|
|
Chapter 22
The next morning, after an uneasy sleep, Colleen walked into the kitchen to see Howie sitting at the table, reading the paper and drinking a cup of coffee from the pot that had automatically brewed at seven am.
"Morning," she murmured tiredly as she sat down at the table. Howie smiled.
"Hey, you look like you didn't sleep at all. Why don't you go back to bed?" Howie suggested as he took in the dark circles under Colleen's eyes. She shook her head.
"No, I have to leave in two hours to go to the hospital, I might as well stay up. I'm used to it."
"Used to it?" Howie looked at her as Colleen nodded.
"When I was doing my residency, I had to stay up for 48 hours at a time," she said as she laid her head on the table.
"Really? I don't think I would want to be worked on by a doctor who hasn't slept in two days."
Colleen shrugged as she reached over and took Howie's mug, taking a sip of his coffee..
"Help yourself," Howie said with a grin. Colleen smiled.
"Thanks. It looks like Shannon and Morgan are going to work today, they only put coffee on a timer if they are going to work at Serenity." Howie nodded and was about to reply when two people burst into the kitchen.
"Crap, we're late. Are you filling our mugs?" Shannon asked as she grabbed her briefcase that held the accounts for the month as Morgan filled two travel mugs with coffee.
"Yes. Do you have your briefcase?" Morgan looked at Shannon who was making sure all files were in her leather briefcase.
"Yep, let's roll. You drive, I'm only half awake," Shannon said as she nodded to Colleen and Howie sitting at the table.
"Hi. Bye," she walked out the French doors to the family room and front door, following Morgan to the garage.
Howie and Colleen looked at each other and then Howie went back to reading the paper and Colleen stole some more of his coffee. She played with her hair and sighed.
"I'm so sick of my hair. Maybe I'll cut it all off," she murmured. Howie looked at her sharply.
"Don't even think about it. I like your hair." Colleen smiled.
"Well, I'm still sick of it. I want to do something new."
She flicked on the radio and the news came on. "Folks, don't take the Eisenhower today, the worst traffic jam has occurred, where people haven't moved for an hour. On to weather, today will be sunny with a high of 90 and a low of 65, so later tonight grab a jacket to keep warm. In other news, a movie is being shot in Chicago. . . "
************************************************************************
"Traffic SUCKS!" Morgan yelled as they sat in bumper to bumper traffic, not having moved in the last ten minutes. Shannon nodded as she put her feet up on the dashboard, putting on her silver charm anklet.
"You called the shop and told Cheryl that we are stuck in traffic, right?"
Morgan nodded. "Yeah, I did. You know, my legs are cramping, I'm going to get out and stretch." She opened her door and stepped out, reaching her arms up into the air, stretching her sore muscles. Shannon followed suit and walked around to sit on the hood of the car. She was bobbing her head to Love Thieves by Depeche Mode when she looked over at the Land Rover next to them and smiled.
"Morgue, look at the cool car next to us," she said softly to Morgan who had sat down next to her.
Morgan glanced quickly and shrugged. "I don't like Land Rovers really." Shannon rolled her eyes.
"Why don't you look again, Morgue? I'm sure you will like this one."
Morgan sighed and looked again, this time noticing the two gorgeous guys sitting in the Land Rover. She smiled.
"Then again, Land Rovers can be pretty cool." Shannon laughed and reached around to the CD player in Morgan's black Camaro convertible, turning the Depeche Mode CD up loud, drawing the attention of the car next to them.
The dark haired guy looked over at Shannon and Morgan, who were now pretending like they didn't even know there was another car besides them, and smiled. He nudged the blonde guy next to him and pointed at the two girls.
"Check out that Camaro," the blonde guy murmured, drooling over the car. His friend laughed.
"Yeah, it's pretty nice Paul, but look at the hood ornaments on the car," he said. Paul looked over and smiled even bigger as he took in the two beautiful girls sitting on the hood of the car. His eyes took in the brunette dressed in a pair of loose khaki cargo capris with drawstrings at the bottom and a black tank top while his dark haired friend stared at the blonde in the knee length silver skirt and black tank top.
"I think I'm going to get out and stretch," Paul said.
"I'll join you." They both got out and stretched, Paul walking over to the other side to talk to his friend, waiting for the girls to notice.
"Nice car," Paul said loudly to Shannon and Morgan, who had been watching them out of the corner of their eyes.
Morgan smiled. "Thanks."
Shannon looked over at them and smiled, when a puzzled look came across her face and then a few moments later her eyes widened as she realized something.
"Morgan, do you recognize the two guys?" she whispered.
Morgan looked at them again. "Now, that you mention it, they do look familiar. Do we know them?" Shannon smiled.
"In a way. Remember that movie, um ,what was it called? She's All That?" Shannon asked. Morgan thought for a moment. Then she nodded slowly.
"Yeah, but what does that have to do with . . . " Her eyes widened as she realized the connection. "That's Freddie Prinze Jr. and Paul Walker!"
Shannon nodded. "Yes it is." She turned towards the two guys.
