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Oh, Indiana Jones. Pt 1 by TheFellowTraveler
This is the first piece of a two part story. Spoiler alert: this part contains a hair washing scene, the second part contains the haircut itself.
After the amazing feedback I received on my Jack Kerouac story, I wanted to experiment with something new, and this was the result.
Hope you like it!
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It’s past eleven on a Wednesday night and I’m already heading to bed when there’s a loud knock on the backdoor.
When someone’s knocking on the door this late, it’s either to deliver bad news or bring trouble in another form â€" they rarely arrive in any other but harm’s way â€" so I approach the door as cautious as someone who is half-asleep can be; a second-long glance through the peephole shakes off the sleepiness instantly.
I’m unlocking the door and swinging it open before I remember to take my next breath: on the other side of the threshold, leaning against the doorframe, stands a familiar, well-beaten and bloodied face. His lips spring into a grin before he winces and hisses, putting a dirty hand against the side of his head, then somewhat awkwardly smiles at me instead.
"Indy?"
Dr. Henry Walton Jones, to most perhaps better known by his nickname of Indiana Jones, winks at me. "Is that offer of a bed at your place still standing?"
To what must’ve been a nod from me â€" I paid more attention to his injuries than I did to my actions â€" he let out a small exclamation of "Great!" and suddenly shut his eyes, tried to take a step forward and all but dropped dead into my arms instead.
I struggle to keep my balance and barely manage to do so as I catch him mid-air, wrapping my arms tightly around his back as his face plants itself against my chest; his hat flies off on a trajectory of its own, landing somewhere in my hallway as I pull him into the house and drag us into the kitchen.
*
Thirty minutes later, Indiana Jones is on my kitchen table and he’s still knocked out, though breathing evenly and without obstructions to his airway; some good news, at least.
I don’t keep an entire cabinet of medicines at home, as supplying that would take every penny out of my surgical resident salary which is already meager, so when it comes to cleaning him up after assessing his injuries, I’m making do with the bare basics: clean cloths, hydrogen peroxide diluted with water and a first-aid kit.
There are already-healing cuts on his arms and legs, as well as one on his cheekbone; those aren’t concerning, at least not as much as the contusions that are splattered around his ribcage, varying in shades from plum blue to olive green; at least three of his ribs are broken, judging by the swelling in the area, but I can’t tell precisely without actual medical equipment, such as an x-ray machine.
As if hearing my thoughts, Indy chuckles, rattling his injured ribs. "I’m not going to a hospital."
Relief flows through me, as do joy and rage and a smorgasbord of emotions. "You’re awake!" is the first thing I say to him, followed by, "And you most certainly are going to a hospital, you baboon."
"Don’t insult baboons," he wheezed instead of laughing, "they are intelligent creatures."
"Well, that makes one of you, then." At this, he does manage to get out a laugh, and I do, too. My shoulders sag with relief at the sound. "What the hell happened, Jones? Who did this to you?"
He takes a deep breath, the xylophone that is his ribcage sounding itself and with that clearly indicating that more than three ribs are broken. "A mission gone bad: lousy intel, a betrayal, the typical near-death experience and all. You know how it is with me by now."
I certainly did: this was my second time patching him up, the first one being three years earlier, in the winter of 1935; he’d come to me with much less work to do then than he did tonight, though. Should the saying that the third time’s a charm come to fruition, I ought to start keeping more medical supplies at home.
He shoots me a playful glance, despite his injuries and whatever hell he’d walked through this time, his lips in a smile as he asks: "So, how am I looking, Doc?"
I swipe the wet cloth across his cheek before I answer: he closes his eyes, most likely enjoying the touch of cold against his bruise, and smiles faintly, lifting my fingers as he does his cheek.
"You’re dashing as ever, sweetheart."
I put the cloth down on the table next to him and run my fingers through his dark brown hair, partially for my own enjoyment and partially to check for injuries there as well. Indy chuckles, eyes still closed.
"It hurts a little when I laugh," he admits, cranking one eye open.
"That’ll probably be the broken ribs."
"Multiple of them?" He opens his other eye as well, looking at me all clear and attentive.
I nod. "Which is why I’m taking you to the hospital first thing in the morning, even if I have to drag you there by this pretty hair of yours." We’d go right away, but there’s no radiologist on call â€" numerous are the joys of a rural hospital.
Begrudgingly, after a minute of silence, he nods. "You’re the boss, Doc."
"You’re staying with me until the last one of them is healed; I’d be going against my oath if I let you waltz into new dangers once you’re out of the hospital."
The smartass squints at me, his lips pressed into a firm line. "The Hippocratic oath doesn’t say anything about that."
"Then let it be my oath to you."
Indy reached for my hand in response.
______________________________________________
"At least six weeks" he repeated the doctor’s words grumpily. He wasn’t happy about having to have a cast on his right arm, but it was the six weeks of exclusively light physical activity prescribed as treatment for the five broken ribs that soured his mood this morning.
"If I don’t die from medical complications, I will from boredom."
He was, all in all, as joyous as a sopping wet cat, but well enough to be prescribed home rest. I paid little mind to his endless grumbling as I unloaded groceries onto the kitchen counter until he’d sat down onto one of the chairs at the table and sighed. I looked at him over my shoulder and he simply said: "All of this would be more tolerable if my head wasn’t itchy."
"There’s hot water," I tell him. "We’ll wash it whenever you want."
