Radclyffe - Turn Back Time

"What's your name?" she shouted.

The dark head half turned in her direction. "Pearce. You?"

"Wynter."

"Stay close, Wynter." Pearce clasped Wynter's hand more tightly and pulled it around her middle, drawing Wynter near as she faced forward and kept shoving. "Wouldn't want to lose you."

Wynter felt firm muscles rippling beneath her palm as Pearce twisted and turned and forged ahead. She was equally conscious of her own abdomen pressed to Pearce's backside. It was oddly intimate, and wholly unlike her. She was neither impulsive nor prone to letting others take charge. But here she was, being led--no, dragged --along by a stranger. She hadn't felt like her usual self-sufficient self for far longer than she wanted to admit, so she told herself that was the reason she didn't resist. Plus, she was curious. Curious about the woman who so confidently cut a swath for them as if she owned the Commons.

"Hey, Pearce," a man called out. "You're bleeding."

"No shit," Pearce called back. "Brilliant. You must almost be a doctor."

Raucous laughter followed them, until Wynter jerked Pearce to a stop. "Hey! Hold on a minute and turn around."

Surprised by the strength in the arm encircling her waist and the command in the smooth voice at her ear, Pearce halted and angled around in the crowd. "What?"

"Did you ever think to ask if I wanted to go where you're going?"

"Nope. I'm a take-charge kinda person."

"Well, so am I." Wynter extracted her hand from Pearce's grip and studied her lip. "And he's right. You're bleeding pretty briskly. Do you have a handkerchief?"

Pearce laughed. "Come on. Do you ?"

Wynter smiled and shook her head, then tapped a young blond woman in a scrub suit on the shoulder. "Can I have that napkin, please?"

She pointed to the paper square beneath the woman's plastic cup.

"Huh?" The blond gave them a curious look, her eyes widening as she focused on Pearce's face. "Oh, Pearce. Baby. Look at you. What happened?"

"She hit me," Pearce stated matter-of-factly, nodding toward Wynter.

"Now wait a minute," Wynter protested as she watched the blond's expression change from surprise to...jealousy. Jealousy? Wynter took a good look at Pearce--at the way she tilted her hips forward suggestively while smiling at the blond, the way her eyes unconsciously flickered over the woman's mouth, at the lazy grin. She'd seen that look before- on men. Oh. So that's the way it is.

The blond visibly bristled. "What do you mean, she hit you."

Wynter edged away. Time to get out of the line of fire.

Laughing, Pearce reached out and reclaimed Wynter's hand. "It was an accident, Tammy." She took the napkin and dabbed at her face, then looked at Wynter and indicated her lip. "Better?"

Wynter assessed the damage, ignoring the other woman. "It's slowing down, but you still need ice. It's probably a branch of the labial artery."

"Yeah, probably. Come on, almost there." Pearce was about to turn away when Tammy grasped her arm.

"Where did you match?" Tammy asked, adding almost petulantly, "As if I didn't know."

"University," Pearce replied, her eyes narrowing dangerously.

Then she pointedly slipped her fingers through Wynter's and pulled her against her side. "Let's go."

Wynter couldn't move away as the crowd automatically shifted to fill the slightest available space. "Look, I have to--"

"You're not going anywhere fast," Pearce said, "and your face is swelling."

"Fine. Go."

It took another five minutes of determined effort, but eventually they reached the tables where the drinks were being dispensed. Huge coolers lined the sidewalk. Pearce collected two plastic cupfuls of ice and handed one to Wynter. "Better hold one of these cubes against your chin. You're getting a pretty good bruise."

Experimentally, Wynter worked her jaw from side to side, noting the tightness just in front of her ears. She sighed. "It looks like I'm going to be wearing my bite block for a week or so too."

"TMJ?" Pearce wrapped the napkin around an ice cube and held it against her lip.

"Yes, but not too bad. Just every once in a while my jaw reminds me that I landed on my face too many times when I was a kid."

"Climbing trees?" Somehow Pearce couldn't see Wynter playing contact sports. She looked more like the tennis type. A good workout in a country club where you didn't get dirty, barely worked up a sweat, and had lunch in an air-conditioned restaurant after your set was finished.

She knew, because it had been her mother's favorite pastime.

Wynter laughed, thinking of how much she had wished for tennis courts and a chance to play when she'd been young. "No, ice skating. I started when I was two, and I can't tell you how many times I landed on my face while trying to do triple axels."

"Olympic aspirations, huh?" Pearce could see her on a rink, a trainer nearby, choreographed music coming through the speakers. Yeah. That fits.

Though Pearce's tone was teasing, for some reason, Wynter didn't mind. She shook her head. "Nope. Always wanted to be a doctor. You?"

"Yeah. Pretty much always." Something dark passed through Pearce's eyes, making them even darker, nearly black, and then was gone. She glanced at her free hand, which was streaked with dried blood. "I should go wash this off."

Wynter recognized when a subject was off-limits. "I'll go with you. I want to get a look at your lip once you get it cleaned up. You might need stitches."

"I don't think so."

"Well, we'll decide after we see it."

Pearce grinned, ignoring the pain in her lip. She wasn't used to letting anyone else call the shots. It was neither her nature nor the reputation she had acquired in the last four years. And because of who she was, others expected her to lead. It was refreshing to find someone who didn't seem to care who she was. "Okay, Doc, whatever you say."

"Very good," Wynter said with an approving laugh. "But since you seem to be good at it, I'll let you navigate."

Once more, Pearce clasped Wynter's hand in a motion so natural, Wynter barely gave it a thought. They stayed close to the buildings, skirting the crowds, until they reached Houston Hall. When they slipped inside the student center, the noise level mercifully fell.

"Oh, thank God," Wynter murmured. "I might actually be able to think in a minute." She glanced around the high-ceilinged room with its ornate carved pillars and marble floors. "These old buildings are amazing."

"Where did you go to school?" Pearce asked.

"Jefferson."

"Ha. We're rivals."

Wynter stopped, extricated her hand from Pearce's grasp, and regarded her appraisingly. "Penn?"

"Uh-huh."

The two medical schools, a mere twenty blocks apart, had sustained a rivalry since the eighteenth century. Over the decades, the competition had become more theoretical than real, but the students of each still claimed superiority.

"Well, then you better let me decide how bad the problem is,"

Wynter said with utter sincerity.

"I might," Pearce allowed, "if I didn't care what my lip looked like when it was healed."

They regarded one another, eyes locked in challenge, until their smiles broke simultaneously and they laughed.

"Let's go upstairs," Pearce suggested. "The bathrooms down here are going to be too crowded." After years on campus, she knew the out-of-the-way restrooms that were never occupied, and quickly guided Wynter through the twisting hallways and up a wide flight of stone stairs. "Here we go."

Pearce pushed the door open and held it for Wynter, who preceded her inside. There were three stalls, all empty. Wynter ran cold water in one of the sinks and pulled paper towels from the dispenser. She soaked several, folded them, and motioned for Pearce to lean over the sink. "I guess I don't have to tell you this is going to sting."