More Than a Kiss (2 page)

Jordan
threw a leg up on the windowsill and reached out again.  She still needed
another four inches.  She held on to the windowsill with one hand and leaned
out further.

Edison
dashed across the room and grabbed Jordan by waistband of her shorts. 
"What're you doing?"

"I'm
going to rescue him.  What does it look like?" Jordan said.

"You're
three stories up!  It's too dangerous!"

Jordan
looked over her shoulder at Edison.  "You want to do it?"

"No."

"Okay
then, shut up and let me go."

"Meow!"

"Okay,
okay, but be careful."  Edison turned loose of Jordan's shorts.  She stood
back, watching fearfully, and making whimpering noises.

Jordan
turned until she was sitting on the windowsill with her legs outside.  Very
carefully, she pushed herself to her feet, balanced on the sill, grabbed the
lattice on the outside of the house with one hand and reached toward the tree
branch with the other.

"Meow!"

"I'm
almost there, Mr. Pip," Jordan said.

Edison
bit her fingernails as Jordan leaned further and further.  She breathed out a
sigh of relief as Jordan's hand grabbed Mr. Pip by his scruff.

"Thank
God," Edison muttered.

Crack!

“Oh
no,” Edison amended.

Jordan
was slowly moving further and further away from the window – the lattice was
peeling off the house.

Edison
ran for the window.  But she was too late.  Jordan and Mr. Pip plunged three
stories.  Edison covered her eyes and screamed.

“For
God’s sake, stop screaming,” Jordan yelled from below.

Edison
un-peeked her eyes and looked out the window.  “You’re alive!” she said.

Jordan
lay spread-eagle on her back in the dumpster they had rented for the
construction project they called home.  Luckily, she’d landed on carpet padding
that they’d removed from the den.  Mr. Pip sat regally on Jordan’s chest. 
Without so much as a thank you, Mr. Pip leapt out of the dumpster, leaving
Jordan covered in dust.

“You’re
welcome,” Jordan said.  Then she noticed her bloody hand.  As is the way with
injured body parts, she didn’t notice the pain until she saw the blood.  Then
she screamed.  She surveyed the area and saw the piece of glass from the broken
shower door.  After she finished screaming she called up to Edison. “Will you
please bring me a towel?”

“Why?
Did you pee your pants?”

“No,
I’m bleeding,” Jordan yelled back up at her.

Edison
turned and ran out of the room, panting, "ohmygodohmygodohmygod!"

Amy Meets Jordan

"What
do we have here?" Amy asked.

Jordan
looked down at her bloody shirt and answered, "A ruined shirt and a really
bad home first-aid job."

Meet
Dr. Amy Stewart
. 
Amy was too short, too brown, too fat and too smart.  That's what she thought
anyway.   She still pictured herself the way she looked as a sophomore in high
school.  Since that time, Amy had shed twenty pounds, gotten contacts,
highlighted her hair and made good use of her brains. But when she looked in a
mirror, she still saw her old self.  It was like reverse alchemy.  Her mirror
turned gold into lead.

The
first time Amy laid eyes on Jordan was in the emergency room at University
Hospital.   Amy sat on the rolling stool in a curtained-off cubicle and
surveyed her patient.  To say that Jordan was good-looking was an
understatement.  Amy thought Jordan was perfection personified – speaking
purely from an anatomical viewpoint.  Not that Amy was much of a judge of
anything other than medicine, but to her this woman, with the sculpted body and
long dishwater-blond hair, looked like one of those Olympic volleyball players
everyone went gaga over.  In short, she was the type of woman Amy despised.

Well,
maybe despised was too strong a word.  Loathed?  No, she didn't loathe Jordan
just because she was the type of woman that stared out at her from magazine
covers, made a sports bra look sexy, and made her feel inadequate and homely
and invisible.  Hate?  No, she didn't hate Jordan either, not exactly.  She
hated the
idea
of Jordan.  Amy hated that there were women out there who
looked like Jordan and made women like her feel like something you had to
scrape off the bottom of your shoe.

Jordan
asked, "You look like you're going to be sick.  You're not going to throw
up over a little cut and some blood, are you?"

"Of
course not," Amy said, lifting her chin defiantly.  "I'm a
doctor."

"Yeah,
but that was an 'I’m going to puke' face if I ever saw one."

Amy
took a deep breath and assumed her professional look.  Her professional look
consisted of knitted eyebrows, a squinted right eye and pursed lips.  If she
wanted to be super professional she tapped her fingertip on her chin.  She had
perfected this look in front of her mirror in the bathroom at home.  She
thought it made her look smart, knowledgeable, caring and in control all at the
same time.

"You're
not pooping, are you?" Jordan asked.

