It's funny how time can be divided.
It can be broken down into centuries and decades; years and months; weeks and days; minutes and hours.
And with each deafening tick of the clock, it can even be broken down further...into seconds...whose speed can only be matched with the quickness of a person's thoughts.
Or the slow weariness of waiting.
Which Woody was feeling right now, in the waiting area of the emergency room. He was waiting on the doctor to give him some word on Jordan. How she was, what was wrong...will she be okay?
Most people think centuries, with their one hundred year span, can take nearly a millennia to happen. Or decades. Woody knew these people were wrong. Seconds and minutes can take much longer when you're waiting .... Needing information that is not coming quickly enough.
Information that your whole future hangs on.
He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. It had been an hour and no word from the doctor. He began to pace.
"Still no word?" came a voice from behind him. It was Garret.
"No. Not yet."
"I'm sure he'll be out soon to talk with you. And I'm sure Jordan's fine," Garret said as he sat down on the couch to wait with the detective.
"I hope so," Woody replied, sitting down on the couch beside Garret. Woody leaned forward and put his head in his hands, covering his face. He was trying to be optimistic.....but this was hard. It had been hard seeing her writhing in pain and knowing there was nothing he could do about it. It was even harder waiting for the ambulance.
Of course, his relationship with Jordan hadn't been easy, either. It had been From the beginning. He smiled as he remembered. She didn't like his ties. She didn't like his hair. She had thought him naïve. But for this one instance, time had been on his side. Three years had passed. Three years since she had gone from telling him he had terrible taste in ties to the other night when she had told him she loved him. Woody smiled to himself. So much time...and yet so little. He felt like he had gone from hardly knowing her at all to knowing her better than she even knew herself. And felt like she could read his very soul. Time...where had the time gone? And would they have any more of it together?
All of that hinged on what the doctor told him.
Woody sighed and leaned his head back on the couch and shut his eyes. He could see her face clearly in his mind. Her eyes. Her birthmark. Her hair. He chuckled to himself as he remembered when he first joined the Boston PD. When he heard that the ME's name was Jordan Cavanaugh, he fully expected a man to be behind the badge. He had been shocked down to his toes when he was finally introduced to her at that bank robbery. Jordan was many things...but masculine was no where in the description. Brown eyes...small, heart-shaped face, petite, feisty, strong-willed...but her hair. He loved it when it was wavy and for about the last year she had insisted on straightening it. He fussed about it all the time. One day – a Saturday, if he remembered correctly – not too long ago, he had been working on a case. He had gone to the morgue to see her and pick up some files. Nigel said she wasn't there, she had the day off and she had the files at home...finishing up the paperwork. Woody had gone over to her apartment to look at them and found she had just gotten out of the shower. He banged on the door and she had answered it in her robe, her hair a sopping, wet mess down her back. She had let him look at her files while she was getting dressed. He had watched her out of the corner of his eye, as she began to put on her make up and finally reached for the hairdryer and brush. He came up behind her and threatened to cuff both hands behind her back if she so much as touched her hair...it had began drying in the waves and curls that he loved so much.
Surprised, she had fussed that it was none of his business the way she wore her hair...why did it matter to him?
"I like it curly," he explained... "I just think you look cute with it curling around your face."
She had given him one of her Jordan-looks and said "Woody, no woman likes to be called cute. You call your little sister cute. You call your dog cute. You don't call a woman cute."
He had gone over and gently twined a lock of her hair around his fingers. "Okay," he had replied, with a husky note in his voice. "It makes you look sexy. Is that better?"
She had snorted, but let her hair alone. As a matter of fact, he hadn't seen it straight since then.
Woody checked his wrist watch one more time. It had only been fifteen minutes. It was now an hour and fifteen minutes since the ambulance had brought her in. If time had gone this slow without her....how would he make it if there was something seriously wrong with her?
Garret glanced at Woody from the magazine he was pretending to read. He had watched Jordan and Woody do this strange "mating/dating" dance for a long time. He had been relieved when the two had finally started "officially" seeing each other a few months ago. Hell, it's about time, he had thought, as he remembered all the issues they had been through. Her mother's murder. Max leaving. James. Maulden. And then Devan.
Woody had nearly blew it there. Garret didn't know Jordan had it in her psyche to be jealous. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Compassionate, yes. Jealous...no. Jordan had never struck him as the jealous type. But she had been. With Woody. Of Devan. She had really been afraid that the blonde was going to steal Woody's heart.
They had talked about it, one night, late at the Pogue, after a few too many beers. She had assumed that eventually she and Woody would end up together. Devan had clouded the picture. She wasn't sure of anything anymore, she told Garret. "Woody told me he would always be there for me," she said. "I guess I never thought he might change his mind."
Garret had looked at her soulfully. "You need to tell him how you feel, Jo. Before too much time passes and the fire burns out before he even knows there is a flame there." He wasn't too sure how it happened, but he thought he knew when. It was close to the time Devan was to leave and she and Woody had been spending quite a bit of time together. Until her last week. Garret had given her some time off for interviews at other morgues and some time to pack up her things. So it happened that one night, when Jordan was working the night shift, Woody came in to check up on some cases. He had gone to her office. She had evidently told him at some point, because Garret had walked in on them in mid-kiss, and they had been too preoccupied to notice. He had politely coughed and knocked on the door. Twice, as a matter of fact, before he got there attention. Woody had turned beet red Jordan couldn't string two coherent thoughts together for the next two hours.
Garret chuckled and looked at the time on the television set. An hour and a half had passed since Jordan was admitted. And not a word from the surgeon. Nervously, he got up from his seat and went over to the nurses' station.
"What did she say?" Woody asked, when the ME sat down again.
"She said there had been some complications, but it was nothing life-threatening. The doctor should be out soon to talk with us."