Heart Trouble

by Jae

Suuure, came Jordan’s answer. Anyway, how about coffee on Saturday afternoon?

  Laleh put her foot up on the laundry hamper and typed balancing her cell phone on her thigh. Sorry, but I work all weekend.

  This time, the answer came with less of a delay. It might sound strange, but would you consider having coffee in a hospital cafeteria? I can’t leave the hospital, but I can take a break any time. I know you know where the hospital is.

  So Jordan worked at Griffith Memorial Hospital too? Oh yeah, Laleh was very familiar with it! More familiar than Jordan suspected, actually, and not just as a patient. I don’t mind at all, she answered. I didn’t get to enjoy the hospital coffee when I was there.

  Well, I wouldn’t call it enjoyable, but it’s drinkable, came Jordan’s reply. And the pleasure of your company will make up for the taste of the coffee.

  What a flirt. But she was actually charming, so Laleh had to smile. With her outspoken manner, Jordan reminded her a bit of Jill. When? Laleh typed.

  How about now? No time like the present, right?

  Laleh looked at the dirty laundry strewn across the bathroom floor. Well, it wasn’t as if she had anything more pleasant or interesting to do, so she agreed to meet Jordan in an hour.

  She stepped over the piles of clothes and went into her bedroom. What did one wear for a non-date in a hospital cafeteria?

  * * *

  The beeper on Hope’s waistband vibrated just as she had settled down at one of the workstations to write a discharge order. She glanced at the display.

  It was a hospital extension. The surgical floor, to be exact.

  She stood, picked up the wall phone, and dialed the number. When one of the clerks answered, she said, “Dr. Finlay. I was paged.”

  “Oh, yes,” the clerk answered. “Hold on. I’ll get Dr. Williams.”

  So it had been Jordan who had paged her.

  “Hi, Hope,” Jordan’s voice came over the line a minute later. “Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.”

  “No problem. What can I do for you?” Hope turned and glanced up at the patient board while she talked. Why the heck was Mr. Davies still listed as an active patient? It shouldn’t take Scott that long to reduce a dislocated patella. God, that resident needed a babysitter, not an attending. “Are you surgeons upstairs in need of a real doctor?”

  Jordan snorted. “We’re the ones who do the real work. You just keep them alive until we get there.”

  “Keep dreaming.”

  They’d had variations of this exchange since they had first met as residents six years ago, but neither of them ever got tired of it.

  “Speaking of keeping them alive…” Jordan said after a moment. “That’s actually why I paged you. I thought I’d catch you up on how the guy from this morning did in the OR.”

  Hope frowned. What was going on? Jordan had never paged her for something like that before. “You know I never check up on patients once they’re out of the ER.”

  “His mother said you talked to her for a long time and held her hand in the waiting room, so I thought you might make an exception this once.”

  “I do that for every family member who looks like he or she needs it,” Hope said. “That’s all part of the job. You know that.”

  “So you don’t want to know how he did?”

  Hope groaned. To herself, she could admit that she was curious. The patient had been a college student, a young man with his entire life ahead of him, and it had been touch-and-go the entire time they had worked on him in the ER. “Since you paged me, you might as well tell me.”

  “We had to remove his spleen, but he’s stable now,” Jordan said. “Looks like he’s going to make it.”

  The satisfaction of having helped to save a life flowed through Hope. “Good. I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Oh, and speaking of former patients of yours… I thought you didn’t want to get involved with a patient?”

  Jordan’s question came out of left field. “I don’t. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Laleh Samadi and your little squash date.” The way Jordan said the name, it sounded like an accusation.

  Great. Apparently, Laleh wasn’t as discreet as she’d thought. “It’s not a date.” She looked left and right. One of the nurses sat at a workstation, making notes in a chart, so Hope lowered her voice. She didn’t want her private life to become the object of hospital gossip. “We’re just playing squash, the way you and she are just going to have coffee together. She doesn’t date women, remember?”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t fantasize about her throwing me down on a cafeteria table and having her way with me.”

