Eejit

I felt my shoulders metaphorically slump, too painful to do it in reality. She was right. That would have been the right thing to do. But I couldn't have left her.

"Instead you charged straight in," she continued. "I saw you. You didn't even hesitate. You attacked four of them. You took so much punishment for me. Feckin' eejit!"

"I'm not actually quite sure what an eejit is," I confessed.

"I'm not saying eejit," she stated. "I'm saying eejit! I.D.I.O.T. -- eejit!"

"Oh, right." I muttered with a smile that I carefully kept off my face.

"You are an eejit! But not nearly as much a one as I was." There were angry tears in her eyes. "I was so stupid. So fucking stupid! What was I thinking? Crowd-surfing? I've never even thought of doing that before. I was swept away by the moment, the adrenalin, the zeitgeist, the whole rush of it, and just jumped straight in. And got you hurt so badly. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I need to make it up to you."

She was crying hard now, making little hiccupping sounds. I felt something inside me lurch horribly. I couldn't bear to see her cry. I squeezed her hand, rubbing the back of it with my thumb.

"Hey, come on," I whispered to her, searching for something that might stop the tears. I was in the company of the fabulous and beautiful Raven Quinn, after having seen her astonishing body almost naked for a split-second. She had come to sit at my bedside and apparently stayed of her own volition. Despite the pain, this was probably the best day of my life. "You don't need to feel like that. You don't need to make up for anything. It was my honour to defend yours."

She stared at me, tears dripping from her chin. Her lips quivered as she fought to control them. God, even with the tears, she looked so beautiful in her floral patterned skirt and blue blouse that showed just a hint of her generous body. I felt a stirring in my loins -- which I felt to be particularly unfair as, with my hands bandaged up, I wouldn't even be able to masturbate later.

"Defend my honour?" She gave a choking laugh, and not knowing what else to do I simply smiled at her. My lips, which felt more like water balloons glued to my mouth, felt as if they might split, but I forced them into place. A strange expression drifted across her face, and very quietly she said, "I have no honour."

"Yes you do! Absolutely. A fair lady's honour." It must have been the medication. I can't flirt -- never have been able to. And here I was, bandaged seemingly from head to toe, trying to flirt with someone like Raven Quinn. Flirting really badly. Ugh, my flirting game is so shit!

"You're daft," she stated firmly, but then tenderly laid a small, warm hand on my cheek, mitigating her words. "Or concussed. Definitely one of the two. Or both."

I touched the back of the hand on my face, wanting to lift it to my lips and kiss her palm. "Probably just daft. But I'd do it again at the drop of a hat."

She stared at me again for a long moment, a puzzled frown on her face. The she shook her head, wearing an expression of wonder. "I believe you really would."

The nurse gave a little cough. I turned to see a knowing smile on her face.

"Sorry to interrupt ... your moment," she said, the knowing smile getting even bigger. "But now Mr. Foster is awake, I need to let the doctor know. Mr Foster, you took some very nasty blows to the head and may experience some confusion, but I need you to stay in bed, okay?

She turned to Raven, "Are you going to stay with him a while to make sure he stays put, or shall I call--"

"I'll be here," Raven stated in a voice that brooked no dissent."I'm not going anywhere."

"You probably have other things to do," I said, in the uncomfortable knowledge that all good things have to come to an end. "Please don't feel you need to stay on my account."

I was surprised to see a look of alarm flash across Raven's face. Then it cleared, to be replaced by what I can only describe as tentative determination. "Nonsense! You are my hero. What sort of princess would I be if my prince was wounded while saving me from fearsome monsters, and I immediately left him to go shopping or something equally mundane?"

At the thought of me being the prince in this situation, I couldn't help laughing and immediately regretted it, as my head and back both gave a flare of pain.

Raven stroked the part of my head that wasn't bandaged and I stopped regretting anything. Definitely worth it!

A short, thin south Asian doctor appeared shortly after that and informed me of the list of injuries I had somehow accumulated in that brief time of madness in the theatre bathroom. Working from top to bottom: a severe gash on the back of my head from the mirror, a broken orbital bone either from the boot of patting-fuckhead or the fist of fingering-fuckhead (Raven's nomenclature for them), a broken nose, a gash in my back that had actually damaged my spleen, a pair of severely bruised fists, and severe bruising to my butt and legs from being booted.

Raven resolutely declined a request to go to the other side of the modesty curtain while the doctor revealed each of these wonders in all their glory of swollen, wildly coloured bruises and stitching. Instead she wept silently, for some reason seemingly taking on each new revelation as some sort of penance.

It really was weird. This beautiful, talented woman crying buckets because I'd been hurt doing my job. She didn't know that in my mind I had been trying to save the woman I loved. She had been uncomfortably close to my real mindset when she had talked about princesses and monsters.

When I had been rubbed, had ointments applied and was bandaged up again, the doctor left and Raven and I sat in silence, leaving only the softest sounds of skin on skin as our fingers gently stroked each other's hands.

