The nurse chuckled.

“Yeah, who knows?”.

They entered room 333 and Carmen smiled at the good-looking man in the bed.

“Good morning, Mr. Bizari”.

The man – around 35, brown hair, green eyes, unshaven beard and a massive, muscular body – looked up and smirked.

“It’s Biz – zar – ri. Double ‘z’ and double ‘r’, as in ‘bizarre’. Meaning weird. Or fantastic”, he corrected her. His eyes were deep and penetrating.

Carmen nodded, smiling, then frowned and pointed at his face.

“What’s on your lip?”, she asked, narrowing her eyes.

He jolted, and cleaned up his mouth with the back of his hand.

“What? Am I slobbering here?”, he mumbled, blushing.

Carmen grabbed a canister of chocolate ice cream that had been incautiously hidden under the bed. She observed it and scoffed. Then, she showed it to the man, arching her eyebrows.

“Where did you get that?”, she asked, reprimanding him.

He blushed even more.

“What am I, a prisoner?”, he scoffed, shrugging.

Carmen’s expression didn’t falter a bit.

“You want to get well, or you want Ben & Jerry’s?”, she asked, “This operation is a big deal. Continue to eat like this… and you might as well skip it”.

Mr. Bizzarri laughed mischievously, nodding.

“Oh well, if you’d have performed the operation yesterday like you were supposed to, I’d be sucking carrots through a straw in my arm”, he watched Carmen carefully and his smile disappeared, “What happened?”.

Carmen placed the canister on the nightstand.

“Circumstances were not optimal for the procedure”, she replied, professionally.

The man grinned slyly.

“I ain’t ‘the procedure’. My name is Dante Bizzarri and I’m right here”.

Carmen couldn’t help but smile back. That man was definitely one of a kind.

”…Like any uncharted territory
I must seem greatly intriguing
You speak of my love like
You have experienced love like mine before…”

***

Carmen sneaked into the Nursery and took a fistful of seconds observing Dr. Dana Fairbanks cooing a preemie into an incubator.

“Hello, hello, hello…”, Dana said quietly, massaging his belly, “…Do you know the Muffin Man, the Muffin Man, the Muffin Man?”.

Carmen laughed silently.

“Hi, Dane”, she said then.

Dana turned around and smiled, her eyes popping out in surprise.

“Hey! What are you doing here?”, she exclaimed.