Second First Kiss

They were in total sync. It was electric. “Exactly.”

“Right away, doctor.” She left him to go arrange for the tests, which meant going down the hall to the nurse’s station computer for scheduling them.

Jasher waited a few minutes with the patient, Mr. Powell Barlow, age forty-two. Father of four. Farmer. What could possibly be the matter with you, Powell Barlow?

As good a guess as gall bladder was, and as impressive as Sage’s powers of deduction were, Jasher’s instincts said the patient’s problem wasn’t as easy as that. Most signs pointed that way, but yeah. Not quite.

He’d have to wait on the test results.

“Try to rest if you can, Mr. Barlow. We’re ordering some labs.” Maybe not the right ones. Yet. “I’ll be back.”

Jasher checked on other patients. Sage hadn’t come back. He glanced at the clock. Fine. She’d been gone less than five minutes’ time. Time crawled when she was away.

Man, Sage was a far cry from Veronica. How had Jasher even dated a woman like the girl he’d been referring to when he and Sage talked the other night? It wasn’t that Veronica had been a gold-digger, considering at that moment of his mid-med-school debt accumulation he’d been far worse off than a homeless guy on the street. Although, maybe she had been.

It was more that Veronica was terrible at math. No matter how many times he worked the addition and subtraction for her, she couldn’t ever put together the fact that he worked twenty-four-hour shifts sometimes, which left zero hours in a day for him to take her places or to hang out.

And if Jasher ever got called in to the clinic when he was with Veronica, she’d pout. For days.

What a waste of three months. For both of them.

Not Sage.

Despite the fact she’d faced down some real dragons in her last relationship—dragons he needed to know more about to fully understand her—she didn’t come across as jaded, like a lot of women would be.

Instead, she’d channeled her emotions into others. Like when she asked about Redmond. How he was doing. Seemed interested in what he liked. That was cool. A lot of people ignored Redmond, which was a mistake. They were missing out.

Did Sage even remember that she and her popular sophomore friends had asked Redmond to be their date to the spring dance, and they’d made him a Dance King crown—and a sweet memory for the rest of his life?

The guy still had the crown perched on a special shelf in the living room.

Plus, she was always kind to Rhoda the photographer. She made Rhoda feel important and helped her complete a thankless job. And, she took shifts for people and came into the hospital when they were short-handed. Sage put the patients at ease.

That, and she was willing to eat chicken-fried steak at the Moose Creek restaurant.

If she hadn’t already occupied the top slot as his teen dream-girl, she’d be climbing his charts right now.

He went to check back on other ER patients.

“But does she cook?” he asked himself aloud when he was examining Rudy Melser, age nine.

“Yep.” Rudy nodded. “She does.”

Okay, then. “Who does, Rudy?” Jasher asked.

“My mom. And you can ask her out as soon as the divorce is final, Dr. Hotchkiss. She told me that after you stitched up my gash.”

Huh. Well. “Thanks, pal.” Jasher rubbed the kid’s hair. “That’s good to know.”

“She makes all my favorite stuff, too. Ramen and cheese quesadillas.”

Rudy’s mom walked in right then. “Oh, no. What has he been telling you?” Her face flamed. “Rudy! I told you not to say anything.”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Melser.”

“It’s Jane.” She touched her neck and got even redder, if that were possible and not turn her into a pickled beet. “I love what gentle hands you had when you stitched up my Rudy last time.”

Uh-huh. Jasher noted the chart and gave them their discharge orders and a prescription for antibiotic.