Note – I've ditched the item banners because just writing the item out makes it easier to cross-post on .
Wooing Miss Crowell | 1
~ Give advice that matters in one sentence. ~
.: Kelly's Diner :.
He spotted her as soon as he turned the corner and hit the walkway up the Kelly's. Nadine was dressed in a pair of hemp pants and a tank top, perfectly appropriate for the bright, sunny summer day, but her disposition was anything but.
She kept kicking at the leg of the table, grumbling under her breath as she periodically blew her bangs out of her face like an angry horse, and she was so cute that Johnny just stopped and watched her for a moment before ambling up to her.
"Hey." He leaned over to the side a little so that he was in her line of vision. "What's got you so cranky?"
Nadine smiled and blushed a little at having been caught. She sat up straighter in her chair and brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Nothing. I – nothing. Forget I…Forget you saw any of that."
"You seemed upset," he shrugged. "Hardly anything to be ashamed about. I've never seen you get upset unless you had a valid reason. You laugh most things off – something must have happened. Any way I can help?"
"I don't think so," Nadine sighed. "And, hey, I'm surprised you're even talking to me. You know, after yesterday."
Johnny shrugged and slipped his hands into his pockets. Since she'd rejected his offer to take her out to dinner (one of many similar requests), he'd formulated a plan to get her to change his mind. He didn't know what it was about Nadine Crowell, but even though he'd avoided relationships like the plague, hanging onto her for a long while didn't seem like the worst thing in the world. It was actually something he'd realized he wanted.
"No hard feelings," he smiled. "So tell me – what's up? What happened?"
Nadine sighed and Johnny took the moment to grab the other chair and pull it closer to her so their knees were mere inches apart. This hadn't been part of his plan, specifically, but part of his plan was to listen to her and help her out whenever he could – after all, that was what 'boyfriends' did, or so he was told – so everything worked out.
"The people at the hospital are driving me nuts," she ground out, throwing her hands up in frustration. "You'd think there'd be some reprieve, but, no. Everywhere I turn, random psychos are trying to interact with me."
Johnny laughed. "Random psychos, huh? Seems a little vague."
"Doctor Ford," Nadine ticked off, using her fingers. "He knows medicine, but he doesn't know a thing about how to deal with people. He'll tell someone one thing, and then someone else something completely different and then act surprised when they come to him to try to get it ironed out. It's like he wants us to fight it out amongst ourselves, and, I'm sorry, but I expect a more professional work environment than that."
"Reasonable," he agreed, bouncing his knee as he sat with his hands clasped between his legs, his stance wide.
"Epiphany." Another finger went up. "She's not even my supervising nurse. I am the supervising nurse! For my team, I mean. She has to supervise Elizabeth and Leyla and all those girls – I have to supervise Regina and all the other girls in Pedes. We're colleagues, on the exact same level, but for some reason, she thinks it's cool to order me around and undermine me and scold me in front of my own team and everyone else."
Johnny frowned at that. "That shouldn't be happening. Have you told her off? Gone to Doctor Ford about it?"
"I haven't told her off yet because I'm afraid she'll sit on me," Nadine admitted. "And Doctor Ford is useless. Although, I'm telling you, one of these days, I'm just going to tell them both off. Then they'll both sit on me."
He smiled at that. "Okay, Doctor Ford and Epiphany. Anything else?"
"Patrick Drake," she groaned, burying her face in her hands. "I can't move two feet without him hitting on me. He thinks he's God's gift to women – and, I admit, he's easy on the eyes and he's really smart and really funny – but, come on."
Johnny didn't like this grievance all that much.
"And, I'm sorry, but the last I heard, he had a girlfriend," Nadine continued, waving her hand in the air. "Can you imagine? How disrespectful is that?"
His lips hard curled down into a tight grimace. "What an asshole."
If anyone was going to hit on Nadine and try to get into her pants, he'd like to think that it was going to be him, thank you very much.
"God, what is it with these womanizing losers who go around carving notches on their bedposts and thinking-" She stopped abruptly and meekly lowered her hand. "…Sorry."
Johnny burst out laughing. "You know, I think I'm more insulted by the fact that you so easily associated that remark with me than the actual remark itself."
Nadine laughed despite herself. "Well, you know what I mean. I mean, you're single, you can behave however you want. But Patrick has a girlfriend, and he still behaves like a bachelor. There's nothing more off-putting than that. I mean, grow up already."
"Agreed," he said readily enough. "Anyone else we're stringing up a pole, here?"
"The board members," she said. "They had their monthly meeting yesterday and when they walked out into the hub to take the elevators down, they saw me and a couple other nurses – Elizabeth, Leyla, Regina, I think. And there was a bit of a lull in the day so we were just talking as we put away the charts, and the next thing we know, we're being called into Doctor Ford's office because the board members think that the nurses are lazy and gossipy."
Johnny made a face. "Yeah, that sounds like them. They're always complaining about the dumbest things – and things of which they have no knowledge.
She made a face right back at him. "I never saw how you fit into those guys. You've got to be the youngest General Hospital board member by, like, forty years, easy."
"You're probably right," he laughed. "It makes board meetings interesting. They never say anything, but I can tell they're always checking out my pants to see if I'm wearing them too low."
Nadine had to smile at that. "Wouldn't surprise me. That bogus complaint, along with Patrick and Epiphany and Doctor Ford…I'm just a little testy today."
"Nothing wrong with that," he shrugged. "You can't be happy all the time. You'll get ulcers."
"I wish I knew how to deal with it," she sighed. "I feel like I'm going about it all wrong."
"How are you going about it?"
