More Than a Kiss

by Layce Gardner

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

  Amy laughed.

  “Because that face you’re making looks like you might have IBS 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. "And throw it in there."

  Jordan looked at the symbol on top of the trash can. "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 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 then 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 hospital 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 the shirt's arm hole and her head sticking out the other arm hole. She was attempting to worm her way out of the mess, but wasn't having much success. Unless she was trying for a straight jacket 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 intense 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 and 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 sh
e'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 1950's? 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 unpresentable? I knew I should have combed 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 was 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 pain killer. 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 pain killer 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 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."

  Mustaches and Mistakes

  Completely unaware that she had chocolate smeared above her upper lip, Amy opened the door to the waiting room, looked out over the huddled masses and called out, "Ms. Edison? Is there a Ms. Edison here?"

  Edison waved her hand in the air a la Arnold Horshack, saying, "Ooh, ooh, ooh! Tell me she'll live."

  Jordan's description had been right on target except she wasn’t wearing glasses.

  "She'll live," Amy said, shaking Edison's hand. "Thanks to that superior taping job of yours. It was extremely difficult to remove."

  Edison stared at Amy's chocolate mustache and mistakenly thought it was a real mustache. The chocolate matched Amy’s hair color. Edison’s mistake was understandable. She’d not worn her glasses. Edison thought Amy would be really pretty if she practiced hair removal.

  Amy mistakenly thought Edison must be hard of hearing or maybe even deaf since she was obviously staring at her lips and trying to lip read. So, Amy talked very, very loudly and made sure to enunciate crisply. "I. Am. Pleased. To. Meet. You. Edison."

  Edison thought maybe Amy was not only hairy, but deaf and that was why she so carefully said her words and had no volume control. Edison raised her volume to match Amy's, "It is so wonderful that you were able to become a doctor!"

  "Thank you!" Amy shouted back.

  Edison continued shouting, "I think it's wonderful to see people overcome tragic circumstances and fulfill their dreams!"

  "I agree!”

  "So are you going to be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again?"

  "Huh
?"

  "Jordan's cut hand?" Edison said, making elaborate cutting gestures with her own hand.

  Amy added some sewing gestures to her next sentence so Edison could understand better. "Oh, yes, I can put it back together, but it'll take a while. I didn't want you to worry."

  "Can I watch? I find gore fascinating!" She stared intently at Amy’s lips like a bird dog awaiting a signal.

  Amy nodded enthusiastically. "I don't see why not! You can help to distract her while I sew her up!"

  "If I know Jordan, you've already distracted her plenty!"

  When Amy looked puzzled, Edison explained, "Jordan always notices the pretty ones!"

  Amy led Edison down the hallway and since Edison was deaf and walking behind her, Amy didn't bother to keep her thoughts inside her head. "Wow. Here I am being called pretty again. Twice within five minutes. Must be some kind of record. Or maybe it's just a thing with lesbians. She said Jordan noticed pretty women. That means Jordan must be some kind of playgirl. And the way Edison said it was even more telling – like she was jealous. Is Edison her girlfriend? A better question is why am I even thinking about all this? I would have been safer and saner with Mrs. Markus' mood mole."

  Edison said, "What's a mood mole?"

  Amy froze. "You heard me say that?"

  "Sure," Edison said, "You're the one who's deaf, not me."

  "I'm not deaf," Amy said.

  "You're not?"

  Amy shook her head. "So if you're not deaf, why were you staring at my lips?"

  Edison shuffled her feet. "I'm sorry, I know it's rude, but I've never seen a woman with a mustache before." Afraid of offending Amy, she quickly amended her words. "I mean, I've seen mustaches on women before, but not a nice, thick mustache like yours."

  Amy wiped her upper lip. "It's chocolate," Amy said. She licked her finger to prove her point.

  "Oh," Edison said, relieved. "Thank God, 'cause that was really scary looking."

  Amy licked her upper lip. "All gone?"

  Edison nodded. "Yep. Oh, and Jordan’s not a playgirl."