"I'm serious, you guys, you have to get me out of here."
Ray looked at Bob and then back at Frank again. They both had their arms folded, looming over the bed like sentries, one on each side. "I don't know, Frankie, if the doctors think you should talk to someone-"
"I'm with you, Frank," Bob interrupted him.
Ray made a pained noise. "I'm pretty sure smuggling suicide risks out of the hospital is frowned upon, Bob, you wanna rumble with hospital security?"
"I could take 'em," Bob replied. "And don't say 'rumble'."
"I'm not a suicide risk," Frank insisted. "But no shrink's gonna believe me, Toro, look at me." He held out his arms.
Ray sighed and raised his eyes to the heavens. "Give me strength."
"Trust me," Frank said darkly, pulling at the strings of his stupid gown. "That won't help."
Bob said, "Hospitals are such bullshit, man." Everyone knew Bob hated hospitals almost as much as he hated commercial breaks in stupid places during televised movies. Frank remembered one time when Bob was clambering around trying to encourage a rogue pigeon to fly out of rather than around the shop, and he fell awkwardly and managed to smash a mirror and slice his thigh open, and then he wouldn't go to the hospital for like three days.
" - and you almost died," Ray reminded Bob heatedly now. "And I don't ever want to see anyone's leg turn that color again, Bryar, I mean it. I think Frank should stay here and-"
"There's nothing wrong with his leg," Bob frowned. "And it's Frank, dude, he's not going to stick his head in the oven."
Frank tugged on Ray's sleeve. "I won't," he promised.
"You don't have to help," Bob said, bringing Frank's stuff over so he could get dressed. "You can say you didn't see a thing."
"Of course I have to help!" Ray shrilled, throwing his hands in the air. "If I leave you two alone you'll wind up getting accidental vasectomies or something!"
Frank finished yanking his pants up and slithered off the bed so he could jam his feet into his shoes. "We have to hurry, they said the shrink was gonna be here soon."
"Fucking hell," Bob said. "They won't give you Medicaid so you can get a fucking oxygen tank when your puny little lungs throw a fit, but they can find you a shrink when you don't need one."
"God bless America," said Frank, pulling on his shirt.
The problem was that they didn't know what the shrink looked like, so Frank had to hide every time a doctor walked past, which was kind of a lot, because - hospital. Luckily Frank could hide behind...well, anything bigger than him, which was most things, so they did okay until they reached the emergency room waiting area, and then suddenly Ray wheeled around on the spot and hustled Frank into a chair.
""What-"
"Durning," Ray hissed, him and Bob forming a human wall behind Frank, shielding him from view.
It was depressing, Frank thought, that all his friends knew what his favorite emergency room doctor looked like. He was about to point out that Durning probably knew what Ray and Bob looked like too, but then the girl in the seat next to him said,
"Hello, dancing boy."
Frank looked up in surprise and saw it was the podium girl he'd danced with at the club. She was wearing jeans and a shirt, but it was definitely her. "Dancing girl!"
She smiled. "You are sick?"
"Me?" Frank pulled his sleeves down over his hands. "No, no, just - visiting someone. Are you okay?"