  “TMI, TMI!” She really didn’t need to know the details of Jordan’s little fantasies. When Jordan talked like that about other women, Hope didn’t mind as much, but listening to her talk about Laleh made her feel as if she needed to jump in to uphold Laleh’s honor. She shook her head. That wouldn’t do. Hope had always preferred wearing scrubs to wearing shining armor. She wasn’t anyone’s knight.

  “So you really aren’t interested in her?”

  “No,” Hope said with vigor, “I’m not.”

  “Cross your heart and hope to die?” Jordan asked, the teasing undertone obvious in her voice.

  This was getting ridiculous. “Go back to your gallbladders, Jordan.”

  “I just wanted to make sure.” Now Jordan’s tone was entirely serious. “I’ve never seen you pursue a woman like that.”

  “For the hundredth time, I’m not pursuing her!”

  “Well, you must have gone back to the restaurant to invite her to play squash with you. That doesn’t look all that uninterested to me.”

  “It’s not like that,” Hope said. How was she supposed to explain her connection to Laleh? Finally, she settled on “It’s…complicated.”

  “Isn’t it always when a woman’s involved?”

  Hope gave up. It was impossible to convince Jordan otherwise. She thought every lesbian had to be attracted to any good-looking woman crossing her path. But just because Jordan was that way didn’t mean Hope had to be too. “I have to go check up on my resident. Either he fell asleep, or he’s been at a patella reduction for half an hour.”

  “Yeah, I have to go too. Hot date in the cafeteria.” Jordan chuckled and ended the call.

  With a shake of her head, Hope pushed away from the wall and strode toward treatment room three to check up on Scott. When she reached out to pull back the curtain in front of the open door, she paused.

  Wait a minute! Jordan’s words echoed through her mind. That doesn’t mean I can’t fantasize about her throwing me down on a cafeteria table and having her way with me.

  Did that mean her “hot date” in the cafeteria was with Laleh?

  So what if it is? It was none of her business. Laleh could take care of herself and would let Jordan know if she overdid it with her shameless flirting. Determined to focus on work, she pulled back the curtain.

  * * *

  “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  The deep voice behind her made Laleh whirl around.

  A uniformed security guard stood in front of her, one hand wrapped around his duty belt next to his walkie-talkie as if preparing to call for backup. “Do you work here?”

  Did he look at everyone as if facing a potential terrorist, or was it her Middle Eastern looks? Laleh tried not to take it personally.

  “Um, no, I was just…” She gestured to the entrance in front of her—and then wanted to slap her forehead. It was the staff entrance. She had steered toward it by instinct instead of heading for the visitors’ entrance. This connection with Hope really took some getting used to. “Oh. It seems I got a bit lost.”

  “What are you looking for?” the guard asked.

  “The cafeteria.”

  “You circle around here, to that entrance over there.” He pointed. “The cafeteria is on the second floor.”

  Laleh knew that, of course. “Thank you.” As she
walked toward the visitors’ entrance, she glanced back toward her car to make sure she hadn’t parked it in the staff parking lot. How weird was that? Now she had to overcome another person’s habits.

  When she entered the cafeteria five minutes later, Jordan was already seated at one of the small tables. She lifted her hand and waved.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Laleh said. “I…uh…lost my way getting here.”

  “No problem. Seeing you was definitely worth the wait. You look great.” Jordan looked her up and down.

  Did this woman ever turn off the flirting? To Laleh’s surprise, she found that it didn’t make her uncomfortable. Coming from a guy, it probably would have annoyed her, but there was nothing lecherous about Jordan’s gaze; her eyes held only admiration and a bit of a humorous twinkle.

  When Laleh sat across from her, Jordan slid a large paper cup across the table. “I didn’t know how you like your coffee, so I brought sugar, artificial sweetener, and creamer.” She pointed at the huge pile of goodies covering half the table.

  Laleh laughed. “How much coffee did you think I would drink?”

  “I was hoping a lot,” Jordan said with a grin.

