"Don't tell Edison that.  That's my friend who did this first-aid job.  She's already a huge fan of the stuff.  Edison always says if you ever have to make a run for it, be sure to pack a hundred dollars in quarters, duct tape, and Vaseline."

Amy agreed on the first two counts, but wasn’t sure if she wanted to know about the Vaseline.  "So, tell me what happened."  She held Jordan's hand in an upright position and gently prodded at the rest of her arm, checking for contusions or broken bones.

"I fell out of a window.  I was rescuing Mr. Pip.  He was hanging from a tree branch."

"Who is Mr. Pip?"

"He’s the old man who lives next door."

Amy's eyes widened.  Jordan laughed.  "I’m kidding.  He's my cat."

Amy almost laughed out loud.  If she wasn't careful this woman was going to make her stoic doctor personae crumble.  "Okay, you fell, but how did the cut happen?"

"There was a broken piece of shower door in the dumpster.”

"You fell into a dumpster?"

Jordan nodded.  “Dumpster diving.  Literally.”

“So, what happened to Mr. Pip?"

"He’s fine, although he didn’t say thank you.”

"Cats," Amy said, shaking her head in mock disgust.

"When I came to he was sitting on my chest licking his butt."

Amy chuckled.  "Why don't you get out of that bloody shirt?"  She peeled off her latex gloves and tossed them into a white can sitting on the floor.  "Throw it in there."

Jordan looked at the symbol on top of the trashcan.  "Because I'm a biohazard?"

"Pretty much.  I'll find you another shirt to wear and be right back."  She swished aside the curtain, drawing it closed behind her and went in search of the supplies she needed.


The Mole

 

Amy rounded a corner of the hospital hallway just as Jeremy did and he crashed into her.

Meet Dr. Jeremy Blevins.  Jeremy was tall and skinny and had his hair pulled back in a ponytail.  He looked like he had never outgrown the garage band look of his teen years.  Jeremy was Amy's roommate and whenever she needed a last minute date to chaperone her somewhere, he was always available.  As long as there was free food.  It was a give-and-take system that had worked well for them for several years.

"I heard you had a hottie come in," Jeremy said.  "Wanna trade patients?"

Amy sighed.  If Jeremy wanted to trade patients it meant he had somebody really bad.  "Who do you have?"

"Mrs. Markus," he said.  "She thinks her mole is changing colors again."

Amy grimaced.  "No thanks."

"No, you should really see it this time.  It is a different color, I swear.  It's green today.  Last week it was magenta."

"Maybe it's a mood mole," Amy said.  She looked closer at Jeremy.  His eyes were bloodshot and glassy.  "How long have you been on?"

He squinted at his watch and moved his lips in silent calculation.  "Sixteen hours and counting.  Why, you need some help?"

"Go home," Amy said.  "You look like homemade poop."

"I believe the metaphor is homemade soap," he corrected.

"It's not a metaphor it's a simile."

Jeremy wagged his finger in her face.  "I know what you're doing.  You're trying to distract me from the hottie."

Amy answered, "I hate the term hottie."

“No, you don’t,” Jeremy said.  “You only hate it that I didn’t call you a hottie.”

Jeremy dodged Amy’s playful swat.  He laughed and walked backwards down the hallway saying with an ominous vampire accent, "Don't be late for supper.  Isabel is preparing dinner.”

Isabel was their other roommate.  You will meet her later in the story.  Isabel was a budding chef.  She liked to try out exotic recipes and Amy and Jeremy were her human guinea pigs.

Amy wrinkled her nose in disgust.  "You go home first.  Text me if she's boiling organ meat again, and I'll smuggle in some fast food."

“You’re looking pretty perky for pulling a double shift in the emergency room,” he said.  “If I didn't know better, it almost seems like you’re, oh, what’s the word?”  He snapped his fingers.  “Happy.”

“It’s just a figment of your addled and sleep-deprived brain.   Go make Mrs. Markus happy and see if her mole turns blue.”


Low Blood Sugar

 

Back in the E.R. cubicle, Amy watched in amusement as Jordan tried to put on the green scrub top with only one hand.  So far, she had her injured hand through one of the shirt's armholes and her head sticking out the other.  She was attempting to worm her way out of the mess, but wasn't having much success.  Unless she was trying for a straightjacket effect in which case she was having terrific success.

"Alittlehelphere?" Jordan mumbled with her mouth full of shirt.