Indy slowly raised his eyebrows. "I can’t ask that of you. I mean, you have to go to work and…"
"I took a leave of absence until the end of this week to settle you in, so no worries about that. You’ll need a shower, too, by the way."
He chuckled in response, shaking his head. "If the Englishman is being direct with me, I’m afraid to even imagine how bad the smell must be."
I responded with a chuckle of my own, going on to prepare breakfast. "We’ll have a bite first and then we’ll get you all prim and proper again. Are you okay with that plan, Jones?"
"I am," he said, "so long as breakfast doesn’t include black pudding. I can not get that one down."
*
Half an hour later, we were in the bathroom, having spent a quarter of an hour before we finally settled on an arrangement that was comfortable enough for him to sit in for a longer period of time.
I sat at the edge of the wide-rimmed tub; one of my legs was in the tub itself, the other sprawled across the rim and acted as an impromptu cushion of the back of his head, while himself was reclined in a lawn chair whose front legs hung in the air as he redirected most of his weight onto my leg.
I was pouring more hot water out of the pitcher into the large white bucket that was halfway full when he spoke. "I’ll either walk out of here waterboarded," he said, then did his best to add a little hope to his voice, "or with my hair washed. Either way, it’ll be an eventful afternoon for both of us."
On the small tripod next to the bathtub waited two combs, one wider-toothed and the other more precise, as well as a towel. I picked up the comb with the tightly-packed teeth and twirled it around in my hand as I assessed his hair now instead of his injuries: the beautiful, dark-brown color had deepened its hue when it got matted with muddy water or whatever this was; as such, it had none of its gleam in the daylight, nor any of its softness to the touch. It was less bad on the sides and back, where the hair was shorter (though, in my mind, still ripe and ready for a fresh cut), but the top of his hair would take the most work to get clean.
"Ready?" I asked, and received an affirmative nod in return, the back of his head going up and down against the lower end of my thigh with the motion. I held the pitcher full of warm water in my right hand as I brought my left to his hair; it was coarse and dry, sticking up as if with a will of its own, all until I slowly poured the first splash of water into his hairline. The warm water slid down against my skin as well, blazing paths of warmth as it followed the curve of my thigh, sending a sea of electrifying sensation down my spine.
Indy’s hair darkened in hue as it got damp, first on the top and then on the sides as well when I gently tipped the pitcher against his forehead and poured small streams of water down the sides of his head; this had elicited a barely audible gasp from him, then a faint smile and a fluttering of his short lashes.
I put the pitcher down onto the tripod and made way for my hands to get into his hair after I’d put shampoo in it. It was soft now, sliding between my fingers like the folds of a silk scarf as the tips of my fingers rubbed against his scalp; the more I worked the shampoo into his hair, the more ticklish it felt as it passed between my fingers. Indy let out a small whimper as I brushed the back of my hand against his cheekbone, trying to prevent shampoo getting into his eye; as if only afterwards realizing that it was audible, he cleared his throat and pressed his lips into a firm line, deepening his breathing.
Once his hair was covered in shampoo and ready to be rinsed, I’d taken a small moment to myself when I wrapped my finger around a strand on his hairline and gently tugged at it as I raised my hand away from him; the smooth hair passed between my thumb and forefinger, landing in a loose curl on his forehead when it fell out of my grasp. Indy smiled at it, whispering a simple: "That felt nice."
When the time came to wash his hair, I’d cleaned my hand of the shampoo first, then wiped the runaway tidbits of shampoo from his face before we got started with the rest. I ran my thumb against his bushy, light brown eyebrow, receiving in return a blink and a flash of his green eye underneath it. His lips curled into a smirk, and naturally, my thumb followed, trailing the curve of his cheek and all the way down to the small scar on his chin. We would’ve stayed like that forever had it been up to me.
With more alacrity, being mindful of his injuries, I rushed to rinse the shampoo out of his hair; my hand placed once more against his scalp, the warm water sent the same sensations down my spine once more as it send his hair tumbling down over my hand and then spilling over my bare thigh.
It took a couple of splashes and rinses before it was done; after that, I helped him land his chair onto the black and white tiled floor before reaching for the towel and comb.
"I could do this part myself," he said before I got started.
"Would you like to?"
Indy gave me a slight smile. "I wouldn’t mind you doing it, either."
Smiling in return, I clapped him on the shoulder as I planted myself behind him.
"As you wish, Dr. Jones."
I patted his hair dry with the towel first, massaging his scalp as gently as I could manage while being effective at the same time; he didn’t complain at my work, but rather seemed to relax as a result of it. Once he was mostly dry, I’d combed his hair into a side part, marveling at how swiftly the dark brown strands flowed through the comb as I raised the front of his hair over the left-swept middle.
With some gentle, ending swipes of the comb at the back of his head and at the side part, it was done. I handed him a hand-held mirror and stepped aside for him to see himself in peace. However, peace was a quality I myself seemed to be lacking, because two seconds later, I was asking:
"What do you say, did I do a good job at making you presentable?"
Indy chuckled. "Presentable is putting it lightly. You made me look like a movie star with this hairstyle, Doc."
"Well, the potential was already there to begin with."
"You know," Indiana Jones turned to me with a smirk, the early morning light gilding the edges of his green eyes and dark brown hair, "I think we’ll have a good time together here."
And, looking back to it, we certainly did.