"So what are you heading into Chicago for?" she asked them, casually, pretending she didn't recognize them.
Paul shrugged. "Work, what about you?"
"Same. So what can of work do you do?"
Freddie looked down. "Well, we're actors," he said, hoping they wouldn't make a big deal if they recognized the two of them.
Morgan nodded. "Cool." She paused as if she had thought of something. "Oh, I know where you two are from. That movie, She's All That."
Paul nodded. "Yeah. Did you see it?" This time Morgan nodded.
"Yeah, it was pretty funny. So you're Paul Walker and you are Freddie Prinze Jr?" she asked as she pointed to them. They nodded.
"Yeah." Shannon smiled.
"Cool. Of all the places to meet a celebrity, I wouldn't have thought a traffic jam would be one." Just then the cars started to move, so they all jumped back into their cars and moved forward. About twenty minutes later, they were stuck again and sitting on their hoods.
"So where do you work?" Freddie asked them.
"At a coffee shop called Serenity," Morgan answered as she rubbed some peach lotion on her arms and passed it to Shannon who started rubbing it on her legs. They hadn't had time to do it that morning and they were feeling really dry and scaly.
Paul laughed. "We just went there for coffee yesterday," he informed them. Shannon smiled.
"Weird."
"So you are waitresses there?"
Morgan shook her head. "Well, when we're short of servers, sometimes we fill in but mostly we just own the place." Freddie looked impressed.
"Wow, you own that place. That's really cool. I know it's really successful, because about four people recommended it to us yesterday when we were asking for a cool place to hang out at."
Shannon smiled proudly, thinking of her restaurant. "Well, if you ever come back, coffee's on us."
Paul nodded. "Okay, well we'll come back today then. Can't pass up free coffee," he said as he smiled.
"Yeah."
****************************************************
"Okay, so we are going to meet for lunch at Serenity at about 1:30, right?" Colleen asked as she locked the door behind her.
The guys nodded. "Yeah, once we are done with rehearsal and you finish at the hospital."
Colleen nodded absently as she grabbed her brown leather backpack and grabbed her car keys.
"Ryan, are you going with them?" she asked her cousin. She knew Kendall was going so she could take a look at their special effects and maybe give them some pointers. Ryan shook her head. "Nah, I thought I would hang with you." Brian looked disappointed but then remembered that Ryan only got to see her cousin once a year and this was that time and he didn't want to hog it all. So when Ryan looked back at him, he was smiling.
"I'll see you later, Bri," she said as she kissed him quickly on the lips. He nodded and walked over to the van where Lonnie sat in the driver's seat, waiting to take the guys to the arena.
"See you later, Colleen," Kevin said. He kissed her on the forehead and touched her side. "Take care of your ribs, okay?" She nodded and walked towards her car.
The rest of the guys loaded in the van, AJ looking at Colleen.
"You know, I never knew business wear could be sexy but Colleen's suit is pretty hot," he observed. Kevin just rolled his eyes. But he had to admit Colleen's suit was pretty sexy. He watched as she walked to her car, the slit in her blue calf length skirt, showing her leg and her jacket opened, to show the fitted silk tank top underneath. Then his thoughts went to the rehearsal as Lonnie locked the doors and backed out of the driveway and onto the arena.
Meanwhile, Ryan and Colleen were chatting as she started on her way to the hospital twenty minutes away.
"So what do you have to do exactly?" Ryan asked.
"Just some paper work and I have to make sure all my files and things arrived at my office okay," Colleen replied as she flipped on the radio and Sometimes by Britney Spears came on. "Yuck, I hate that song," she said as she changed the station.
Ryan nodded. "Yeah, I can't stand Baby, Hit Me One More time, anymore either. They played it so much, that it drove me to hate it."
Colleen nodded in agreement. "I hate when they overplay songs. You start out liking it and then by the end, you never want to listen to it again." Colleen put on her turn signal as she changed lanes and turned into the hospital. She parked and she and Ryan walked through the Emergency entrance to the elevator.
They stopped off at the fourth floor and Ryan sat down and read some magazines as she waited for Colleen to finish her paperwork. She had started reading an article about the BSB and had been laughing at some of the silly photos that had been taken of Brian and Nick when Colleen walked out.
"Okay, sorry that took so long, I'm done." Ryan took the magazine and put in her purse, wanting to finish the article and they started walking down.
"We have over an hour and half left until we need to meet the guys," Ryan said as she looked at her watch. Colleen sighed.
"Okay, well, I guess we can . . . " Just then the doors to the emergency entrance flew open and the paramedics rolled a man about 35 years old, bleeding profusely from a chest wound into the emergency area. A man dressed in doctor's scrubs moved forward, putting on two sets of gloves and a mask and started rushing the gurney in the direction of Ryan and Colleen, who moved out of the way immediately. But the doctor stopped and stared at Colleen.
"Dr. Davis, how nice of you to visit us today. Maybe you would like to scrub in on this one? The man was shot in the heart and you being a cardiologist and all, I thought you might interested," he remarked snidely.