Amy gently pulled the scrub top over Jordan's head and then not-so-gently pushed her head back through the proper hole.

"Thanks, Doc," Jordan said. "Usually people are trying to get me out of my clothes, not put me in them."

There was a split-second where Amy was shocked.  Then she quickly covered her expression and smiled in an overly polite way.  The blood pounded in her ears.  She knew if she were to take her own pulse right now it would be racing.

"Whoops," Jordan said, "TMI.  Maybe you can test me for Asperger's while I'm here.  I'm not good in social situations.  That's what my Pre-K teacher wrote on my first report card.  That and 'if she doesn't stop licking the other students she will be expelled.'"

Amy's mouth literally dropped open.  “Did you say licking?”

"I liked to pretend I was a puppy," Jordan explained.  “I got over it by second grade when I finally realized licking friends was not socially acceptable."

Amy laughed and looked away.  She found it hard to hold Jordan's gaze for any longer than three seconds.  She didn't know why except that it was so… intense.  She gathered her surgical implements on a tray and pulled out a pair of latex gloves from the cardboard box.  "Are you wearing a wedding ring?"  She snapped the gloves about five times too many.

"Wedding ring?" Jordan asked.

"Any rings?  Any kind of jewelry?"

Jordan smiled coyly.  "Are you trying to find out if I'm available?"

Amy blushed.  She could feel Jordan scrutinizing her. It was pleasant and unpleasant at the same time.  Which was kind of like eating ice cream when you had a sore throat.  It felt both good (ice cream) and bad (sore throat).

Amy squirmed in her chair and said, "I'm going to have to cut close and I don't want the scissors to get caught on your ring."  She added, "If you had one."

"I don't.  So, Doc, are you married?”

Amy slipped the scissors under the first layer of duct tape.  "No, I'm not married."

"Haven't found the right person?"

"Something like that."  Amy noticed that she had said 'person' not 'man.'  If she wasn't mistaken, Jordan was flirting with her.  But maybe she was wrong. She didn't get flirted with often and never had a woman flirted with her, so she was no expert.  The only flirting she'd ever witnessed between two women was in that movie about the fried green tomatoes, and even that had to be pointed out to her.  (By her mother of all people.)

She began to cut at the duct tape.  "This may pinch a little."

Jordan winced.

Amy asked, "What about you?  Does someone like you have a sweetheart?"  She could kick herself.  Sweetheart?  What kind of word was that?  What was she, raised in the 1950s?  What was next?  She was going to talk about sock hops and poodle skirts?

"What do you mean, someone like me?" Jordan asked.  "Am I that un-presentable?  I knew I should have brushed my hair before I came to the emergency room.  My mother always used to tell me to wear clean underwear all the time in case I got in an accident.  I never understood that line of logic.  I mean, if I was in an accident I'd probably mess my pants so what would the underwear have mattered in the first place?"

Amy had a sudden flash of what Jordan would look like in underwear.  What kind of underwear were they?  Red and lacy?  White and cotton?  You could tell a lot about a person by their underwear.  What was wrong with her brain today?  It kept taking these weird erotic turns.  Must be a lack of caffeine. Or maybe too much caffeine.

Amy said, "I just meant someone like you who is so… attractive.  I meant you must have a lot of admirers."  Admirers?  Did she really just say that?  My God, she was turning into her grandmother who always asked her about 'gentleman callers.'"

"Well, thanks for the compliment.  But you see that's the problem.  I seem, through no fault of my own I guarantee you, to bring out the worst in my girlfriends."

Girlfriends, Amy thought.  So she was gay. Her blood pressure spiked and her heart picked up in tempo. The only bothersome part was that she had used the word 'girlfriends', as in the plural sense.  Of course, Jordan was so beautiful she had her pick of women.  She could have oodles of women on the line.  God, did she really just think the word 'oodles’?

Amy finally managed to unwrap the hand.  "In what way do you bring out the worst?"  She got up and put together a sterile bath for the hand.

"Most of them turn into a combination of Medusa and a green-eyed monster."

Amy looked puzzled.

"Jealous.  And if I'm with someone I don't cheat.  Sometimes I think I must be the only lesbian left on the planet who believes in monogamy."

Amy nodded.  She knew exactly how Jordan felt.  Her love life hadn’t exactly been a stunning success.  She’d had Nick who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, and Joe who had been overbearing and jealous, and now she had Chad who played the egotistical ass.  Yup, her love life definitely sucked as well.