Page 7 of Wrong Number Right Doctor

I step inside the elevator and press the lobby button. As the doors slide shut, my phone buzzes again.

Marco: Seriously. Study C5 to T1. Do not freestyle this.

I look at the message. Then I look at my reflection in the elevator doors. Round cheeks. Messy bun. Tired eyes. Stomach full of bruises and hormones. Face of a woman who has made a practical decision and is now being bullied by nerves with names like musculocutaneous.

I type back: I never freestyle. I medically improvise.

Marco: That’s worse.

The elevator begins to descend.

I smile. For exactly two seconds, the world feels almost manageable.

I stare at Marco’s message and then at the little black bars of service in the corner of my screen. Two bars. One bar. Two bars. The clinic elevator is apparently located inside a technological cave.

I need help.

Not emotional help. Absolutely not. Emotional help is expensive and involves people asking what I feel.

I need brachial plexus help. Specifically, I need the notes from someone who understands the brachial plexus instead of simply fearing it, respecting it, and occasionally whispering threats at it. There is one person in our class who understands it.

Unfortunately, that person is Evan Cole.

Evan Cole has unfair cheekbones, a suspiciously clean backpack, and the kind of calm academic energy that suggests he has never once cried into a packet of instant noodles. He also explained Erb’s palsy last week in a study group with such gentle precision that four women and one man forgot to blink.

I am above having a crush on him. Mostly because I don’t have time.

Also because every time he says “clinical correlation,” my brain turns into a boiled potato.

I text Marco.

Me: Do you have Evan’s number?

The typing dots appear immediately. Then vanish.

Then appear again.

Oh no.