“Honestly, I don’t know why you make such a big deal out of it,” Patricia said as she carefully picked up her bowl of ramen noodles and took it from the microwave. The brunette sat it gingerly on the breakroom table before sitting down herself. “Yeah there’s a lot of morons, but there’s a lot more people who use it responsibly and get a lot of enjoyment out of it.”

Carrie held back an annoyed groan. She knew where this discussion was going and realized she shouldn’t have mentioned this morning’s moron already. The blonde had a bad habit of talking a lot about patients that came to the Emergency Room, though she strived to uphold the exact opposite image. Some days she just couldn’t help herself.

“Oh sure,” she said as she took a bite of her donut, “And then they show up here and we’ve gotta spend an hour combing through someone’s colon to find their girlfriend.”

Patricia blew on her noodles and raised an eyebrow at her shorter coworker and sort-of-friend. It was obvious Carrie’s dislike for Tiny Tinder went beyond having to do extra work.

“You’ve never even tried it, have you?” she asked with a grin that only got wider when Carrie responded with a small fake gagging sound.

“No!” Carrie replied with a grimace, “Why the heck would I want to be shrunken and –“ she gestured with two fingers “- shoved up some guy’s ass so he can beat off and forget I’m there before he falls asleep?”

The brunette giggled and slurped up a noodle, which gave her an interesting thought the next time she was on Tiny Tinder.

“There’s a lot more to do than just that!” she said as Carrie gave her an annoyed look. “That just happens to be half of what we see. I say, why be the small one?” she asked with a shrug.

“I’ve done it a couple of times, most guys want to be small from what I’ve seen. I’ve got my app set so it doesn’t even match me with guys that want a tiny gal. Not my thing.”

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,” Carrie replied as she sipped her coffee. Some days it seemed all that kept her upright was caffeine and annoyance.

“Oh come on!” Patricia said excitedly as she leaned forward, “You never even thought about it?”

“No!” Carrie said back, slightly offended and taken aback. Her tone made it clear she found the very idea disgusting. “If I wanna get laid I’m gonna go to the bar and cougar it up like the good ol’ days.”

“Please, you’re not old enough to be a cougar, you should-“

“Alright alright alright,” Carrie said quickly, “I’ve got enough issues around sex I’m not gonna shove some two-inch dude up my snatch and hope for the best.”

“Well two inches would be smarter than the guy I had yesterday,” Patricia said, wanting to keep talking about tinies to see where it would lead but also wanting Carrie to have a way out of the conversation. Everyone knew Carrie loved talking about patient’s stupid decisions, even though she proudly professed to be a paragon of silence. But Patricia didn’t want to push her too far on her own sex life; clearly the blonde nurse wasn’t comfortable talking too much about it.

Instantly Carrie’s eyes narrowed questioningly. She hadn’t been on shift yesterday and this was the first chance she had gotten to gossip.

“How stupid are we talking?” she asked, careful to not sound too eager.

“Let’s just say if he’d only been two inches it would’ve skipped his entire problem,” Patricia replied, pretending not to notice Carrie’s interest.

“No!” the blonde said, “You can’t just stop there!”

“Oh fine,” Patricia said with a roll of the eyes as she spooned more noodles into her mouth.

“So,” she started, “about four in the afternoon this family comes in. Mom, dad, daughter. She looks like she’s dying from shame and dad’s about to have a heart attack. The girl’s maybe fifteen, you know?”

Carrie nodded and leaned forward, her coffee forgotten.

“So once we figured out what happened fixing it wasn’t that hard, but basically she’d been bragging to this boy about how good she was with her mouth for weeks. Then invited him over to her place when her parents were at work. We couldn’t figure out if this was the plan the whole time or not, but he gets down to four inches-“

“Oh no,” Carrie said as she guessed.