"I'm ignoring it," Nadine admitted. "I'm bitching about it to you, someone completely removed from the situation. I'm just setting myself up to explode one day, I know it, but I don't know how else to deal with it. Doctor Ford is my superior and he can fire me if he feels like it. Epiphany and Patrick are my colleagues, and I have to work with them for a long time to come. And the board members – well, I don't want to be on any of their bad sides."
"Okay, first things first," he said, moving closer so that this time, their knees did bump. "Yes, Doctor Ford is your superior, but you're hardly an employee-at-will. He can't just fire you because he feels like it. Even if he wants to prove something like insubordination or negligence or incompetence, there's so much red tape that the nurse's union will make him jump through. Not to say he can't get around it – like, by saying that budget cuts are forcing him to eliminate positions – but he's not just going to tell you to pack your shit and get out if you go to him with a valid problem."
Nadine was nibbling her lip as she watched him.
"Second, yes, Patrick and Epiphany are your colleagues and you'll have to work with them for a long time, and that's all the more reason that if they're doing something that's pissing you off, you need to let them know."
Especially that Patrick asshole.
"Third, the board members, don't worry about them." He offered her a lop-sided smile. "They don't remember names or faces. You've seen them – they're doddering old fools with the mobility of redwoods. Besides, even if you do somehow get one of them to put a bounty on your head, you've got me on your side."
"Do I?" she asked, amused. "And why would you stick your neck out for me like that, if push came to shove?"
"I think you know the answer to that," Johnny smirked, making sure to pile on the charm and mischief. He might have been imagining it, but he could have sworn that Nadine shivered a little despite the warm summer day.
"All I'm saying is, don't be afraid. Be concerned, but not afraid."
She nodded at his sound advice. "What I really need to do is just find a way to deal with it before I lose my mind. Aunt Rayleen used to say, make your fences horse-high, pig-tight, and bull-strong."
Ha, her corn-pone aunt would say something like that.
"Oh, she did, did she?"
Nadine nodded, not noticing his amusement. "Yup. She used to say something about perseverance, too. I wish I could remember it."
"Well, I don't have Aunt Rayleen's book of quotations lying around," Johnny said, making her smile, "but I'm good for some advice now and then."
"Yeah?" Her blue eyes were twinkling. "What's your advice? Lay it on me."
He shrugged. "When you reach the end of your rope, make a knot and hang on."
The corner of her mouth curved up and he wasn't sure if she liked that or if she thought it was the dumbest thing she'd ever heard.
"I mean," he said hurriedly, "it's what I always try to do. Even if you get pushed to the end of your rope, so what? Hang on. Stay in the game. Don't just quit and let them walk over you whenever they want. Don't let them beat you like that. Just don't accept that."
She was smiling wider now and he was starting to panic. The last thing Johnny needed was for a cute girl to think he was a complete, bumbling idiot.
"Think about it this way," he offered. "Aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly. But the bumblebee doesn't know that, so it keeps on flying."
"Bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly?" Her lips were pursed, giving her the most adorably befuddled look. "Why not?"
He rubbed his clammy palms together and tried to explain, absently wondering how the hell he got started on bees. Goddamn bees. With their goddamn buzzing.
"Well, all winged bugs flap their wings through a wide arc, an obtuse angle, something around 165 degrees," Johnny started as she nodded along. "Frequency varies with size: the larger the bug, the slower its wings beat."
Nadine was still nodding. "Yeah, they have an exhibit like that at the zoo, in the bird house. There's a giant set of plastic wings and you have to step on the weighing scale and try to make them flap. Only you can't, of course, even though you don't have to beat them that fast. It's meant to show how strong birds are relative to their size and wingspan."
"Exactly," Johnny replied, glad that he didn't have to stumble through some watered-down explanation. Nadine was one of few women he'd chased around who could actually hold her own in that respect. "It's the same thing. Relative to their size, mosquitoes beat their wings faster than a fruit fly. Mosquitoes beat their wings around 400 times a second and fruit flies beat their wings about 200 times a second. Birds, even small ones like hummingbirds, only beat their wings about 50 times a second."
"Right, right."
"But bumblebees, which are, like, 80 times bigger than fruit flies, let's say, beat their wings 230 times a second at an arc of only 90 degrees, which is nothing. So, really, they shouldn't be able to fly, but they do."
"How are they able to fly, then? Because they can get most of the lift going about halfway through the stroke?"
There was a 'that's what she said' joke in there somewhere, but he didn't stop to indulge it.
"Not really. I think they make up for the extra work by stretching out the wing stroke but not adjusting the beating frequency, something weird like that," he said, brushing it off. "But you see what I mean, right?"
"I do," Nadine replied. "I think Aunt Rayleen would like that."
Johnny grinned. "Well, if Aunt Rayleen likes it, then I've got it made."
She laughed and idly jostled him with her knee, her blue eyes dancing. "Seriously, though, thank you."
"I didn't do anything."
"I know," Nadine shrugged. "But you listened. And you tried to help. So, thank you."
"My pleasure," he smiled back. Damn, but he was good. He'd win her over in no time if he kept on being awesome like this.
A waitress came out of the restaurant with two menus. "Sorry, we had a little accident in there. One of the girls broke, like, two hundred plates. I'm so sorry. Here are the menus. Can I start you guys off with anything to drink?"
"Iced tea, please," Johnny replied, grinning cockily at Nadine at assertion that, yes, he would indeed just love to join her for lunch.
Nadine returned a crooked smile, shaking her head, and accepted the menu. "Lemonade, thanks."
Johnny settled into his seat and watched her over the edge of the menu. Oh, yeah, he'd have Nadine Crowell eating out of the palm of his hand soon enough. All he had to do was keep it up. Hopefully, being boyfriend material wouldn't be as hard as he'd once thought.