  Laleh stirred creamer and sugar into her coffee. “So you’re a doctor too?” The new knowledge her brain suddenly held hadn’t included that bit of information. “A surgeon, right?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  Shit. She couldn’t tell Jordan that her pale green scrubs had given it away. At Griffith Memorial Hospital, the scrubs were color-coded depending on the department, but since Laleh had never been in the OR or on a surgical floor, she shouldn’t know what color a surgeon would wear. Quickly, she pointed at Jordan’s ID badge, which said, Jordan Williams, MD, surgical department.

  “Oh, right.” Jordan reached up and touched the piece of plastic. “I forgot. I don’t normally wear that on dates.”

  “Well, good thing this isn’t a date.” Laleh smiled but kept her tone firm enough to draw a line.

  Jordan gave her a nod. “Understood. Thanks for the reminder.”

  Laleh took the first sip of coffee. Only her Persian upbringing, which regarded it as a deadly sin to scorn any food or drink a hostess offered, kept her from grimacing. Ugh. This raises bad to a whole new level.

  “So, is this”—Laleh pointed at the ID badge and the scrubs—“how you met Hope?”

  Jordan put down her paper cup and nodded. “Yeah. We worked together at Mass General when we were residents. I moved to California right after my residency, and when I heard there was an opening for an emergency medicine attending at Griffith Memorial, I called her. She jumped at the chance to get out of Boston.”

  “What’s so bad about Boston? I heard it’s a lovely city.”

  “It is, but… Well, it’s not easy to keep working in the same place where you started as a wet-behind-the-ears resident. You have to work harder to be taken seriously.”

  “I can definitely understand that. It’s the same for me at the restaurant.”

  Jordan cocked her head. “Why’s that?”

  “My aunt and uncle own it, so I often helped out, washing dishes and running errands, as a teenager. When I started working there full-time, it took a while before I could make the other waiters and waitresses stop ordering me around.”

  “And you never thought about working someplace else?”

  Laleh firmly shook her head. “Never. It’s home.” She stirred more creamer into her coffee to make it halfway drinkable. “Did Hope…I mean, did you two work at Massachusetts General at the time of the Boston Marathon bombing?”

  “Yes. That was right before I left. I wasn’t on duty that day, but I was called in later because they didn’t know how many wounded to expect. Hope was pretty much the first one on scene. She’d volunteered in one of the medical tents they had set up in Copley Square, less than a block from the finish line.” Jordan took a big gulp of her coffee. “She doesn’t talk about it, but I imagine that might be another reason why she was so eager to leave Boston after she finished her residency. Too many memories.”

  Wow. Laleh clutched her paper cup with both hands. How come she knew about some obscure genetic disorder hidden away in the far recesses of Hope’s brain, but she had no idea about Hope’s personal past?

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to shock you with my gory stories about work.” Jordan shrugged apologetically. “Guess it’s an occupational hazard. You get so used to sicknesses, injuries, and death, you could go to sleep right next to a corpse in the morgue.”

  “Ooh. Do I sense a story behind this? Was Hope involved?” Somehow, she sensed she’d been.

  Over the rim of her paper cup, Jordan studied her for a while. “Are you sure you don’t date women? For someone who’s supposedly straight, you are awfully interested in Hope. Do you notice how often you bring her up?”

  A sip of coffee went down the wrong pipe. Laleh started coughing. “It’s not what you think.” She wheezed and rubbed her cheeks, which were burning. Hopefully, Jordan would think it was from the coughing, not because she was blushing.

  “If it’s any consolation, I think the interest is mutual, as much as Hope is trying to deny it,” Jordan said.

  “What? No! It’s really not… I’m not… Hope and I, we are just…”

  Jordan’s pager chose that moment to go off.

  “Saved by the beeper.” Jordan flashed her a grin, her very white teeth shining against her dark skin. She glanced at the display and instantly sobered. “Damn. I’m needed downstairs. But it was nice to see you, even if it didn’t last long. Thanks for coming.”

