* * *

The tall surgeon rounded the corner just in time to see the pilot step out of his craft. The faint rays of the late February sun gave his metal boot tips a glimmer of reflected light. It was still cold but Cowboy refused to wear anything but his customary clothing, including the down ski vest with the insignia of the company on it. Garrett watched from the Trauma doors of the E.R. as he made his way into the hospital.


"Morning, Cowboy!"


"Morning to you, Doc. You know of a flight that I don’t?" He looked at her seriously for a minute then continued, "Or do you just need to talk?"


Garrett wet her lips, stalling for a moment then she closed her eyes, and sighed. "Talk is more like it." The woman looked around the busy hallway. "But not here. Do you have a minute or two?" Cowboy nodded. "Then let me buy you a cup of java. Come on." She motioned with her head for him to follow her as she moved down the hallway.


Cowboy had sensed that something was troubling Garrett and Danni both for the last week or so, maybe longer. He’d wanted to ask if he could help but chose wisely not too. The pilot had hoped that he was enough of a friend to the both of them that if they needed help or even just wanted to talk, they knew he’d be there for them.


Garrett opened the door to the E.R. Lounge and looked around the room. Nobody was there and the smell of fresh coffee filtered across the air. She crossed over to the large urn of liquid gold, the sustenance of the medical profession, coffee. The surgeon picked up the package of Styrofoam cups and offered one to the pilot. It was her way of making him feel at home. A lot was riding on this conversation and she didn’t want him thinking that she was going to interrogate the hell out of him.


With their cups of coffee in hand, each one stood quietly, sipping away and thinking until Cowboy finally started the conversation.


"Doc, something going on between you and that lil’ nurse?"


Garrett’s eyes flashed at him with an intensity of lightning bolts, her eyebrow raising almost into her hairline.


"I mean, stop me if I’m wrong, but you two just aren’t the same anymore. Like one of you is hurt or…I don’t know, but it’s just not right." He shook his head then sipped at his coffee some more. "I thought you two…" Cowboy stopped short, "well, it ain’t no business of mine either." His voice became a whisper.


Garrett looked him square in the eye, one military person to another. "What was it that you were going to say, Cowboy? Don’t try to spare my feelings, I’m looking for a reason for the uneasiness between Danni and myself. If you have any ideas, I want to hear them."


Cowboy knew the saying before it was even the directive in the military. Don’t ask and don’t tell. As long as the person did their job, it had never matter to him whom they chose to be friendly with. That was their business and none of his. In his mind, he was still that age-old enlisted man standing before an officer. It didn’t matter that they never served together or that they weren’t even in the same branch of the service. What did matter was that he respected her. "Doc, I really don’t think that what I was going to say had any real bearing on the matter at hand. At least, I don’t think so."


The surgeon sipped pensively at the hot liquid. "Damn! I’ve got to find out why things aren’t right. It’s like McCormick and Danni changed minds." She smirked, "At least where I’m concerned." She paused for a moment in thought. "You know, I really expected some wild tantrum from him up at the ski lodge when I gave you his suite key. Funny that nothing ever came out of that." She gave Cowboy a sidelong glance. "Or did it?"


"Whoa! Hold those horses right there. I stayed on my side of that huge bed and he did the same…er…I mean…he stayed on his side." Cowboy was adamant. "Jeez, Doc! Give me some credit for at least picking someone better looking than that bald pecker head. Besides, he ain’t my type, not enough curves in the right places." The pilot winked at her and used his hands to illustrate what he meant.


Garrett smiled at the concept that was left floating in her mind of Ian McCormick. "Pecker head, eh?" With that statement, they both chuckled at the thought. She was glad that he had not taken offense at her comment.


Cowboy tilted up his cup up to drain the last mouthful of coffee out of it. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he stepped over to the urn and poured himself another cup. "You know, Doc, I don’t think I even saw him. Heard him though, with all that snoring he was doing."


The surgeon thought about the last time that she had seen Ian on his way to the room that night. He’d walked in front of her and over to the elevators to the top floor where the suites were. "He didn’t seem that drunk, but come to think of it now, he did take a long time to push the button for the elevator and when he got in he did the same with the button for the floor."


Cowboy stirred his coffee. "I didn’t hear him come in. I hung that Flight suit over the back of a chair and crawled into bed. I must have fallen asleep right away. The last thing that I remembered was pulling those covers up over my head."


"Hmmm…interesting."


"Next thing I knew, it was morning. When I got up I remember looking at the bed and he was sound asleep, his clothes were draped over the foot of the bed."


"Can you think of anything else that happened?" Garrett was starting to see a definite misconception on Ian’s part; she just needed something to confirm her suspicion.


"Nope, I just did my morning ritual in the bathroom and came out, put my Flight suit on, then got my case and left."


"Did you say anything at all?" The surgeon watched his face. "Do anything that he could have…"


"Oh, shit! I left him a note with the room key on it." His eyes widened in realization of his actions. "I bet he thought it was from you."


"Why do you say that?" Her steely eyes grew in intensity.


"I…I didn’t sign it."