“-and she swallows him down. Two hours later of trying to make herself puke him back up, and they’re here,” Patricia finished with a laugh. The idea of having a man stuck inside of her for that long was surprisingly appealing now that she’d actually voiced it.

“Wait, so he died? How did I not know about this?” Carrie asked, incredulous. “We-“

“No, he didn’t die,” Patricia interrupted, “They get super-tough, remember? But I bet he wished he’d died when we gave her that emetic and her dad was the first thing he saw when she launched him into the emesis basin.”

“What a bunch of morons,” Carrie said as she shook her head. “Whatever happened to just sneaking a boy into the house for plain fooling around? We bragged about our mouths for different reasons when I was a kid.”

“And just think,” the brunette said around a mouthful of noodles, “If they’d done two inches instead of four she could’ve ralphed him out no problem and we wouldn’t have anything to talk about.”

“I’ve got one the opposite way,” Carrie said as she took another sip of her cooling coffee. “Did you hear about when that guy slipped his girlfriend down his…you know…”

“We’re adults here,” Patricia said with a patronizing look, “the word is penis. And no I haven’t. Do tell.”

“Okay, fine,” Carried replied with a scowl before she continued, “Well, she decided she wanted to be crazy small and climb into his dick,” Carrie shuddered, “and of course the guy would go along with anything she said. They’re thinking if she hops in and goes down into his balls she can have her fun while he has his –“

Patricia mimed jerking off briefly and Carrie giggled before wiping the smile off her face and resuming her dour expression.

“And she hops in, somehow goes down his urethra and everything, and poof! She’s in his balls.”

“Mmmhmm,” Patricia said, “I’ve heard of cockvore but it’s not for me.”

Carrie gave her an uncertain look before continuing.

“Uh, so she says later it was a blast, except when he masturbated she didn’t come flying out like they’d expected. She got caught up in his epididymis I think.”

The brunette went pale when she realized what this meant.

“Did they-?”

“Oh, yes we did,” Carrie said with a grin. “I helped the trauma surgeon in the OR, and we had to cut the little idiot out of him. And you know what the worst part is?” she asked.

“Well yeah,” Patricia replied.

“He couldn’t tell where she was and she didn’t show up on the ultrasound. She was too small.”

Her friend put down a spoonful of noodles to really pay attention.

“We had to cut his balls open and literally comb through his parts until we found a little moving speck. She was fine, he’ll be fine once he’s healed up, but can you imagine?”

“That’s honestly just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of,” Patricia said with a nod. “Almost.”

“Almost?” Carrie shot back, almost offended, “What do you mean almost?”

“I had to help a doctor flush a guy’s sinuses about two months ago,” was the reply.

Carrie searched for a memory of the incident but came up blank. When she gave Patricia a questioning glance the brunette continued.

“Basically, this idiot girl let her boyfriend shrink her insanely small, just like your last one. Except she just wanted to experience running around on the kitchen table for some reason. Ditzy girl.”

Carrie nodded and smiled at Patricia’s insult, which she agreed with.

“And her boyfriend thought it would be absolutely hilarious to start sniffing around the table like some kind of dog or something.”

Another nurse entered the break room and paused on her way to the fridge, clearly listening.

“Well, dipshit finds her and decides it would be even more funny if he did a line of coke. Right there. Right where she is.”

“Oh no,” Carrie said, “Did she overdose? Did he?”

“No!” Patricia replied in an annoyed tone, “Haven’t you been paying attention? Most tinies are made insanely tough, the process shoves out things like booze and drugs, so for her it was just like getting covered in flour. Until he snorted her up in the line too.”

The newest nurse put a hand up to her mouth and made a retching sound. Patricia and Carrie waited until she’d ran from the room, clearly about to lose her breakfast, before they broke out into laughter.

“And then!” Patricia said between bursts, “We had to irrigate out all his sinuses and he’s still high as a kite and trying to act normal! She got real lucky, she got stuck in an ethmoid right away and had a couple of freaked out hours. If she’d gone into his trachea and lungs we’d still be trying to find that little moron.”

