“Ma’am. I’m sorry. I can’t get Dr. Fernandez. As I said, he’s in surgery. But what I can do is have him call you when he’s finished. In the meantime, is there anything I can help you with?”

“Can you save my husband, you nurse or whatever you are? If you can’t even put the right person on the phone, I have a hard time believing you can do anything! Just tell the doctor that Judge called!” And with that, the judge slammed the phone down. Suddenly, my hangover didn’t seem so bad.

“Sheera!” In addition to dreading whatever it was the judge had to say to me, I feared that I looked like a prune and smelled like a brewery. No matter to the judge. She barely looked at me at all, instead focusing on the red carpet.

“I’ve, I’ve lost my bridge! My bridge!” What was she talking about. The Ben Franklin Bridge? Golden Gate? Which bridge had she lost? “Well, do something about it!! Find my bridge!!!” Bark bark bark. She motioned to the floor. I dropped to all fours in search of a suspension bridge underneath her desk, by her dead ficus plant, next to her stacks of briefs. Nope, no bridge there. “My bridge! My bridge! It’s missing!” She was up now and running in circles around her office. Even I, who had passed the bar, couldn’t begin to solve this puzzle.

“Judge, what exactly am I looking for?”

“My bridge. It holds my teeth together”—her eyes bulged and she started tapping her front teeth. “It just fell out. Just now.”

I went from all fours to on the floor, my self-respect vaporized. It was one thing to be nearly thirty years old and banned from all talking, having toilet lunch be the high point of your day, and having a different name and ethnicity repeatedly thrust on you. But here I was on my hands and knees looking for my boss’s dentures. This was years of therapy.

I found myself asking: “OK, Judge. Please describe your bridge.” I was out of body, floating above a violent red sea, with an even more violent lady running circles around a poor, pathetic law clerk desperately searching for a “small, metal thingy.”

“Sheera. Shayla. I know it’s there somewhere. Find it! Find it!” I crawled east, west, north, south. Lewis and Clark weren’t this thorough. “It’s a small metal thingy, I said!”

“Yes, Judge, I’m looking. I just don’t see it.”

“You can’t do anything. Where’s what’s-his-name?” How was it possible that I felt inadequate because I couldn’t find the judge’s denture Band-Aid? I didn’t know the answer. I just knew that I felt like a total loser.

“Roy?”