Betty Quinlan and Nurse Holt blocked out the moans and cries of the students all around them. They locked their focus onto the children laying on each of their exam tables.

Betty stared at the barely lucid Dark Brother before her. He clutched his chest and gasped for breath. Betty grabbed a pair of bandage scissors off a nearby tray and cut through his robe like butter. She then sliced through his black T-shirt. Once the fabric was gone she flinched while spotting the enormous patch of red and purple skin on the boy's chest.

"Third degree bruise on the sternum," Betty stated. She glanced at the pulse oximeter clip attached to the cultist's right index finger. "Oxygen saturation is 92%. Possible pulmonary contusions?"

Across the room, Nurse Holt finished bandaging a girl's arm. "Most likely, but what's the scarier thing we have to rule out first?"

Betty stared at the boy's ravaged chest and imagined the organs lying immediately under the skin. "Punctured lung," Betty answered.

Nurse Holt asked, "Which can lead to what life-threatening crisis?"

Betty considered what would happen if the balloon-like lungs were breached. "Air leaks in the chest. Pneu…pneumo…"

"Pneumothorax," Nurse Holt finished. "Brilliant. How do we rule that out without an x-ray machine?"

Betty tried to imagine what the boy would look like if air was spilling into his thoracic cavity. "Swollen chest and we can feel the…uh…damn it," Betty cursed herself. "The crinkly stuff."

"Subcutaneous emphysema," Nurse Holt explained while whipping the stethoscope off of her neck and joining Betty. "And yes, you might feel that if the tissue right under the skin is damaged." She ran her hands down the boy's ribs. "We also listen for quiet lung sounds," she said while placing the bell of her stethoscope on one side of the boy's chest, then the other. "No evidence of pneumothorax. What now?" she asked.

Betty stared back at the pulse oximeter, which dropped to 91%. "Flow-by oxygen, 600mg ibuprofen, and ice pack." She considered the countless other bruises she and Nurse Holt had treated over the past few months. "We can't do a compression bandage around the chest if he's not breathing well. We also can't raise the wound above his heart."

"Incredible," Nurse Holt told her protégé. "Now start the treatments and then move on to the next patient."

Betty nodded while grabbing a portable oxygen tank. She offered the Dark Brother a face mask just as the nurse's door swung open. She cringed at the idea of more patients before sighing in relief.

"Thank goodness," Betty said as Ike, Carl, and Libby strolled inside. They cast anxious stares at the dozen bleeding and moaning children in the waiting room atop chairs and gurneys.

Libby cringed and looked away from an open wound. "This is a lot."

"You're telling me," Betty agreed. She studied the three and asked, "Only three of you could come?"

Ike calmly answered, "The others have their hands full."

Carl eagerly said, "But we're here to help!"

Betty offered a slim smile. "Well I appreciate it. So, do any of you have any medical experience?"

Carl looked from side to side at his silent partners. He raised a hand and said, "Yeah, I have tons."

"Great. You're in charge when Nurse Holt and I are too busy." Betty pointed at the closed door leading to Nurse Holt's office. "There are some extra scrubs in there. You all go get changed and meet me in the treatment area. Be quick."

Betty hurried towards the medicine cabinet to find her patient's ibuprofen. Libby turned to Carl and asked, "What was that about?"

Carl was flummoxed. "What do you mean? I'm in and out of hospitals all the time."

Libby protested, "I don't think that's the kind of experience she was talking about."

Ike said, "Well, it's too late now. We're at Carl's mercy. Let's get changed."

The boys headed towards the office until Libby said, "Wait." She glanced around at the horde of injured children. "These kids are all here because they're scared and rioting. What if the school had something to distract them?"

Carl asked, "Like what?"

Libby spoke faster as her mind raced. "Like a TV show! We can make a medical drama about you and Ike working here. People can't get enough of those shows."

Ike asked, "Why not just play Courtney's movie? It's already finished."

Libby shook her head. "Her documentary is all about the school falling apart. That's not a comforting distraction. It might even make some kids start another foam war."

