Jay's Anatomy

Leight doesn't much care. He gulped down a can of Pepsi and a snack bag of peanuts during the first deluge of patients, and he's still wisecracking his way through diagnoses. Leight is the clinic's most reliable physician; even after a full day at his own clinic, he calls another six-hour shift with the Jay Docs "refreshing."

"Most of them [the students] still have no clue how broken the system can be," he says. "Or, if they do know, they haven't really lived within it yet. They haven't watched themselves become a functioning part of it on a daily basis, metamorphosize like Kafka's worker, as we all do to a greater or lesser extent."

Tonight, Lase Ajayi is looking for a syringe — and advice on how to administer her first butt injection.

"It's probably best to reconstitute the stuff out of the room," Leight tells her. "The more people see you play with needles, the more nervous they get. It's best to just walk in there and, you know, whip it out of your back pocket when they're not even looking."

"This'll be a night of a lot of firsts for me," she quips. "First gluteal injection, first urethral swab ..."

"Male urethral swab?" Leight asks. "You used the blue ones, right?"

"Yeah," she says.

"The other ones are like Q-tips," he says, causing the men in the room to cringe.

"What does it feel like?" Ajayi says in a tone that sounds like a set-up to a joke. "Like, how painful?"

"I've never personally been swabbed," Leight says. "But it wouldn't feel good."

"Hey, Adam, you get swabbed every day," Ajayi says, turning to Obley.

"Ask him," Obley says, pointing at an unsuspecting student who walks into the back office at the wrong moment.

"And another thing," Leight continues. "If you like the guy, you should probably reconstitute it with Lidocaine instead of water."

The Jay Docs show no urgency to head home. Kicking back and eating slices of a carrot cheesecake, they chat about their dorm days at KU and debate whether one of them can really communicate with her cat.

"There are times when you just get so into it and the people you work with, that you forget about the rest of your life," Ajayi says.

Before the clinic's next open hours, Harmon will get calls on his cell phone from patients who need help with their prescription assistance programs. On off nights, he'll ride his bike to the clinic to catch up on paperwork.

And he'll keep thinking about the patients he's had to turn away.