More Than a Kiss

Happy Birthday to Me

Jordan paced back and forth in the small room. There wasn't much to do or look at while she waited for Amy. The décor left a lot to be desired. One gurney-type rolling bed, one rolling stool, and a small desk holding some medical torture instruments. The desk was on wheels, too. What was it with doctors and rolling devices?

There were two doors. One was the door that she had come in and the other door led to another room identical to this one. Jordan knew because she had peeked earlier.

She stopped pacing long enough to study the poster that was taped to the wall. It depicted a cartoon boy holding his hands over a sink. There were bugs and worms crawling all over his hands. Cartoon germs. She moved to the next poster. It was a drawing of the male anatomy complete with Latin-esque labels. Jordan leaned in close and studied the side view of the phallus. It was a sliced open view so you could see what the inside of the penis looked like. It looked all spongy. She reached out and touched it with one finger. It just felt like a poster.

She wiped her un-bandaged hand on the side of her shorts. Her palm was sweaty. It was a cold sweat. Nerves. She didn't like to admit it, but Amy made her nervous. Not like she was scared of her, but like she was scared of her. That didn't make sense unless you were Jordan. And it made perfect sense to her. She was scared of Amy, all right. Not scared of the physical person of Amy. More like scared of how Amy made her feel.

The small room was giving her an acute case of claustrophobia. The walls were closing in, making her brain play tricks on itself. She swore the cartoon boy on the “Always wash your hands!” poster was talking to her. Which was markedly better than the penis one talking to her. The cartoon boy told her she should wash her hands. Sweaty hands were germy hands and sing the Happy Birthday song because that was the specified length for optimum germ removal. She didn’t know whether she should believe him or not but she had an instant driving desire to rid her hands of sweat and potentially hazardous germs.

She went to the sink, and turned on the hot water. She didn't want to shake hands with Amy and have a clammy, sweaty palm. That would be the death knell of any budding relationship. Almost as bad as kissing and slobbering on her face. She held her hand under the stream of water and sang the Happy Birthday song all the way through just like the cartoon boy in the poster told her to do.

When she turned off the water, she heard a voice. No, two voices. They were coming from the room next door. One voice sounded like Amy’s. Jordan pressed her ear to the door that led to the room next door, closed her eyes and listened. There was a man’s voice, and Amy’s voice.

Here is what she heard the voices say:

“No! Don’t!” Amy said.

“Why not? You want it. You know you do,” a man said.

“I do not want it. Especially while I’m working.”

“C’mon, this is the perfect place. That way if it makes you sick you’re already in a hospital.”

“I don’t have time,” Amy said. “I have an appointment any minute now.”

“I’ll be quick. Here, open your mouth.”

“No!” Amy screeched. “Put that back where it belongs. I don’t want to even look at it.”

“Aw. C’mon. Just put a little bit in your mouth.”

Amy screamed. Metal clanged against metal and fell to the floor. There was a giant thud.

Jordan immediately morphed into white knight mode. She bashed open the door and crashed into the room, hands held high in a karate posture. She hai-yai’ed and did the whooping crane stance that The Karate Kid made famous.

The frozen tableau she saw before her was this: Amy was in a corner. Jeremy was holding a bowl in one hand and a spoon in the other. He held the spoon, which had some type of green sludge in it, only an inch from Amy’s lips. A bedpan was on the floor, still spinning from its fall.

“Unhand her,” Jordan said because she was still thinking like a knight and Amy was her damsel in distress.

Jeremy clanked the spoon into the bowl and said, “Hey, you’re the lesbian hottie.”

Jordan relaxed, deflating from the whooping crane stance to one of an embarrassed penguin. “And you’re Amy’s boyfriend. Who’s trying to spoon feed her.”

Amy laughed and slapped Jeremy’s chest with the back of her hand. “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my butthole roommate. Who’s trying to make me eat my other roommate’s experiment.”

“Um, okay,” Jordan said. “I’ll just be right over there. In the next room. Waiting.” She held up her injured hand. “Stitches, you know.” She saluted them. “Carry on.”

Jordan backed out the door, smiling so big her face hurt. She closed the door and banged her head against it, muttering, “Dumb, dumb, dumb.” She went back to the sink, turned on the water and washed her face with her one good hand while humming Happy Birthday.

"Is it your birthday?"

Jordan gasped and turned. It was Amy. She turned off the faucet and looked around for a paper towel. "No, it's not my birthday. I was just singing it because the cartoon boy told me to."

"Cartoon boy?" Amy asked. She tilted her head to one side. She squinted like she was trying to figure out if Jordan had gone bonkers.

Jordan gestured at the poster.

Amy studied the poster. She looked worried. "That boy in the poster talked to you? You know he's not alive, right?" Amy handed her a paper towel.

"No!" Jordan said. "I mean, yes, I know that. I meant the bubble over his head said to sing…well you know." She took the paper towel and dried her hands.

Amy laughed. "I was just kidding."

Jordan breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh. That was funny. You had me going there for a minute." There was an awkward pause while she wiped her face with the paper towel. “Um, sorry about bursting in on you like that. It sounded like, you know…”

“Yeah, I know,” Amy said, “But it wasn’t what you think. And he’s not what you think.”

