In vocational school I spent some time training at The Med. On my first day, Tanya and I were walking back from the ED (Emergency Department) where we’d dropped off a patient. A man and his wife came rushing up to me and asked where he should go to find his family member. I immediately ceded the floor to the employee standing right next to me.

They stood there, mouths agape, unable to make words. Why the hesitation? My confusion cleared up when I saw the look on Tanya’s face. Pursed lips and the dead-eyed determined glaze of a woman dealing with idiots. Just then a young man in a long white coat rushes up to the couple with that comforting sense that he’d been looking for them all along. The triad frantically wanders off and we keep walking.

I looked at Tanya and she looked at me. “You saw that, didn’t you?”

I cast my eyes down, “Yeah,” I sigh, “It’s what I think it was?”

“Yep.”