  Laleh barely had time to stammer out “you’re welcome” before Jordan was gone. She stared after her and then buried her face in her arms, which were folded on top of the table, and let out a long groan.

  CHAPTER 8

  Normally, playing squash was a great stress reliever for Hope, but today it was having the opposite effect on her. Already in her shorts and tank top, she paced the squash court while she waited for Laleh. When she couldn’t stand the waiting anymore, she started to hit the white rubber ball, driving it against the front wall with greater and greater force.

  By the time a knock sounded on the Plexiglas door behind her, she was bathed in sweat.

  She stopped the ball with a quick drop shot before turning around.

  Laleh stood on the other side of the transparent wall. Without Hope having told her how to dress, she had put on the right kind of clothes to play squash.

  Hope’s gaze registered white-soled sneakers, then trailed up a pair of slender legs to comfortable-looking black shorts and finally took in a red tank top that clung to Laleh’s curves and showed off the smooth skin of her arms.

  Her mouth went dry. Damn. Why couldn’t she have accidentally shocked herself while resuscitating a nice, wrinkled lady in her eighties? That would have made it easier. Okay, not by much, but still… She quickly walked over to the back corner, where she’d left her water bottle.

  “Hi,” Laleh said as she entered through the Plexiglas door. She sounded a little shy.

  Was this as weird for her as it was for Hope?

  She wiped a drop of water from her mouth before answering. “Hi.”

  They stood in front of each other for several awkward moments.

  “I see you already got started,” Laleh finally said, pointing to the sweat gleaming on Hope’s arms and the dark spots on her tank top.

  Hope wiped her brow with the sweatband encircling her right wrist. “Uh, no. Just hitting a few balls while I waited.”

  “I’m not late, am I?” Laleh glanced at her own wrist, but she wasn’t wearing a watch.

  “No. I got here early.” Since all this craziness had started, she hadn’t been able to relax at home. “So, want to get started?”

  “Yep. I’ve got my eager-student hat on.” Laleh pointed at the headband holding back her gleaming black hair, which was tied into a ponytail.

  Hope had never taught anyone how to play squas
h. Normally, she preferred to play with opponents who could keep up with her skill level, so she didn’t have to hold back. It took her a moment to decide where to start. She bent, picked up her second racquet, and held it out to Laleh.

  The second Laleh’s slender fingers closed around the racquet grip, she knew this part of her knowledge hadn’t transferred to Laleh.

  “What?” Laleh followed Hope’s gaze down to her hand. “I’m doing it wrong, aren’t I?”

  “Well, let’s just say you shouldn’t get any ideas about inserting a chest tube into a patient with pneumothorax.”

  They both chuckled.

  “Don’t grip the racquet with your clenched fist,” Hope said. “Think of it more like a handshake. Hold it with your fingers, not deep in your palm.”

  “But won’t I have more power if I hold it like this?” Laleh asked.

  “More power, sure, but at the price of giving up control, and that’s really the secret to being a good squash player.”

  Laleh regarded her curiously. “Is that why you like it?” She lowered her gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry. We don’t know each other well enough for a question like that. It’s just… Well, it doesn’t feel like we’re strangers.”

  Hope shrugged. “It’s okay.” That didn’t mean she would answer Laleh’s question, though. “So, you hold the racquet like this. The V of your hand, between your thumb and index finger, should be in line with the inside edge of the racquet frame.” She demonstrated with her own racquet.

  Laleh mimicked her grip.

  “Good. Let’s mark it so you can more easily find your grip while we’re playing.” Hope returned to her backpack in the corner and pulled out a pen.

  “Are you sure?” Laleh hesitated to hold out the racquet. “It’s not my racquet.”

  “It’s okay. It’s an old one that I don’t use anymore.” Hope stepped closer, gripped the racquet just above Laleh’s hand to hold it steady, and ran the pen along the V between her fingers.

  When Laleh shivered a little, Hope stopped mid-motion and became aware how intimate their position and the gentle touch of the pen along Laleh’s hand was. “Is this okay?”

  “Yeah, of course. It tickles a little. That’s all.”