4:30 PM - Lita and Rose
Lita nibbled on one of the ghost sugar cookies as she watched her shot being poured from behind the counter. She’d finally extricated herself from the boring ass conversation with one of the radiology techs from the hospital and had felt the immediate need to burn the tedious dialogue from her brain. Lita surveyed the crowd for someone she would actually want to talk to and, after a moment’s search, spotted a familiar face among the costumed party goers. She smiled.
“Make that two shots,” Lita amended to the bartender, who nodded. Lita popped the rest of the cookie in her mouth and swallowed just as the bartender set the second shot down on the counter. Lita paid and tipped accordingly and, shots in hand, wound her way through the crowd, only wincing once when one flailing dancer collided into her arm, sending Lita’s own elbow into her still tender ribs.
“Watch where the hell you’re gyrating, jackass,” Lita grumbled. She took an experimental bend at the middle to make sure she hadn’t done herself any more damage. Finding herself, and her drinks, no worse for wear, Lita continued parting the crowd and finally approached the woman she had set out to see.
“Hey there, guardian angel,” Lita said to Rose, holding out a shot of bright red liquor for her colleague to take. She smirked at her doctor friend going as a nurse for Halloween. “A little drinky to cure what ails you?”
Momentarily taken aback by the unexpected visit from Lita, Rose’s features shifted from pleasant surprise to thrilled. “You’re okay and you have alcohol!” At least Rose listed things in the order of importance. Taking the offered shot glass into her hand she wrapped an arm around the woman's neck in a quick but gentle hug, avoiding her abdomen at all cost. Lita, who was prickly about physical affection with people she didn’t know very well, surprised herself by leaning into Rose’s embrace. Their budding friendship was literally forged in the fight between life and death. Lita would have to be as inhuman as the woman who’d tried to tear her throat out not to feel something for her courageous rescuer. The fact that she seemed as cool and outgoing as herself only endeared the psychologist to Lita more.