Jordan nodded. She nodded too much. It was like she couldn’t stop nodding. She felt like one of those toy Chihuahua dogs people put on the dashboard of their car.

"You're nervous, huh?" Amy asked.

Jordan nodded quickly about three hundred more times.

"No need to be. Getting stitches taken out doesn't hurt at all. Have a seat." Amy looked over her paperwork on her clipboard and jotted down some notes.

Jordan sat on the gurney-bed. She could feel the coarse paper lying across the top of it sticking to the back of her sweaty thighs. Great. She was so nervous that she was sweating all over now. Amy was going to think she had some kind of sweating disease.

Jordan closed her eyes and took three deep breaths. She couldn't ask Amy out. There was no way this brilliant, busy, probably straight doctor would go out with her. Jordan was certain she would just make a fool of herself by asking, and Amy was so nice that she'd have to make up an excuse and then they'd both know she was lying and that would make everything really awkward and tense and then she'd have to tell Edison about how stupid she'd been and she'd feel embarrassed about it for months or maybe even years.

"One down," Amy said.

Jordan opened her eyes. Amy was smiling and holding one tiny little black piece of thread in some tweezers.

"That didn't hurt, did it?" Amy asked.

Jordan shook her head. She'd been so wrapped up in the conversation with herself that she hadn’t known when Amy had unwrapped her hand and taken out a stitch.

God, this woman was delectable. If she asked Amy to kiss it and make it better, would she? That was a wicked thought. Wickedly delicious, that is. Wasn't that the jingle for Lucky Charms? No, that was magically delicious. Jordan closed her eyes again and thought of sex. She had learned this trick while going to the dentist. Thinking about sex made having people poke and prod in your mouth much more tolerable. Now, she had Amy to think of having sex with. She knew she shouldn’t go there, but she went there anyway.

"Done," Amy pronounced.

Jordan opened her eyes again and gaped at Amy. She had taken all the stitches out in less time than she could sing the Lucky Charms jingle.

"Wow," Jordan said for lack of anything better to say.

"Your hand is healing nicely. Now let's see how it functions.

"You made it bionic, right? 'Cause I always wanted a bionic hand."

Amy laughed. "Let's just see if you can open and close it first."

Jordan slowly made a fist while making bionic sounds. A sudden shot of pain made her stop and gasp. "Ouch." She looked at Amy. "That hurt."

"It will for a while. You did sever a tendon, you know. Practice opening and closing, making a fist, squeezing." Amy demonstrated the motion with her own hand. She looked like she was milking a cow. "You'll have to do some physical therapy in order to regain full use of your hand."

Jordan's world brightened a little. "I get to come here and do therapy with you?"

"No, you can do it yourself. At home."

"Oh," Jordan said when what she really wanted to say was "Damn." She'd had a little ray of hope there for a minute. Hope that she'd get to come to Amy's office and practice squeezing things. Whoops, there were those magically delicious thoughts again.

Amy rolled her chair over to the desk, opened a drawer and rummaged around inside. When she rolled back over, she handed Jordan a little yellow rubber ball. "Squeeze on that ball. Carry it around with you and when you have a spare moment, squeeze it. In a few weeks, you'll have complete use of your hand again."

Jordan gave it a try. She could barely make a dent in the ball.

"Keep at it. You'll see."

She stowed the ball in the side pocket of her shorts. Amy rolled away to the desk.

I want one of those rolling stools, Jordan thought. I could get all around my house and never have to stand at all.

When Amy rolled back, she handed Jordan a stack of books. Jordan accepted them with her good hand and was shocked when she saw they were the books she'd written.

"These are mine," Jordan said. "I mean, they belong to you, obviously, but I wrote them."

"I bought them the other day. I was wondering if you'd do me the honor of autographing them?"

"Yeah, sure. Of course I will," Jordan said. She was stunned. She'd never been asked for her autograph before.

Amy handed her a pen.

Jordan opened the first book to the title page and had a sudden thought. "Who should I make it out to?"

"Me," Amy said.

Jordan bent over the page and wrote: Amy, will you go to lunch with me? Jordan March.

Jordan nervously handed it over. She watched as Amy read it and looked up at her.

"I'd love to," Amy said. "When?"

"Now?"

"Right now?"

"Do you not want to?" Jordan asked, her heart racing. Thank God, Amy didn’t have her stethoscope with her – she might admit her to the cardiac unit for observation.

"No, it's the suddenness of it that startled me."

"We could do it tomorrow. Or next week. Or some evening."

Amy shook her head, saying, "We can't do it in the evening."

"Um, okay, I understand. You already have plans and…”

Amy interrupted her, "No, I mean you wrote 'lunch' so we can't do lunch in the evening."

Jordan quickly wrote in the next book: Or dinner?

Amy read it and laughed. "What are you going to write in the third book?"

Jordan shrugged. "Depends on how well lunch goes. When would you like to go?"

"Now?"

"Right now?"

"Isn't that what you said? You wanted to do it right now?"

Jordan shook her head. "I'm confused. Are we still talking about lunch?"

Amy giggled. Jordan liked it when Amy giggled.

"How about if I meet you out front in five minutes?"

"That'd be great," Jordan said. “See you then!” She hurried into the hall and headed to the elevator. She felt like skipping. She felt like skipping and singing and laughing all at the same time.