Everyone goes at the same time

Lia was scrolling on her phone when the school nurse, Nurse Abernathy, stepped into the campus clinic. Nurse Abernathy already seemed annoyed. The woman was in her late thirties, but the stress of working in medicine, let alone medicine with college students, had clearly taken its toll on her body.

“Alright!” Nurse Abernathy exclaimed. “Let’s get this over with. Looks like we got three shrimps today!”

She looked down at her clipboard and tapped it with her pen.

“Let me get your names and years, one at a time. Let’s go!” she dictated.

The three co-eds were caught off guard by her bluntness and all remained awkwardly silent at first. This only annoyed Nurse Abernathy further.

“I don’t have all day, shrimp!” she complained.

“Lia Jones! Freshman!” Lia chirped suddenly, doing whatever she could to break the tension.

“Lia Jones!” Nurse Abernathy repeated, scribbling on her clipboard. “Someone with brains, unlike these two boneheads who don’t even know their own names!”

“Trey Canino. Freshman,” one of the boys spoke up.

“Jake Tomkins. Also freshman,” the other boy stated.

Nurse Abernathy scribbled their names down.

“Alright, shrimp,” she started, “my shift ends in thirty minutes. So we are not going to be wasting anyone’s time, capeesh? Let’s get everyone’s weight first. Canino! Step up and onto the scale!”

“I said don’t waste my time, Canino! Get your butt on the scale!” Nurse Abernathy hissed.

Trey leapt to his feet and got onto the scale. Nurse Abernathy scanned Trey and his attire like a hawk looking for mice. He was tall, 6’2, and thin. He wore basketball shorts, a light grey t-shirt, and white socks with slides on his feet.

“Why are you here today, Trey?” Nurse Abernathy questioned.

“I, uh… I need to pass a physical to be on the basketball team,” Trey explained.

“Basketball,” Nurse Abernathy muttered, scratching this information into her clipboard. “Predictable. 204 pounds. Sit down.”

Trey quickly took his seat.

“Tomkins! You’re up!” Nurse Abernathy barked.

Jake got up and stood on the scale.

“I’m here because I get a yearly physical. My parents are doctors and raised me to get regular checkups every year,” Jake explained.

“I didn’t ask!” Nurse Abernathy hissed. Still, she wrote this down on her clipboard. “If your parents are so smart, they should have taught you that certain articles of clothing can alter weight results.”

She pointed to the thick hoodie Jake was wearing with her pen.

“My hoodie?” Jake asked.

“My hOoDiE?” Nurse Abernathy mocked. “Yeah, your hoodie! It’s adding weight to the scale! Making my records inaccurate! You should have shown up like LeBron over here, none of his clothes weigh anything!”

“Take it off, Boy Scout!” Nurse Abernathy shouted.

“Okay! Sorry!” Jake peeled off his thick hoodie. While he did so, he revealed his muscular abs and chest.

“223 pounds. Why did you bring a hoodie? What are you, cold?” Nurse Abernathy sneered. “Sit down!”

Jake quickly took his seat, keeping his hoodie in his lap.

“Hello Kitty!” Nurse Abernathy called, granting Lia a nickname. “Let’s get this over with!”

Lia stepped onto the scale.

“I’m getting my physical because it’s a requirement of my scholarship,” Lia spoke carefully, enunciating every word to avoid Nurse Abernathy’s wrath.

Nurse Abernathy didn’t even write anything down. She just looked at Lia with a crooked eyebrow.

“Someone with a scholarship can’t figure out context clues?” she asked. Lia wasn’t sure what she meant.

“Let’s ask the boys, maybe boys are smarter than girls,” Nurse Abernathy continued before turning to them. “Boy Scout! What problems arose when we took your weight?”

“Uh… my hoodie was too heavy?” Jake answered uncertainly.

“Boy Scout is on the board!” Nurse Abernathy cheered sarcastically.

“Now, LeBron, taking into consideration what we learned from Boy Scout’s weighing, what issues do you think Hello Kitty here will face?” she pressed.

Trey looked Lia up and down. Lia blushed under his gaze.

“Uh, well…” Trey adjusted in his seat. “She’s wearing pretty clunky boots?”

Trey was correct. Lia had worn her 8-eye black leather Doc Martens that morning.

“Oh, and her pants!” Jake chimed in. Lia didn’t like where this was heading. She was wearing extremely baggy cargo pants tucked into her boots. Lia hated showing off her silhouette, so the more oversized her clothes, the better.

Lia looked at Nurse Abernathy, who smirked at her before shifting her eyes back to the boys. The nurse licked her lips.

“Anything else, boys?” she goaded.

“Well, uh…” Jake started, but Lia shot him a look, almost begging him not to continue. “It’s only fair that if I had to take my hoodie off, then she should too.”

To match her baggy cargo pants, Lia was also wearing a black hoodie two sizes too big. The bigger issue was that, unlike Jake, she wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath.

“And there we have it. The boys are smarter than the girl,” Nurse Abernathy taunted before looking back to Lia. “Now let’s get some proper measurements, shall we?”