The Last Flight ( girlxgirl / lesbian )

Chapter Six

                  

                  

The brief moments of comfort the younger woman was able to offer her grieving friend were short lived, being cut off by the task of helping others that seemed to be coming to their senses.

Magnolia's gaze drifted around the plane as she heard a few moans, and the detective thought it best to attempt to mend the way that the two women had been introduced so that they could work together effectively. Pulling up from the comforting embrace around her colleague she turned her gaze on the blonde doctor who was looking more uncomfortable with every passing second, eyes flickering around the plane in what appeared to be the urgency to help those that were still alive.  Biting back any rude remarks that she had planned on saying prior to the respect that the other woman had shown before, she delicately–or as delicately as Magnolia ever managed to do anything–offered her hand to shake.

Realizing what Magnolia had wanted, the woman narrowed her eyes as though she were playing a trick on her. Causing the female detective to feel a pang of guilt for being so malicious to the woman that stood before her, nothing that she had done had warranted the behavior that she had received. Grasping the peace offering with the firmness of a young suitor trying to impress a father, the blonde shook her hand, allowing Magnolia to hear the name of the British doctor. "Doctor Lauren Hayden, I'm a surgeon out of one of London's top trauma wings. And, you are?"

Green eyes met the gaze of the blonde and held it, in an attempt to show that whatever intimidation she thought her title would have caused, she had nothing over her.

"Detective Magnolia Norbert, Los Angeles Police Department homicide unit."

A flash of what seemed to Magnolia to be surprise entered the features of the doctor before her, but it left as soon as it came and she quickly masked whatever thoughts had caused that emotion. Magnolia thought that it had something to do with the fact that she had figured her for a receptionist and not a cop, but that was probably because today was one of the only days that she didn't look like her usual, detective self. Noting that their hands were still clasped in a motionless embrace that was far longer than necessary she pulled her boney appendage out of the soft one of the other woman, holding her gaze in some sort of battle for who had the upper hand.

A hand extending into the space of the doctor from somewhere else interrupted their staring contest, "Atticus Finch, I'm a lawyer with two children and I live down the street from Boo Radley." The man who was still seated joked half-heartedly, though he only sounded like a shadow of his former, immature self. It got a chuckle out of both of the women, though none of them were in the mood to respond to his joke with anything other than that, the time was too dark. "Yeah, I'm Atticus Merle, this little ladies partner."

When he said it, the brunette sent him a sharp glare, letting him know that the boyfriend joke had passed and she was really not in the mood to play on that subject more. It was entirely the blonde that had made the assumption that they were more than coworkers, and she knew that Atticus had probably woken up after the assumption had already been made. Magnolia wasn't sure why she hadn't corrected the blonde's thinking to let her know that they couldn't be further from dating if he was a dog, but the moment had passed now and she was too flustered already to divulge into information that quite frankly was none of the doctors business. Glancing around the cramped and damaged plane, she saw that most of the passengers that had been on the flight were still on. The flight was surprisingly not a particular popular one, she wasn't sure why–maybe it had something to do with the ridiculously early wakeup call­–but she had noticed that around half of the seats that could usually have been occupied had not been on the way up. Shrugging off the thoughts she methodically began to feel the pulses of each of the passengers in the rows, and the doctor got the hint by working her way down the other side. As she was going, she counted six people on her side that seemed to be relatively uninjured, or to put it bluntly... alive. But the other side seemed to have taken most of the blow, seeing that many of the passengers were like Colby in the fact that there was shrapnel on that side.