“So what,” Carrie asked, “You just caught all the saline and she was floating on top after awhile?”

“Yeah, basically,” Patricia replied, catching her breath from the laughter and trying to act nonchalant. “Once her boyfriend came down from his high and realized we’d gotten her out she unshrank no problem and the two of them left, right into a cop car.”

“Cop car?”

“They were doing coke, Carrie!” Patricia said, laughing again. “You know we’ve gotta report that stuff!”

“Now here’s where I come across more problems,” Carrie said, “We get all sorts of dipshits in here constantly and I hate it, but this mandatory reporting for drugs thing I’m just not all for.”

“Really?” Patricia asked, “Really? That’s what bothers you out of all of this?”

“Well it all bothers me!” she said with a short laugh, waving her hands in the air. “But I’d rather focus on that than the shrinking and dying thing and not the whole drug use thing.”

“They’re not all tough,” she added wistfully.

Patricia raised an eyebrow as she finished her noodles. Carrie responded to the unspoken question in a more somber tone.

“About two weeks ago a girl comes in bawling, holding her five-inch tall boyfriend in one hand.”

“Oh no,” Patricia said, realizing someone had lived one of her worst nightmares.

“Oh yes, these two didn’t think to do the tough thing,” she waved her hands in the air, “and when she used him as a dildo he basically got more trauma done than if he’d been in a car wreck going seventy.”

Patricia didn’t say anything at all as Carrie kept talking; she’d heard stories like this but luckily they were few and far between. Few users of Tiny Tinder were actually dumb enough to shrink without being made tough. In fact, after the first few reports the app makers had switched the default setting to super tough just to make it safer.

“She got super into it, and he probably did too for a bit,” Carrie continued, “But his head was really banged up, so I think at first she was holding him by it. Then she said she lost control and couldn’t help herself. The girl spun him around and held him by the legs the whole time.”

“Oh shit,” Patricia whispered.

“When she was done he was pretty much gone already. The doctor wasn’t sure if he’d drowned or brains were scrambled or what exactly it was, but she told us he was wiggling really good until she came. She thought she clamped down on him too hard at first, then when she finally came down from her ‘O’ and pulled him out his legs were twisted in the wrong direction and he was barely breathing.”

Carrie took a shaky drink of her coffee.

“She got him here fast but didn’t think to unshrink him, so we had to bust open that size-cart we always inventory then ignore. I did compressions but Doc Matthews was sure if we grew him full-size the change itself would kill him, and you know we don’t make any equipment actually good for someone that small.”

“Poor guy was twenty-two. Law student. The girl was twenty-one and worked at a steakhouse.”

“She’s gonna need some serious therapy,” Patricia stated simply. “I can’t imagine how many shrinks it’s gonna take for her to ever enjoy sex again. Um, no pun intended.”

Carrie laughed bitterly and nodded.

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“On the bright side,” Patricia added, “We’ve gotta look at that as an outlier just like we look at heart attacks and strokes. We see them both a lot here, but for most people it’s a pretty low risk thing, right?”

“I guess,” Carrie replied, “But that doesn’t make me want to go diving any more than it makes me want a giant cheeseburger.”

“You mean spelunking?”

The blonde rolled her eyes and sighed at Patricia, who was smiling at the thought of someone squirming around her backdoor. She hadn’t tried it yet, but it was on her list.

“We’ve had to fish out quite a few spelunkers lately,” she said as she tossed her empty noodle cup into the nearby trash can.

“I…you know I hate this but I gotta know,” Carrie said reluctantly, “But what the hell are you talking about?”

Patricia gave her friend a pointed look as she leaned forward. A glance at the door told her that the nurse who had left to vomit wasn’t about to come back in, and the hallway that led back to the Emergency Department was empty.

