hitting her head on the underside of the desk as she backs out. She leans back on her heels, rubbing the spot with her fingertips, her face looking apologetic. “I don’t know where it went.”
Evie lets out a little shriek. “I can handle blood, infected wounds, broken bones, fingers cut off. But I do not do rodents,” she says, wringing her hands together.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a little brown-and-white ball of fur scamper toward the other side of the nurses’ station.
“There!” I say, pointing over to the desk in the corner where I see it squeeze under one of the rolling cabinets.
Lucy scrambles over to where I’m pointing, grabs onto the cabinet the little guy just went under, and starts to slowly move the rolling file drawer out, away from the wall.
“Please be careful,” the dad says.
“A little help, please?” Lucy asks, and I make quick work of walking inside the nurses’ station and getting down on the floor. I’ve done a lot of things in the name of medicine, but this is a new one—on my hands and knees looking for a rodent.
I hear the clank of something falling on the floor near me, and I look down to see the otoscope that was in my pocket is now on the floor, broken in two, the head separated from the handle. Crap. That was my favorite one.
“Hurry, please,” she says.
“What can I do?” I ask, pushing the useless otoscope to the side and quickly moving closer to Lucy. So close I can smell the citrus and floral scent she’s wearing. Old me would have told her she smelled good and then added something stupid like, Did you wear that scent for me? New me keeps my trap shut. See? Growth. I can still think it—I just don’t need to say it.
“I think we’ve got him cornered,” Lucy says. “If you could ease the cabinet out and block that side with your body in case he tries to go back under, then I’ll try and grab him.”
I do as she asks, slowly pulling the metal rolling file cabinet out from under the desk, keeping a lookout to make sure he doesn’t crawl back under it.
Lucy quickly moves under the desk, reaching her arm back behind it to try and grab Cinnamon.
“Do you see him?”
“Yes,” she says. “He’s just out of my reach.” She’s lying on the floor now, scooting closer with small movements as she reaches for the gerbil. The top of her purple scrub set is riding up just enough that I catch a peek of creamy white skin. I look away.
“Come on, you stale cracker,” she says, her voice sounding stretched as she tries to reach for it.
“Stale cracker?” I ask, not able to help myself.
