Mind the Bleep

6 | Am I Distracting?

"I fucked up."

"Yup, you did." Dawn droned, her lips hanging open in a perfect circle as she swiped her dampened eyeliner wand over her top eyelid. Her hand quivered once she reached the inner canthus of her right eye, causing an unfortunate inky black line to grace her nose. "Ugh!"

"You haven't messed up." Amari encouraged, currently scrawling away in his fifth drug chart of the hour. "I'd help you look for Jasmin, but I swear I'm doing the job of a foundation doctor and a registrar at the moment."

All three of their heads shot to the left of the Doctor's Mess at the exact moment that a harsh snort-snore resonated throughout the room. Sure enough, Gerrard's gangly figure was sprawled out across two sofas, the back of his hand situated over his forehead, as several scratchy snores exited his mouth and convulsed his body.

The Doctor's Mess was located in the bowels of the hospital, in an overlooked unmaintained corridor away from patient encounters. Adorned with polystyrene cups upon polystyrene cups of varying contents, and magazines that predated the birth of most of the current foundation doctors. It was nearly always filled with undesirable and disfavored objects; today's order of the day was Doctor Gerrard Ali.

"Does that man even do any work?" Dawn rustled; an exasperated expression written across her powdered face. "It's literally day three, and he's making Amari work his ass off! Turn around and show Callie what I mean."

"Dawn, I don't thi—"

"Turn around, Amari." Dawn urged, giving him a gentle nudge.

He exhaled a deep and grievant sigh, but hailed from his chair, and swivelled around, lifting his scrub top, to reveal the baggy material around his rear end.

"See! There's literally no ass left!" Dawn gasped, the palms of her hands flying to her mouth as she illustrated her point. Amari hitched his top back down, whizzing back into his seat, and rolled his eyes before returning to his scribbled notes; his exhaustion was paramount by the way his writing no longer seemed to resemble actual words.

"What exactly is your obsession with men's butts?" Caliana felt the wave of giggles rise within her chest.

Dawn settled her eyeliner kit onto the table, her elbows nestling upon the table. "Well, it all started in my childhood. I was watc—"

"Actually, never mind." Caliana waved the thought away with a flit of her hands. "Can we return to the issue at hand? I lost my first-ever patient! How do you even lose a patient?" She mumbled more to herself than anyone else.

"You haven't lost her. I mean, security's been hanging around the whole hospital all day. I doubt she could've gotten that far. She's probably just hiding out somewhere." Amari suggested.

"What? For four hours?! Caliana answered despondently. "I've looked everywhere already. I don't know where a fifteen-year-old girl would go to hide, honestly. I can't think of anywhere else to look." She thrust her head into her hands.

"Last time I checked; I don't think I have the right genitalia to offer any suggestions." Amari quipped.

"Probably back to the boyfriend?" Dawn replied, frankly. She witnessed the appalled glare etched across Caliana's face and explained herself. "What? It's true. You've said it yourself; she thinks he loves her. And now because of you and Doctor Rhys, she thinks the whole world is against her, so of course, she might go back to her place of comfort. Come on, you were a teenage girl once too, Callie."

Caliana's shoulders wilted, her mouth falling into a pout as she turned towards Amari.

He shrugged. "I think Dawn might be right."