“You know,” she said quietly with a playful tone and a smirk, “A little backdoor action? Shove a little dude right up your brown hole before you go to a movie? Let some lucky guy experience your ass while you go to a club and pick up a guy who won’t even realize he’s in a threesome because you pushed the other one-“

“Whoa whoa whoa!” Carrie said, laughing even as she was disgusted, “You have put way too much thought into this! Have you-?”

“Not yet,” Patricia replied as she wiggled her butt, excited by the thought. “But more seriously, spelunking is what they call it when a tiny goes to play in somebody’s rectum.”

There was silence in the break room as Carrie processed that. It was one of the Tiny Tinder uses she hadn’t encountered in the Emergency Department yet, and it hadn’t even occurred to her that couples would be experimenting with that form of anal sex. The blonde had just finally gotten used to the strange “normal” things people shoved inside of themselves a week before Tiny Tinder had come out, and the implications hadn’t all yet reached her.

Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to find something to say. Instead, Patricia kept going.

“Yeah. And most of the time things go fine; she or he masturbates, the little person comes out, and life goes on. Hopefully after a shower. But I’ve helped out on three rescues because people are stupid.”

“Uh, rescues?” Carrie asked as the nurse who left to vomit came back into the break room, still looking green. Before the two nurses could continue the new nurse hurriedly grabbed a soda from the refrigerator and vanished back down the hallway.

“Think rush colonoscopy,” Patricia explained, “Turns out a lot of people just want to hang out inside of their significant other all the time, and of course it’s dark in there so they get turned around. Usually the girlfriend slips him in, goes to work, and then he’s supposed to come out when she gets home.”

“Let me guess. They get turned around and somehow go further in?”

“Yeah, pretty much. The first woman took a nap and he wandered all the way to her ascending colon, and the other two only made it to their girlfriend’s transverse, but that’s pretty far when you’re an inch tall and have no sense of direction.”

“You did a whole colonoscopy just for that?” Carrie asked.

“Well, after trying a couple of enemas, yeah.”

The blonde nurse nodded as she went to take another drink of coffee. Frowning she looked into the cup only to see the bottom.

“Damn, that went fast. I gotta get back on the floor,” she said as she stood.

“Wait!” Patricia said, “I got one more. The best one ever.”

Carrie’s eyes narrowed and she gave the other nurse a skeptical look.

“Like any of these are actually that amazing?”

“Well this one,” Patricia replied as she washed her hands quickly, “Was in the name of true love.”

Carrie made a gagging sound and Patricia laughed, but continued.

“So last Valentine’s Day a woman comes in, pretty distraught. We all figured she’d been dumped and was suicidal, but no. She tells us she and her husband had been trying to have a kid for years, but it just hasn’t been working. And so when Tiny Tinder came out they had the bright idea for her husband to go all the way up-“ she made a pushing motion with her fingers, “into her uterus and start beating off directly at the site.”

The other nurse threw away her empty cup and leaned against the door frame.

“Of course, these two didn’t plan the trip back out very well, or really any of it. His sperm would be too small to fertilize her at that size anyways, but they really meant well.”

“Let me guess: you had to get him out with some kind of speculum scope surgery?”

“Nope!” Patricia said happily, “He actually came out really easy from a good douching.”

Together the two nurses stepped out of the break room and started walking back toward the main Emergency Department.

“That was a lot tamer than you made it sound,” Carrie said, sounding a little disappointed.

“Well,” Patricia said with a grin, “I figured we could have at least one really happy ending. When we explained how their idea sucked they got another bright idea.”

“Oh crap,” Carrie said as she swiped her badge.

“Oh no, these two started that new fertility clinic downtown using shrinking tech; he personally takes sperm samples into women and finds their eggs and directly fertilizes it by hand, inside the woman.”

Carrie started to make a gagging sound, then thought twice.

“You know,” she said as the doors opened and the sound of someone crying out in pain reached their ears, “That’s probably the smartest thing I’ll hear all day.”