Tall grass

Thunder rang out. Oh crap, he thought. Was it hide in a ditch? Under a tree? Why hadn’t he paid attention during those lessons? He army-crawled through the field, hoping that was the right thing to do. Three feet away his sister watched him, a bemused expression on her face.

Moments later the rain started. Drizzles at first, then buckets. Jon looked over his shoulder for his sister and saw nothing. Just tall grass and dark clouds. After remaining calm for a seconds he shouted desperately, "Becky!"

Becky was playing hide and seek, of course. She was a regional champion at the game and was practicing for the state competition. Jon, forgetting this, grew more hopeless by the second as he recklessly searched the tall grass for his sister.

Jon’s mistake was searching in the grass. To truly hide in the tall grass, Becky had become the tall grass. It was a special technique she learned in Nepal.

It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, only the haystack itself was really a pile of needles.

But in the end, that's all the transient nurse practitioner was ever looking for: a duty. And here, in that lonely pile of used needles, she found it. Too bad there's not a pile of sterile gloves to accompany...