I Don't Believe You
The pulsing pain from her ankle throbbed and demanded that Pam give it the attention it deserved. She ignored the pain for too long. At the same time she commended herself for handling the pain like a warrior, her ankle gave out on her. Pam caught herself by placing her hand on the wall and gasped to mask the pain. Through the sharpness, she heard her nurse’s voice in her mind. “Discomfort is a temporary and natural response to distress.” In this instance, her ankle was not happy with her for landing on it incorrectly. Her head wasn’t pleased with all the discombobulation that occurred in such a short period of time. She told herself what she hoped. In a couple of days, everything will be back to normal.
If she were in her house or near her pickup, Pam would have access to the supplies she needed. Simple things like a cold pack and an ace bandage to keep things stabilized always worked with sprains and minor muscle injuries. Pam promised herself she’d ask Jorgen for both when she finished her shower and took the next steps to the bathroom.
“I saw that,” Jorgen placed one hand under her elbow and the other one around her waist for support. “We can try to get you do the doctor.”
It took them an hour to drive the five miles to Jorgen’s house. She imagined the drive to the hospital ten miles away. Zach’s warning of other drivers being stuck in ditches because of the poor visibility peppered the vision. “Going through all that trouble for a sprained ankle. They’d tell me to ice it and take it easy. I’m not paying someone to tell me what I already know.” Pam replied.
“Okay, at best, I’m sitting outside the shower. That way I’ll be right there if you need me.”
“That just isn’t right,” she complained.
“What isn’t right is you being the poster girl for I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up.”
There was the smirk. The one that said he had her right where he wanted her. If she said no, he’d call her out for being intimidated.
She was a bundle of nerves, but she didn’t want him to know it. “If you promise not to look.” She kept her voice light to let him know she was joking.
Jorgen chuckled in response.
A sense of relief came over her. He got her jokes. Trying to keep up the humor she suggested, “I have a better idea. You go first.”
“What if I catch you looking?” He taunted with the same tone she used on him.
“I’m a nurse there isn’t anything I haven’t seen on anybody else.”
“If that’s the argument, I can say the same thing.”
The red crawled up Pam’s cheeks so fast she didn’t know if there was a way to tamper the fire. He was downright attractive. She was normal at best. Sure, she looked good with a touch of makeup and the right clothes to accent the better qualities. Jorgen needed no corrective attire or cosmetics to make him appealing. The last thing she wanted was him seeing her undressed.
“Gotcha,” he joked. He pulled out two towels and a washcloth and passed them to her. “I’ll stay outside the door. If you need me holler.”
She thought she’d be fine. It was a typical bathroom with a typical shower. Shampoo and conditioner were placed precariously on the edge of the tub and lotion and toiletries were on the counter. Pam moved the shampoo and conditioner to the floor, so they wouldn’t fall and stepped into the shower. The water warmed quickly and soothed her muscles. The tension she refused to acknowledge melted away.
Another bottle of shampoo and conditioner were on the shelf beside the shower head. “How many bottles of shampoo does one guy need?” she called out the door. As soon as she asked, she regretted it. What if he had a secret girlfriend?“
My cousin sells those fancy cosmetics.” He answered through the door. “She asked me to try it and tell her what I thought. I liked it, so she let me keep it.”
Pam shrugged. It made sense. Just last week she ordered some Perfectly Posh body wash from one of the patient’s daughters. She took a better look at the bottle so she could remember to buy some for Jorgen as a thank you for his kindness. After committing the green paisley pattern to memory, she squirted a dollop of shampoo in her hand and massaged her scalp with it. With the recognition of a tingling sensation, she stopped working the lather. Pam smelled a hint of mint. “What’s in this…” The room turned dark and the water pressure decreased to a drip. “That is not funny Jorgen Backman.”
He opened the bathroom door. “It isn’t me. We lost power. There must be too much snow on the electrical lines.”
“I don’t believe you,” she snapped. She was standing naked in a dark shower with shampoo in her hair.
“You don’t have to believe me for it to be true. Stay here, and I’ll get a flashlight.”
She heard him move, and the uneasiness formed a knot in her stomach. “Can’t you just stay here with me until they come back on?”
“That could be in ten minutes or ten hours.” She heard him shuffling around the cabinets. “I have something around here somewhere.” The sound of bottles falling and Jorgen talking to himself about knowing what he was looking for being in the back did little to comfort Pam. The suds grew heavier in her head. She knew it was her imagination, but the fear that the soap would make her hair fall out forced her to rethink the situation. The instructions on the bottle said lather then rinse.
A catalog of videos they watched in college rushed to the front of her mind. She mentally searched for the doctor’s recordings of people who hurt themselves in situations that seemed harmless until the person had to visit the emergency room. Had anyone gone in for a shampoo related scalp burn?
“Jorgen is there anything in your shampoo that would negatively affect my scalp. Like you don’t have Rogaine or anything like that in there?”
“Do I look like the kind of man that uses Rogaine?”
“Maybe you don’t look like it because it works for you,” she suggested. A flash of light pierced her eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Not looking at a beautiful woman who is unclothed,” he answered. Her hand went from shielding her eyes to pulling the shower curtain in front of her to hide from him.
Jorgen held out the flashlight, “Hold onto this.”
Pam accepted it without question. Jorgen bent down and reached under the sink again. “Can you shine that a little further?”
She obliged his request.
“There’s what I was looking for.” He pulled his hand out from the cabinet and displayed a two-liter bottle of water. “We can use this to get the shampoo out of your hair.”
In that instance, she forgave him for peeking at her.
“It’s going to be cold, but it’s enough to rinse it clean.”
“I swear to God you are my hero.” She reached for the water.
She heard the pleased grin in his voice. “Let’s hold off on the judgment until the morning. You may think differently when we have to eat jerky and canned fruit for breakfast.”