"What did it say, Cowboy?" She braced herself for the worst.


"I don’t remember off hand. Something about being thankful for the rest before I took off." His eyes flicked back and forth as he tried to remember. "Oh, God!" He looked her straight in the eye. "I wrote, Thanks for letting me rest before going off to new heights."


Garrett laughed. The puzzle of Ian’s attitude change was solved. "That’s why he’s been treating me that way. He was drunk, passed out and doesn’t remember anything but seeing that Flight suit and the note. He thinks we had one heck of a good time before I slipped out in the morning."


"What you going to do, tell him the truth?" The pilot took a long draw on his coffee.


"All in due time, Cowboy. But it will be when I need the advantage." She raised her cup to the pilot and winked. "Boy, is he going to be surprised."



* * *

The late February weather in Pittsburgh was anything but predictable. Between the cold, snow, and ice Garrett found herself with more time on her hands than she knew what to do with. Even on a day like this when they were grounded by the elements, she still couldn’t finagle her way into the O.R. as hard as she tried. She’d round with the Trauma teams, and check in on the patients that she had treated in the field. The rest of her day would either be spent in the medical library reading journals or just thinking.


It seemed that she did a lot of that lately, thinking. Sometimes it would be about her past, sometimes about her future. It didn’t seem to matter what she was thinking; Danni was always what she ended up with. The petite blonde nurse would pop up in Garrett’s thoughts in the most peculiar of times, but today, it was all that she could think about, period.


The talk with Cowboy earlier had helped her understand why Ian McCormick was going out of his way being nice to her. He thought that Garrett and he had something going, if only for that one night. The night that he had no recollection of at the ski lodge. She pondered that thought for a moment, realizing that at least one part of her puzzle was solved. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the part that she was the most concerned about.


Sitting in her small office, away from everyone else, the surgeon closed her eyes and tried to remember what had taken place that could be making such a difference in her young friend. They hadn’t quarreled or exchanged words of any kind. Well, except about where Danni would sleep that night. Garrett immediately shook her head. ‘Why would she be upset about sleeping in the bed?’ Then it dawned on her. Perhaps it was who she was going to be sleeping with that was the problem.


Garrett’s mind conjured up images of waking up with the small blonde draped across her body at first then quickly changed to the intimate posturing of their bodies that morning before the phone rang. The surgeon’s mind lingered on the spooning of her body with the petite blonde woman. She could still remember the warmth of their bodies as they were molded together and the scent of her friend from the very moment that her senses had stirred. The sweetness of that moment washed over her like a sun lit summer day and Garrett found herself sighing deeply, wishing that she were still there with her arm wrapped around the nurse.


‘Why would this time standout when we did nothing more than lay together?’


The surgeon let her mind delve deep into her past, when she had shared more than just lying together with another woman. It was hard to remember that nothing noteworthy from those shared experiments had registered in her memory when they had happened or now, when she tried to bring them back to life. The sensations that those unions had brought lasted only for the brief time when she had first felt them and nothing more. Even if she tried, she couldn’t remember their names. They were nothing more to her than a passing of time in her search for love. A love that had remained just out of her reach. That was until now.


The welcoming ways of the petite nurse had opened her mind if not her heart to the world around her. It was Danni that had given the stoic woman a sheltering home in the mist of her inner storm and helped her lay her demons to rest. The love of that friendship was more than she had ever had with another human outside of her family.


Garrett’s mind drifted once more to the blonde woman nestled in her arms, her tousled hair resting just under her nose. She inhaled trying to savor the scent of her. Then, without warning, the blonde hair was teasing someone else’s nose. The surgeon’s mind now flashed with images of Danni held in the arms of David as they moved slowly around the dance floor.


"That’s it! She wanted to be with him." Now, she had an idea about why the nurse was different towards her. Garrett thought about how many times she had seen the young woman put others before her own needs.


The surgeon snapped her large hand through the air in front of her and quickly grasped at some elusive idea, snagging it as she spoke the words, "I got you now." Her mind had just perceived that last piece of the puzzle and Garrett began to devise a plan to get Danni what she wanted.


She got up from her desk and headed for the door. "First stop, Rosie!"



* * *

The auburn-haired nurse came sweeping through the door at the main lobby. Rosie was always early for her shift and especially on a day like today with the temperature hovering around zero. She would need time to change and warm up before starting her shift.


Garrett had been waiting patiently in the gift shop, watching for the feisty nurse to pass by. The surgeon quickly put back the piece of giftware that she had been holding when Rosie came into sight just outside the glass that separated the lobby from the shop. Moving swiftly, the long legs of the surgeon soon caught up with the nurse.

"Hey, Rosie, can I buy you a cup of coffee to warm up?" Garrett slowed her pace to match, the nurse’s stride.


"Doc, you feeling okay?" Rosie eyed her cautiously then looked around for Danni. "Where’s she at?"


"Where’s who at?"


"Danni. You two are usually inseparable anymore." Rosie looked around but could not find the petite nurse anywhere. "Okay, what’s the joke? Where’s she hiding?"