Amy
laughed.

“Because
that face you’re making looks like you might have I.B.S. or something.”

Amy
decided she was going to have to cultivate another professional look, perhaps
one without the eye squint.  "Who's the doctor here, you or me?" Amy
joked.

"You
are," Jordan answered.  "Unless…" she said with widening eyes,
"you stole a lab coat and scrubs and are impersonating a doctor."

"A
doctor with I.B.S.," Amy corrected.  She pointed to Jordan's overly
bandaged hand, saying, "So, that's some first-aid job.  If I didn't know better,
I'd say that's an oven mitt under all that gauze.  An oven mitt covered in
gauze and attached securely by duct tape."

"It
is
an oven mitt attached securely by duct tape.  This is what happens
when you let a handyman slash inventor slash horror movie fanatic slash best
friend play nurse."

Amy
gently turned Jordan's hand over.  "Well, it looks like the oven mitt did
its job.  Though I think it was due more to the tourniquet quality of the duct
tape."

"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.

Jordan
asked, "Can I ask you a question?"

God,
here it comes, Amy thought.  She's going to ask if I'm a lesbian and I'll have
to say no and then she'll stop flirting or whatever it is she's doing just when
I was beginning to enjoy it.

"Sure,"
Amy said, sounding not so sure.

"Why'd
you become a doctor?"

Okay,
so she was wrong about the question.  While she formulated her answer, she
turned to Jordan and flicked the needle of painkiller.  Jordan looked at the
needle and paled.

"Needles?"

Jordan
nodded.

Then
Amy did something she'd never done before.  Something she had never even
thought of before.  Something that this time yesterday she would never ever
have done.  She pushed her coat and her scrub top off her shoulder and showed
Jordan her tattoo.  "I don't like needles either.  But I sucked it up long
enough to get this tattoo.  It's my one claim to adventure."

"Beautiful,"
Jordan said.  And when Amy looked up Jordan wasn't looking at the tattoo.

Amy
blushed and turned her back to her.  She held Jordan's hand under her arm and began
to inject the painkiller into the wound but where Jordan couldn't see what was
happening.  "You just keep your eyes on my tattoo.  I'll be done with this
before you even know it."

Jordan's
eyes lingered on Amy’s shoulder.  The tattoo was a solid blue.  Not green like
old school tats, but a deep almost purple blue.  It was the caduceus, the
medical symbol, complete with snakes climbing the pole.  It was an artist's
version, though, and as Jordan stared at it, it seemed to be almost three-D. 
It was eerie and mesmerizing at the same time.

Jordan
reached out and lightly touched the tattoo with her finger.  "I wouldn't
think someone like you would have a tattoo.”

"Someone
like me?"

"Someone
so smart and beautiful."

Amy
was silent.  She was stunned that she had actually been called beautiful.  She
finished with the needle, but kept her back to Jordan.  She didn't want to see
those eyes looking at her.  She needed to regain her composure.  Finally, she
took three deep breaths, stood and tossed the needle into the biohazard can.

When
she turned around, Jordan was staring at her.  Her eyes roamed over Amy's face
and lingered on her exposed shoulder.

Embarrassed
(and a little thrilled) to be looked at with such daring, Amy pulled her top
and coat back into place.  "Where's your friend?" Amy asked.
"The one who did this amazing first-aid job?"

"She's
in the waiting room."

"I'm
going to go tell her that you're all right, but it's going to take a while to
do all the sutures.  What does she look like?"

"Short,
curly black hair, red cat-eye glasses, camo pants and a big black hoodie.  Just
call for Edison and she'll pop up."

"Edison? 
Okay."

And
Amy left.  As she walked the hall, she tried to collect her emotions.  This is
what she said to herself in her head as she walked:
Amy, what are you
doing?  That is a real-live gorgeous woman in there and you are here only to
stitch up her hand.  You date men, you’ve never really considered a
relationship with a woman and just because this beautiful, sexy, smart woman is
flirting with you does not mean you’re going to change your entire life
perception of how the world operates.  Jordan probably flirts with everyone. 
It’s what gorgeous people do – they play with the rest of us because they can. 
Still Jordan didn’t seem like that…the way she looked at me was so disarming.

Her
heart raced at the thought of Jordan’s finger on her skin.  She might not ever
wash there again.

It
wasn't working.  Amy’s pep talk with herself was having no effect on lowering
her heart rate.  So she did the next best thing.  She stopped at a vending
machine and bought a candy bar.  She hurriedly unwrapped the candy and stuffed
it into her mouth.  She chewed, swallowed, and sighed with relief.

"See
there?" she said to herself inside her own head.  "I'm not a
lesbian.  I just was having a low blood sugar moment."