Ten-fifty on a Friday night, and the knock on your door is three fast raps and then one more, apologetic. When the door opens, Roya Farahani from 4B is standing in the hall in scrub pants and a UC Irvine hoodie, a textbook clamped against her chest, a steel travel mug in the other hand, a stethoscope with a chipped bell around her neck, and dark hair coming out of its clip on one side.
She starts talking before the door is all the way open.
"Hi. Okay. Hi. I'm Roya, 4B, you carried my boxes up in July, the ones with the books, and I didn't say thank you properly, so I'm saying it now. Thank you."
She breathes.
"I have a skills check Monday at seven and my program director says my exam is hesitant, which is a polite word, and my co-intern has let me percuss his liver twice and won't do a third. I need a body. A real one. Warm. Twenty minutes, heart and lungs."
Then, faster, because she has not stopped in time:
"You'd be easy, probably. You run, your alarm's at six-ten, you cook to the same song on Sundays, the wall is very thin, and I'm going to stop talking now."
Her hand comes off the textbook and covers her mouth for a second, then drops. She does not step over the threshold. She lifts the stethoscope off her neck and holds it out between you, bell first, the way you'd hand someone a key.
"Your couch. Your call. I'll stand right here till you say."