Carter wheels around and returns to the desk, where a tall, disheveled redhead belligerently explains, "I've got this dirty needle; I want a clean one." "We don't do that here," Carter tells her. "Like I said," snorts Haleh, flouncing off. Redhead explains, "A doctor here gave this to me; he said if I come back today, I can have a clean one." Carter impatiently (but, for once, without smirking) says, "There's a number you can call -- there's a van, or something...." He starts to walk off, but she insists, "I don't want to call the van! I just want a clean needle!" Carter curtly says, "I'm sorry, I cannot help you." Randi appears up the hall and coughs, "Dr. Carter." and Carter hurries off in the opposite direction, Redhead calling after him, "He said I wouldn't have to wait!"

Up the hall, Randi tells Carter that "some girl" called him to say she couldn't "make it tonight -- flu." "'Some girl'?" Carter repeats. "You didn't get a name?" "You got more than one date tonight?" Randi snorts. "Oh, great," Carter huffs. Chuny, overhearing, asks, "Big date?" "Had potential," Carter allows. "So ask someone else!" Chuny suggests. Carter tells her it's a charity event, and that it's going to be boring and no one will want to go. Chuny essentially tells him that's crap, and tells him to ask someone in the ER. Her new short, curly haircut is very cute, by the way. She starts walking off, and Carter asks her if she wants to go. "Not me! I've got plans," she laughs. Carter turns just long enough to glance in Randi's direction, but she shuts him down: "Don't even look at me."

Carter sticks his hands in his pockets and is heading back in the direction of the ailing clown when a wicked skinny kid in a gown comes out of an exam room and follows, calling Carter's name. Carter apologizes for leaving him. Skinny reminds Carter that he was going to give Skinny something for his canker sores, and Carter asks a passing anonymous nurse to give Skinny (who he calls Jeff) some viscous lidocaine. Jeff calls after Carter to say that no one's come to take his blood yet, and Carter breezily says, without looking back, "No? Someone'll be in there." Jeff stops Carter just short of the clown's trauma room to ask whether Carter thinks it's something serious; Carter says it probably isn't, but that after two weeks of fever, they should "probably check out a few things."