Carl looked at the clock over the clinic's door. "But the audit's in three and a half hours. How do we make a TV show and air it before then?"

Ike asked, "Will it have to be live?"

Libby said, "No, we have time. I'll call Oleander down here and have him bring two cameras. We film for two hours, edit it in thirty minutes, and then we air it at eleven. Everyone will be so distracted that Betty will have an hour without patients to clear out this office before the inquisitors arrive. What do you all say?"

Ike offered a playful smile. "I'm in, but on one condition. Carl's the star."

Carl's eyes quadrupled in size. "Me? Really?"

Libby protested, "But Ike, you're the most badass kid ever. You're super interesting."

Ike shrugged. "I'm a better supporting character. The Tailor needs the limelight for once. What do you say, Carl?"

Carl slipped a pair of sunglasses over his spectacles. "Let's make some TV magic!"

On a bedside table, an alarm clock ticked over to 9:00 a.m. A loud beeping blared out until a hand smacked the machine off. Carl Wheezer groaned while tossing away his blanket. While he rose and stretched, his voice started narrating the scene.

"Ever since I was a little kid, I've been afraid. I spent my whole life being terrified of getting hurt, embarrassing myself, and most of all, disappointing people."

Carl rose from his army cot and groggily walked across the cramped janitor's closet towards the utility sink. He began to brush his teeth and stared at his own eyes in a grimy mirror.

"But that all changed once I took a chance on a home ec project. I wondered, why do dresses have to be rightside up? So I put the skirt on the top and sleeves on the bottom. The rest was history."

Carl slid into his navy blue scrubs and styled his orange mohawk.

"Being on the cover of Preteen Vogue and meeting deadlines for Donna Karan changes a person. Becoming the Tailor taught me that I can do anything as long as I believe in myself. So when I was asked to intern at Holt Memorial and save Retroville Middle School, I knew I could do it. As long as I had a good friend at my side."

A loud knock filled the room. Carl opened the closet's door to reveal Ike Burke, decked out in his own scrubs. He offered Carl a steaming up of hot cocoa and a smile before the two marched down the hall.

"Ike and I became friends in the usual way. I was his pack mule during a foam war before a scary girl I know shot him. Ever since then, we've been thick as thieves."

A sepia tone and wistful music ushered in a flashback. Carl and Ike wore blue and white sailor suits while sprinting down the halls. Both carried a stick and rolled a hoop down R.M.S.'s hallways.

"You better hurry, Ike!" Carl shouted as he pulled ahead.

"I'm gonna beat ya!" Ike ecstatically shouted before cherubically laughing and outpacing his friend.

A group of nearby kids stopped rioting and stared at the boys in confused disgust.

The sepia tone vanished as a closed door dissolved into focus. Hopeful music swelled as Ike and Carl stared at the two words which were hastily painted onto the glass.

HOLT MEMORIAL

Ike turned to Carl, who offered a confident nod. Carl opened the door to reveal a waiting room filled with sniffling and moaning children. They filled every chair, were sprawled out on the floor, and lay on gurneys. The music died as Ike and Carl looked at each other in horror.

"Suddenly, six years of science classes didn't seem like enough."

"There you are!" Betty shouted while storming towards them. "What is wrong with you? I asked you to get changed a half hour ago."

Ike said, "Sorry, we had to get the hoop rolling footage."

"What?" Betty's jaw dropped in confusion before she swung on Libby and Oleander behind their cameras. "Oleander, where did you come from? And why do you two have cameras? I asked you all to help me treat these patients."

Libby's unseen voice explained, "Trust us, this is going to help calm the school down. Carl and Ike will help you. Oleander, cut out all of this stuff."

He answered, "If you want me to edit this in thirty minutes I don't think I'll be able to."

Libby nervously whispered, "Then stop talking!"

Betty glowered at the camera for a long moment before sucking in a deep breath. "Fine, whatever." She pointed at Ike and Carl. "You two come with me."

Betty led them into the treatment area and pointed at a sixth-grade girl lying on the exam table and clutching a blood-soaked towel to her nose. "Let's round on your first patient."

