Standing By

Decoding and Creating

Adam started to stand up. "Hey, Kirstie, can we—oh!" He looked down, horrified, at himself with the surgical scrubs now at his ankles and nothing on underneath, and yanked them back up. Austin, Rob, Chance, Scott, and I were laughing at him, and Avi and Kevin very politely diverted their eyes. Kirstie and Mitch just gawked at him though.

"Oh no," Linzi stated, Adam now with the waistband bunched up in his hand by his side.

"Third pair's a charm?" he asked blandly.

"Don't you dare drop those again, Adam," Austin warned. "I'm scared now."

"Ah, get over it, you got the same equipment I do," Adam told him.

"I'll go see what I can find myself," Linzi promised. "Give me a minute here. Avi, are you saying you did not ring for a nurse?"

"No, I haven't," he said, still staring out the window.

"It's safe now, Avi. All clear," I cracked.

" 'Cuz it's been going off for five minutes now," Linzi said, starting to paw around in the bed next to him.

"It has?" he asked, surprised. Must've been news to him too.

She nodded, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Can you sit up for me, please?"

"Sure." He sat forward and repositioned himself. Something started to slide down the bed, but Linzi grabbed it and extracted the remote with the nurse call button, displaying it to him. "Uh, oops."

Linzi grinned. "No problem. It happens. Now, I'll personally go down to the surg unit and find a pair that'll stay where they belong."

Kirstie pursed her lips. "I might have a solution for ya, Adam."

"Does it involve you staring at something other than me?" Adam asked self-consciously.

"Sorry, but seriously, I was just thinking." She laughed. "You could have just asked your friends for a belt."

I opened my mouth ready to point out all the problems with that idea, then closed it when I couldn't really come up with any. It was so obviously a solution but not one of us could see it.

"Ahh...," Rob muttered, pausing in his eating.

"Well, yeah, that might coulda solved the problem," Austin admitted.

"Duhhh," Chance and I chorused.

"Well, you know, that would make complete sense," Linzi admitted.

"More sense'n any of us had, obviously," Adam said, still clutching at the pants.

"I'm so sorry, Adam." Scott stood up and started undoing his. "Kirst, I been an idiot."

She laughed lightly and quickly at that, not disagreeing in the slightest.

He handed his belt to Adam. "You look about the same size as me. Try it; if this doesn't work, try maybe, ah..." Scott eyed each of us in turn. "Well, maybe Chance's or Kevin's."

Adam accepted it. "Linzi, I'm going to hold my pants up before I give everyone a thrill—or a scare." He nodded in Austin's direction. "You wrap the belt around me and we'll see how it goes."

She nodded and helped slide it in place, neatly clicking it in a middle hole before stepping back. Adam let go of his hold on the pants—and miraculously, they stayed up.

" 'Mazing how that works," I remarked.

"Perfectly," Chance observed, chewing on a bit of beef that had fallen from his taco onto the wrapper. "Like my dad used to always say, can't see the forest through the trees."