Colleen nodded coolly. "Hello to you too, Dr. Demorey. I would love to," she handed her backpack to Ryan and grabbed the gown from the nurse who was standing there, waiting to hand it to her. They wheeled the man into one of the ORs, Colleen yelling orders to the nurses. Ryan followed and watched from the window in the door as her cousin fed lines and started IVs, and reached into the man's chest to internally massage the heart as it tried to give out. About forty minutes later, she claimed him stable enough to travel up to surgery and she walked out, stripping off her two pairs of gloves and scrub gown.
"That was amazing to watch," Ryan commented with pride on her face for her cousin. Colleen smiled, tiredly.
"Thanks." She stuffed the gown and gloves in the garbage provided for that and then frowned as she realized she had gotten blood on her silk top.
"Crap, I'm going to have to throw it away. I'll grab some OR scrubs and be back in a minute," she said and walked away. Ryan waited for about ten minutes when Colleen walked back out in a set of green OR scrubs, her tank top in the garbage and the rest of her suit in a bag. She had put her hair in two french braids. Ryan laughed.
"You look like a little kid playing doctor," she said, tugging on one of the braids. Colleen laughed.
"Gee, thanks." She glanced at her watch. "Well, now we have just enough time to meet the guys." They started walking out when Colleen heard her name called.
"Dr. Davis!" They turned around to see Dr. Demorey running towards her.
"Dr. Davis, I just wanted to say welcome to the team," he told her. Colleen looked at him.
"I got the feeling that was a test in there," she said mildly. Dr. Demorey smiled and shrugged.
"I like to know that the people I'm working with are good enough to be here," he told her. "So yes, it was a test."
Colleen raised an eyebrow. "Well, then you should know, I always ace my tests," and she turned and walked away.
"The nerve of that guy," she said, angrily. Ryan shook her head.
"Just forget it. Some people are just full of themselves, or full of something else," she said. She grabbed the keys from Colleen's hand. "I'll drive, you're tired." And they set off for Serenity.
****************************************************
"No, Nick. It's step, step, turn, down, up, turn, turn, left." Fatima did the step perfectly and watched as Nick tried again. She shook her head as he forgot to do the second turn. She started to demonstrate it again as Howie and Brian grabbed some water.
"Nick is never going to get it," Howie predicted as Brian nodded.
"Well, you know Nick's biggest problem is dancing. But he makes up for his lack in dancing with his voice." Brian took a swig of water and they watched as Nick tried again. Suddenly Nick's horrible dancing was bathed in blue light and green lasers started dancing around.
"Awesome," AJ yelled as club music pounded through the speakers, matching the beat of the lasers. The guys glanced up to the control booth, to see Kendall talking with Mike, their lighting guy. Mike's face was excited and Kendall was showing him something with the control board when the music stopped and the arena was lit up with warm orange-gold light, like a sunset and small white bursts of lights appeared like stars at the beginning of night.
"Wow, Kendall really knows her lighting," Kevin observed. Even Fatima was smiling at how cool the place looked. Suddenly the lasers started again, this time in white against a background of deep blue light, and the club beat started again. Voices started singing and Nick started laughing hilariously as he recognized who it was.
"She's playing NSYNC," he told the guys, who realized that she was. They are started laughing at Kendall's twisted sense of humor.
After a couple of minutes, Kendall turned off the lights and put back the regular ones and Nick tried to dance step again. An hour later, he finally got the step and the routine and Fatima called it a day.
"We got to get going to lunch," Nick said as he grabbed his stuff and threw it in his backpack. He headed for the door and was greeted by screaming as soon as he opened it. He slammed it shut and stepped back.
"Okay, guess we have to go the back way."
Kendall laughed as she came down the steps from the control room. "I can't believe they know that you are rehearsing today. That's so crazy."
AJ nodded. "Yeah, it's pretty weird. Of course, it's pretty cool too." Kendall nodded and turned towards him, looking down at him since she was standing on the steps.
She smiled suddenly. "Hey, AJ, give me a piggyback ride," she asked him. He nodded.
"Sure, hop on." Kendall hopped on his back and he started running through the arena.
"Not so fast, AJ," Kendall said, laughing as he zigzag around corners, making her feel like she was going to fly off. They finally got out of the arena to where Lonnie was waiting with the car. But even there was a big crowd of girls who were all staring at AJ and Kendall, who hadn't noticed yet since they had just walked out the door. They stopped and stared as they saw the crowd and Kendall started getting nervous as she noticed some of the looks from the girls.
"Hey, AJ, maybe you should let me down," she whispered to him. AJ shook his head.
"Nah, the only way you're getting down is to fall off." He took off for the car, running and Kendall laughed.
"You are so retarded. Could you just walk please? I feel like I'm going to fall off," she told him but they had reached the car and AJ set her down on the seat.
"Let's go to lunch," he said as he flopped down beside her and Kendall made a face at him.
"If the wind changes, your face might stay that way," he told her. Kendall smiled.
"Aw, AJ, would you still be my friend if I looked like this?" She scrunched her face up. AJ stared at her and thought about it.
"Probably not," and Lonnie took off as Kendall smacked AJ on the head.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~