Ike and Carl shared a confused glance. Carl shrugged and said, "Okay. Clockwise or counterclockwise?"

Betty said, "No, Carl. It means we talk about the case. This is a twelve-year-old Caucasian female with blunt force trauma to the skull. She's suffering from a severe case of episkasis."

From across the room, Nurse Holt corrected, "Epistaxis."

Betty cringed and nodded. "Epistaxis. It means a nosebleed. Now what do you think we should do to treat her?"

"This was it. My first real test as an intern. If I was going to wow my senior resident, I had to nail the answer."

Carl lifted his hand into the air. "Tilt her head back to keep the blood in."

Betty shook her head. "That would make her swallow it. That can upset the stomach and may even affect her breathing."

Ike offered, "Then make her lean forward? She could keep squeezing it with a towel and maybe…uh…use an ice pack?"

"Excellent!" Betty flashed him a smile. "The ice pack will help constrict blood vessels and stop the bleeding. If that doesn't work after ten minutes, we'll soak cotton balls with epinephrine and place them in the nostrils to make the vessels even smaller. Ike, why don't you get an ice pack and start the treatment?"

Ike mouthed Sorry, to Carl before heading towards a fridge near the supply closets. Carl sullenly watched him go.

"I was off to a rough start. While Ike got to actually treat a patient, I was given the bane of any intern's existence: scut work. I had to do all of the patient's exams…"

Inside Nurse Holt's office, a teenage boy in a full body cast sat in a gurney. He glowered at Carl while the intern frantically mashed buttons on a pair of calculators. "Hurry! I need at least a B!"

Carl frantically cried, "I don't know Euclidean geometry!"

"Manage all of the patient's labs…"

Carl sprinted across the waiting room just before a pack of Labrador Retrievers jumped up and plowed him into a wall.

"And worst of all, make some really hard calls."

Carl sat at Nurse Holt's desk and stared at the phone before him. He closed his eyes in sorrow and desperately said, "I hate to say this, but you don't have long. You need to get here right away." Ike sat beside him on the corner of the desk and put a hand on his shoulder.

A bored voice crackled through the speakerphone. "We'll get there in twenty minutes or less. Now what toppings did you want?"

Ike said, "Mushroom and onion."

"And the little weenies on top," Carl added.

After a pause, the man sighed and said, "Okay, and sausage. Cash or card?"

Carl said, "Just put it on Nurse Holt's account."

"That is not how pizza places work."

"It didn't take long to learn that the worst part of being a doctor is when the system won't let you help a patient. But sometimes, rules are made to be broken."

Betty stared at the devastated girl on her exam table. "I'm sorry, but we're going to have to amputate it."

The sixth-grader clutched her injured hand and began to sob. "But the Retroville Nail Art Competition is this weekend!"

Betty pointed to the half-dangling nail on the girl's index finger. Her voice was sympathetic but firm. "There's nothing we can do. Most of the fingernail is loose. Carl, trim it."

Carl's hand shook while he placed the nail trimmers in position. The girl's cries turned hysterical as the blades slammed closed and the unicorn-adorned fingernail fell to the ground.

A dramatic THUD boomed as the keratin bounced off the floor in slow motion.

"Come on," Betty told her intern. "Let's move onto the next patient."

A desperate hand on Carl's arm halted him in place. The quivering girl asked, "What do I do now? What do I live for?"

"Carl!" Betty shouted. "Come on."

"We can't just leave her like this," Carl protested. "I have an idea."

Carl, Ike, and Betty stood over the desk in Nurse Holt's office. Carl pointed at the enormous technical drawing of a fake nail sprawled across the desk. "This is an acrylic nail. We can mold it into a unique shape that attaches to Sarah's finger, remake the unicorn with nail polish, and adhere it with something called glue. Then she can win her competition!"

"Carl, we don't have the time or budget to craft a prosthetic for every injured kid. Sarah can survive without that nail."

Carl slammed his fists onto the table. "But would she really be living? Or just be alive?"