"When did you start singing?" I asked, finally breaking the strangely comfortable silence. She sighed.

"I've sung for as long as I can remember. My mother would sing to me as she worked around the house and I would sing back. It's one of the memories of her that I love best. When she died I sang at her funeral."

I mentally punched myself in my good eye for bringing up sad memories and tried to divert her thoughts.

"So when did you start singing as a career?"

"Singing as a career? I never thought of it like that, but I suppose that's what it has become."

After that, the conversation became a lot easier. We spoke of her time as a rock star, although she pooh-poohed that title every time it came up, laughing uproariously at the very idea. She spoke of the happy times when she and the other two members of the band had first got together, singing at church functions, weddings, and gradually moving up to getting paid to sing in pubs.

Raven spoke of her playing around with the Celtic music they had been performing up to that point and how she had given it a rock beat almost as a joke, and then discovered they had something really good. She had written songs that had become popular with the pub crowds, recorded some of their numbers and burned them onto CDs which sold out so fast they couldn't keep up with demand.

"Those CD's were so amateur," she giggled. "I used to burn them one at a time on my home computer. The artwork was literally a joke -- a picture my three year old niece had done at pre-school that I had up on my fridge. I scanned it, titled it "Virtue" as a joke and printed it, then cut it out with scissors to serve as a cover."

"Hang on," I said. "Isn't the cover of Virtue the one that a certain music critic said 'had been beautifully designed to reflect the combination of innocence, joy and modern aspirations of the Irish people'?"

She nodded, laughing helplessly. "You memorised that?"

My smile was wide enough to once again put a severe strain on my balloon lips. "How could I not? It was very incisive."

And then the conversation was off at another tangent, me telling her some of my university stories. Somehow, and I have no idea how I did it, I managed to make the stories -- usually about me doing something dumb -- funny enough that she had to sprint to the bathroom to prevent her wetting her pants. She scolded me when she came back, and then listened avidly as I did it again, with stories of my time as a casual labourer at the theatre and the local TV station, where I had worked as a runner as well.

We spoke of our aspirations, hopes and fears. We got into a fierce argument about politics that ended only when I laughed so hard at a pithy comment she made about a certain politician that I thought my stitches had burst.

I told her my dreams of one day building a bridge that would become as famous as Brunel's Clifton Suspension Bridge, and she seemed fascinated to learn that I designed and built little working toys for my brother's kids in Australia.

Then it was her turn, with anecdotes of how one of their CD's had been picked up by a local radio DJ, and their music had begun to become known. Finally, they had found an agent who had dealt with them fairly, got their music onto the national stations, and found them gigs.

When they played one of Jules Holland's TV shows, their fame had exploded. Overnight they hit the download charts and when they played Glastonbury, their success was cemented.

"I watched that show," I said, not telling her that I had downloaded her set on that show from YouTube and had it on my computer in its own folder.

She was delighted.

Over the next three days, she spent at least eighty per cent of her time with me as I slowly recovered. I learned of her cringing embarrassment when she had had to undergo a check with a rape kit. I also discovered that she had arranged with the hospital to stay with me, sleeping in a nearby room, and arranged for a friend to go to her apartment and bring clothes and toiletries. I found out that she had waited in my room as they operated on my eye socket and spleen to fix the damage, and wept when she had sneaked a look at my medical notes and discovered the surgeons had had to finally remove the spleen. I also discovered that, illogically, she was mad at herself for being in the bathroom when I awoke for the second time.

Three days turned into one long conversation, during which time; we held hands a whole lot; watched television and learned each other's tastes in entertainment; played games and found that she was not above cheating a little to try and win, but doing it in such a way that she would be caught and have to listen to me castigate her in hyperbole that was so over the top we would both end up in fits of laughter; I delighted in exploring her sharp intelligence, which was intuitive where mine was logical. Three days in which I discovered that my love for her was real and not a passing fancy.

The conversation did not cover how I felt about her. I wasn't about to ruin days of absolute delight in her company by announcing my feelings, as if I had some sort of right to them.

The ongoing conversation was interrupted when two policemen arrived for the inevitable interview. Once again, Raven refused to leave the room. Not understanding her insistence, but delighted she wanted to stick around, I told them that I was too shaken up to be alone. I felt her squeeze my hand in gratitude. I had no idea what was going through her head, but it didn't matter at that moment. I would ask her later.

They interviewed me, with Raven listening silently. She cried softly as I described trying to get to her and then discovering the imminent rape. When I described my feeble attempts to stop it, she broke in indignantly, telling them I was a hero in blinding armour, a prince defending his princess, a lion defending his pride, the Hulk slamming around a puny god. I could feel the heat on my cheeks warming the whole room as the police sergeant grinned at me.

The interview finished shortly after that with assurances that they had all the evidence needed to get the fuckheads up before the beak. I swear I heard both of them laughing as the door to my room closed behind them.

There was silence between us for a few moments.

"The Hulk? Really? Not Captain America or Iron Man -- one of the good-looking ones?" I joked.

