“That would be him.” I was a baby when the show initially aired, but it had been my dad’s favorite. He had all the episodes on VHS and watched them all the time while I was growing up.
“Are you guys speaking a foreign language?” Bailey asked. “Furry alien dude?”
Lyla tipped her head to the side. “I know you’re younger than me, Bailey, but you have to know who Alf is. Like, girl, do you live under a rock?”
“No,” Bailey laughed. “I was just born in the twenty-first century.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “What?” Bailey was way younger than I thought she was. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
Oh, sweet Jesus. Bailey was just a baby.
I opened my eyes and dropped my jaw.
“Girl, what?” Layla wheezed. “How the hell are you that young?”
Bailey tipped her head to the side. “Uh, well, because I was born January 3rd, 2001.”
“A baby,” I whispered.
“How the hell are you an RN if you’re only twenty-two?” Layla demanded.
“I graduated early when I was sixteen and started college right away. I passed the NCLEX when I was eighteen.”
“You somehow made me feel incredibly old and stupid all at the same time,” Layla sighed. “When I was eighteen, I was a senior in high school and had no clue what I wanted to do with my life.”
“Same,” I agreed, “although I did know I wanted to be a doctor. That didn’t happen until I was almost thirty, though.”
“By the time Bailey is thirty, she’ll have been a nurse for twelve years.” Layla whistled and shook her head. “Damn. Now I feel really old.”
“You feel old?” I laughed and stood. “I am absolutely ancient and need to go lay down now.”
“Maybe wait until after you make your rounds,” Bailey suggested.
Was she joking or being serious? “Uh, yeah.”
I had three patients to check in on, then needed head back to the ER for whatever else was going to come through the door today. The ER was short on doctors, and I had been filling in when they needed me, which tended to be a lot. I had to admit that I did like the rush I got when a patient walked through the door. You never knew what was going to happen.
The past four years, I had loved working in NICU, but it was nice to have a change of pace in the ER.
“Birdie!”
I turned and watched Luna, Greta, and another woman walking toward me.
“Are you headed to check on Easy?” Luna asked.
“Did his tests come back?” Greta interrupted.
I looked between Greta and Luna. “Uh, hello to you, too.”
“Morning,” Greta and Luna chirped in unison.
“And, yes, Easy is on my list of things to do. Uh, people to do. Check on.” Why were words hard? It was like I knew what I wanted to say, but sometimes, it just didn’t come out as I wanted.
Greta snickered. “I don’t think he’s up for doing that right now. At least, not until you figure out why he dropped like a ton of bricks yesterday.”
I had planned on making Easy’s room my last stop on my rounds, but that wasn’t going to happen with these three hunting me down in the hallway. “I haven’t gotten the results back from the MRI yet. I do plan on swinging by his room, but right now, I don’t have any answers about why he passed out yesterday.”