Ike offered, "I'll call up her insurance company and convince them to cover it."

"There is no insurance company!" Betty snapped. She threw up her hands and said, "Just make the stupid nail!" before storming out the door and slamming it behind her.

Carl turned to Ike and grinned. "Ready to get to work?"

Ike lowered a pair of safety goggles over his aviators and nodded.

"Helping Sarah wasn't easy. It was risky."

Ike and Carl stood in the middle of the woodshop and fed a plate of acrylic glass into a table saw.

"It took incredible skill."

Carl sat in his Tailor's studio before a miniature easel sporting the fake nail. While he clipped a pair of surgical loupes to his glasses, Gjord handed him a palette covered in eight colors of nail polish. Carl dipped a finely tapered brush into the pink lacquer, then started painting.

"And it put me on thin ice with my senior resident. But it was all worth it to see the look on Sarah's face."

"There we go," Carl said while gently applying a coat of glue onto Sarah's injured nail. He delicately pushed the acrylic nail onto the glue and held it in place. After a few seconds, he released his hold. "What do you think?"

Sarah stared in awe at the unicorn sporting an orange mohawk and failed to fight back tears. She wrapped Carl in an embrace which he readily returned. "Thank you. Now I can win that competition and get my parents back together."

Carl nodded and cradled the girl's hair.

From across the treatment area, Betty stared at her intern with crossed arms and the barest hint of a smile.

Ike and Carl sat in the hallway outside Holt Memorial, each leaning against an opposite wall. An open box of half-eaten pizza rested between them.

Ike bit off a hearty chunk and complained, "I don't think we're doing a very good job. Betty is furious with us."

Carl chewed on his own slice and pointed out, "She's only upset with me. You're doing fine."

Ike shook his head. "While you were saving Sarah, Betty had me drain an abscess. She got really mad when I accidentally put all the pus back in." He tossed his half-eaten slice back in the box and asked, "How can we impress her?"

Carl scrunched his face in thought. "You know, I didn't become a great tailor until I started thinking outside the box. Maybe that's what we have to do - get creative."

Ike eagerly nodded. "You're right. What do you have in mind?"

Ike and Carl stood in Nurse Holt's office on opposite ends of an empty whiteboard. They both sported white coats and smiled at the camera. Ike said, "We here at Holt Memorial aren't just practicing cutting edge medicine. We're creating it."

Carl eagerly nodded. "My colleague and I have seen dozens of patients suffering from blood loss. So we created a new treatment."

Ike went on, "It's called autologous gastrointestinal transfusion."

From behind the camera, Oleander said, "Fascinating. How does it work?"

Carl jumped up a few times before finally reaching the top of the whiteboard. He spun it around to reveal three diagrams in a row connected by arrows. The first was a child's face with a nosebleed and drops of blood falling from the nostrils. The second picture was the droplets being collected in a cup. The final image was the same child sipping from the cup.

Ike explained, "We take the blood that our patients are losing and collect it. We then administer it into the gastrointestinal tract via an oral infusion tube."

Carl eagerly held up a crazy straw.

Ike went on, "The stomach breaks down the blood into its component molecules. The body uses these as energy to create fresh blood."

Oleander asked, "So you're feeding people their own blood?"

Ike nodded. "Yes, but scientifically."

Carl raised a glass and sucked on its straw. "It also helps with asthma."

The door burst open as Betty sprinted into the room. "Don't drink that!" She slapped the cup out of Carl's hand and screamed, "Get back to work!"

"Letting your chief resident down again and again eats away at you. The only thing worse is losing a patient."

Betty finished hooking up one of the Maroon Molecule's victims to butt support when Carl and Ike sheepishly walked up. She spotted them out of the corner of her eyes, sighed, and slowly swiveled their way. "What now?"

Ike cleared his throat and elbowed Carl in the gut. Carl rubbed his waist and sheepishly asked, "Promise not to get mad?"

"No I don't promise that, Carl!" Betty shouted. "What did you two do?"

Carl rubbed the point of his right shoe against the floor. "We lost a patient."

