PROLOGUE
Scene One
"I'm telling you, Roy, there's something wrong with that girl!"
"You like her."
"Like her? Man, she's … off."
"Awful pretty," Roy quipped.
"She's beautiful," the word play was lost on a preoccupied Johnny, "but pretty isn't everything." He was on automatic pilot as he loaded the fresh supplies and replenished drug box into their compartments. "You have to be able to talk to a girl. She wouldn't talk to me. Not one word. Even if she told me to get lost – What kind of woman doesn't talk … at all? But that smile … Strange girl."
Corrie Lester was the newest addition to the Rampart ER. She was an auburn haired beauty with a full mouth and big brown eyes and had caught young Gage's attention immediately. While Roy set about getting the supplies they needed, Johnny had turned his attention to the pretty, young nurse seated at the nurse's station. She had smiled at him, holding his eyes with hers and he was smitten. He'd poured on the charm and asked her to dinner. She never said a word, her smile never wavered and her eyes had never left his.
"Seems to me a girl that doesn't talk would be the perfect date for you," Roy teased as they boarded the squad.
"Very funny," Johnny scoffed. "Do we even have a date," he wondered aloud. "She never answered."
"Sure you do. She didn't say 'no.'"
"She didn't say 'yes.'"
"Sure she did, the way she was smiling at you."
"Yeah, she was smiling all right," Johnny mused as a smile of his own lit his face.
Roy started the engine and slipped it into gear. "Yeah," he said with a grin, more to himself than to Johnny, "you like her."
Scene Two
Back at the nurse's station Corrie stared down the corridor after them.
"You like him," said a husky voice behind her.
"The paramedic?" The smile reappeared. "Like him! That chauvinist?"
"Yes."
"He's so full of himself."
"Yes."
After a moment's thought, "He is cute."
"Yes," said Dixie triumphantly, as though she had elicited the correct answer to a difficult question.
"No. Not interested."
"Corrie," Dixie took the younger woman's hands in her own. "Loo," she continued softly, "Frank is gone."
Corrie's shoulders slumped as she looked up at Dixie with sad eyes. "It's not about Frank," she protested weakly.
"Have some fun. You're young; it's time you start enjoying life again."
"And you think I'll enjoy your paramedic friend," it was not a question.
"John Gage is – "
"Gage? That was Johnny Gage?"
"So you've heard the stories. Some of them are even true," Dixie grasped Corrie's shoulders and looked directly into her eyes, "but you didn't stop smiling the whole time he was here. You haven't smiled that much since you've been home."
Corrie thought about her interaction with Johnny, his bragging, his flirting, his eyes. She felt the smile return.
"Accept the date," Dixie pressed. "Maybe nothing will come of it, but if he can get you smiling like that, even for just one evening, it'll be worth it."
"He really is cute," Corrie conceded. At that moment Dr. Early poked his head out of treatment room two and called for a nurse.
Corrie rushed off in response. The door to room two was already closing when Dixie added quietly, "Yeah, you like him."