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“Okay, so I have to ask,” she said. “And I need you to be super honest. Are you sending me all the butt stuff?”

I choked out a laugh. “What?”

“I have gotten all of the weird butt-stuff patients this week. A zucchini, a headless Barbie, an antique candlestick—and the guy asked me to be careful pulling it out because it was his mother’s—are you sending me these? Do you have an arrangement with the charge nurses?”

I shook my head with a chuckle. “No. But if it makes you feel any better, I’ve gotten all the drunk frat boys this week. One pulled out his IV and stripped naked and took off and I had to tackle him before he escaped. Do you have an arrangement with the charge nurses?”

“Of course. But I’m not sending you all the naked drunk frat boys. I’m only sending you the runners.”

I laughed so loud the waitress looked over at me.

“The last drunk frat boy I got thought he was in a drive-through,” she said. “I had to be all like, ‘Sir! This isn’t an Arby’s!’”

I had to pinch tears from my eyes. God, she was funny.

“Every day is a full moon around here,” she said. “Was it this busy at Memorial West?”

I shook my head. “No, not this bad. But then they weren’t a level-one trauma center, so…”

“Yeah, it keeps us from getting bored for sure. Do you like it better?”

I nodded. “I think I do. Never a dull moment.”

She sounded like she was stretching. “Why’d you pick emergency medicine? I’d think it would be a hard specialty with your anxiety.”

This was a common misconception. And I understood it—high-stress job, not great for the nerves. But it was perfect for me.

I’d always known what I was and was not capable of, even as a child. Your parents tell you that you can grow up to be anything. But I knew from the earliest age that wasn’t true. I remember my teacher telling me I could be president one day, and me replying that I didn’t want to because I didn’t like parades.

“I did a short stint in the emergency department when I was in residency in Las Vegas,” I said.

“You lived in Las Vegas?”

“Just for a few years. Zander and I were roommates—I don’t know if you knew that. We go back a long time, he’s one of my oldest friends. Anyway, he wanted to live there. It was close enough to Utah and I wanted to hike all the parks there, so I went with him. It was between pediatrics and emergency services, but I ended up picking the ER. It’s so fast paced it makes me focus. It’s like my brain gets quiet because it only has time for the task at hand. It’s actually pretty relaxing.”

“I guess that makes sense,” she said. “You get in the zone. It makes work go by so fast. God, could you imagine being a surgeon? Nothing to do but think?”

“I would hate it.”

“Did you ever see any celebrities over there?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

I couldn’t tell her who because of HIPAA and she wouldn’t ask for the same reason, but I could give her broad strokes. “Lots of performers,” I said. “Mostly drunk. Contusions, lacerations. Once I had a big musician come through. He had a bruised hand, but I wrote it up as a fracture.”

“You did? Why?”

I shrugged. “Something told me he needed to take some time off.”

“That was nice of you. But what if you’d gotten busted?”

“I’d just do what our residents do to us. Act like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

She laughed. “It’s a time-honored tradition.”

I smiled. Then the server approached the table.

“Can you hold on a second?” I asked.