Betty stumbled back in shock. "What? Who? How? No one here had life-threatening injuries."

Ike said, "You know that feral kindergartener who's been hiding in the vents since last I.O.P. day?"

Carl chimed in, "We were managing her fluids when we took a quick break. We were just sipping on a little…uh…red juice-"

"Stop drinking blood!"

"And when we turned around she was gone."

Betty sighed in relief. "So she's alive?"

"Probably," Ike answered.

Betty rubbed her brow. "That girl was severely dehydrated and malnourished. We need to find her. Where -"

The lights abruptly cut off and plunged the room into darkness. Carl hysterically screamed in terror while Oleander said, "Hang on. This thing has night vision."

The room switched to a green hue and revealed two shining eyes peering through a grate high above.

"She's in the vents!" Libby screamed as the child leapt onto the back of Betty's neck and got to clawing.

"Life in the clinic isn't easy. Every case wears you down. But sometimes, when you're at your lowest, you're given an opportunity to prove yourself."

The clinic's doors burst open as two paramedic live action role players wheeled a gasping seventh-grader in on a gurney. "We've got a stat here!"

The EMTs rolled the child into the center of the treatment area. Betty and Nurse Holt surrounded the patient. Carl and Ike tried to join but a furious Betty flashed them a palm.

One EMT explained, "Eleven year-old Hispanic female. We got a call that she was struggling to breathe after buying a granola bar from the school store."

Carl studied the child's ruddy skin, swollen fingers, and desperate gurgles.

"And when you're given that chance, you have to take it."

"Anaphylaxis!" Carl screamed while ripping an EpiPen from his pocket. He sprinted forward, shoved Betty to the floor, and buried the needle deep in the girl's thigh.

"I'm cured!" the child immediately shouted before hugging Carl.

Betty rose to her feet and snarled, "Carl, you can't just give someone epinephrine before you're sure of a diagnosis." Her face softened as the girl clutched Carl tighter. Betty sighed and admitted, "But you did save her a few seconds before Nurse Holt would have. So good job…I guess."

As Carl beamed, one final voice-over ended the show.

"Despite all the struggles we doctors face, it's these little moments that make it worth it. All you need to keep going is a clap on the back from a friend…"

Libby's hand reached into view and patted Carl's shoulder.

"A hug from a proud colleague…"

Ike wrapped Carl in a tight embrace. They jumped for joy and knocked over the gurney, sending the child crashing to the floor.

"Or a flirtatious wink from the chief resident."

Betty glared at Carl as her right eye twitched in fury.

"As long as you have people you love by your side, you can take anything the clinic throws at you."

Seated at Nurse Holt's desk, Betty stewed in silence as the credits began to roll on the laptop before her. From across the desk, Libby, Carl, Oleander, and Ike smiled.

"So?" Libby asked. "What do you think?"

Betty closed her eyes for a long moment before flatly answering, "I can't believe I'm saying this. But Cindy is now my favorite member of your group."

"Awww," Carl grinned.

Ike asked, "Where do I stand in the rankings?"

"You've fallen to I HATE YOU!" Betty shouted. "All of you get out!"

A walkie-talkie on Betty's hip squawked to life. She ripped it out of its holster and screamed, "WHAT?!"

"Dispatch here," a cracking voice eagerly answered. "You won't believe it, Betty. Ever since Holt Memorial started airing, we haven't gotten a single emergency call. Between that show and H.A.L.L.P.A.S.S., the school's almost back to normal!"

Libby smiled as wide as she could. "See? I told you this would work!"

Betty silently stood up, shut off the radio, and tossed it in the trash. "I'm heading to The Spitoon and having a drink. You four clean up."

"Betty!" Ike shouted. The girl spun around and stared at him with dead eyes. "The woodshop's locked." He tossed her a key ring. "Go nuts."

Carl nodded. "You deserve it. You're the best doctor ever."

Betty sighed and admitted, "You're the worst doctors I've ever known."

Carl and Ike's faces fell.

Betty added, "But you're not half-bad friends."