She stood and leaned over me, looking me in the eye. "Any hero you care to name. Pick one. Pick all of them. That is who you are to me."

And with that she pressed her lips very gently to mine. They tasted of mint and honey with a strong undercurrent of what I imagine ambrosia tastes like. She leaned back and looked me in the eye -- just the one eye still. "You are my hero forever."

I was stunned, my heart beating so fast. The woman I had fallen in love with in a passing moment was here, kissing me. Tentatively I lifted my head again for another kiss. She out her hand to my cheek and happily leaned in to taste my lips again. For a long moment, our lips simply pressed together, and then I touched hers with my tongue.

Her head pulled back and I groaned. "I'm sorry! I got carried away. I'm sor-"

"Oh, shut up, ye eejit!"

"What?"

Her lips touched mine again, this time parting so her tongue could flicker against mine, demanding that mine come out to meet her. Bewildered but delighted, my heart hammered in my chest so hard that had I still been hooked up to the monitors it would have brought a crash team running.

I poured everything into that kiss -- every particle of love that I felt, my astonishment that it was happening, the incredible need I felt to be with her, my sorrow that she had been hurt and frightened -- everything.

When the kiss finally ended, warned by the sound of the meds trolley that we were about to be interrupted, she drew back, gazing into my eyes with a slightly puzzled look.

That was how the next few days went -- getting to know her and sharing those kisses.

I was completely in love by this point, of course, so when I was told I could go home, I was definitely in two minds as to whether to fake something -- a broken spine being the very least of my considerations -- to try and prolong this time in paradise. But when the bandages were downgraded to smaller dressings, and the stitches removed, I knew it had come to an end. She admired my new look nose, which was a consolation prize.

We shared a taxi to my house as it was on the way to her apartment. Gloomier than I had felt in years, I climbed out and took the small paper bag that held my things.

"Raven, I..." She interrupted me with a finger to my lips. Then she replaced the finger with her lips.

As kisses go, it was fleeting, but it took my heart with it as the taxi drove off. I had been told that if a woman was interested, she always looked back when they parted to see if the man was watching her.

She didn't look back.

PART 4

My home -- which was not a bad one really -- felt dull and grey. I was only a student, but I had inherited some money from my parents, boosted by the life insurances that paid out after the accident. After splitting it with my brother, I had invested almost all my share in buying a house, reasoning that it would not only lock money away from any temptation, but was also a good investment for the future. I took the knock on getting a government loan for my university fees, but that would only be paid back when I was earning, so it was all good.

Owning my own house was actually pretty cool. It was set well back from the road, and was very pretty in the sunshine, with its neatly laid out front garden and huge, wide-open back garden where I would exercise whenever it wasn't raining. Even better, I didn't have to share tiny digs with other students who would stink up the place with weed and unwashed laundry, grind the neighbours into screaming arguments about the volume of the music, and gradually knock the place to pieces with unstinting carelessness. I had it all to myself, and I gradually decorated it with weird and wonderful things I liked and that I found in places just as weird and wonderful.

Of course that meant working at various jobs to pay my way, but I enjoyed the work too. I had been awarded a bursary and never needed money so badly that the jobs I took were ever simply grunt work -- I took them as the fancy took me. Which eventually lead me to the theatre -- and to Raven.

As I moved through the house, my eyes moving over all the things I loved, my gloom from missing Raven transformed the magical into the ordinary -- everything basic and plain. The wood panelling in the study, that I had worked a whole summer as a runner at the local TV station to pay for, now just seemed to make the room dark and dingy. The little mementos I had been given after a couple of tough, exhausting winters as an electrician's mate on film sets, now looked like cheap plastic baubles on the little stands I had made for them. Even the portrait I had been given by the photographer I slaved for as an assistant over a three week Easter break -- even that now seemed like just a snap shot in a fancy frame.

I made myself a pot of tea, found the milk in the fridge was completely rancid, and sat at the kitchen table, staring into the cup of blackness that matched my mood perfectly, and trying -- not incredibly successfully -- not to cry.

The doorbell rang and I ignored it. It rang again, as if someone was leaning on it, and I stormed to the door and yanked it open.

"What?" I demanded. Raven shoved two bags of shopping into my hands.

"Go put these in the kitchen," she said calmly, as if her being on my front step was an everyday occurrence. I stared at her for the longest moment.

"You're here?" I mumbled.

"Ye eejit. Where else would I be?" she asked, gathering up several more bags around her feet, and nodding to the taxi driver, who grinned and disappeared up the road.

"I thought you were saying goodbye."

"Didja hear those words?"

"No, but..."

"If I say goodbye, you'll know. Until then..."

It was her turn to break off. For a moment she looked very young, younger than her twenty five years -- younger even than a teenager. She looked like a child.

"Unless, you want me to..." She made a weak gesture at the door, and I instantly swept her into my arms.

"Not a chance. I would never," I whispered, vowing to keep my word.

She seemed to become very soft in my hands and I realised how tense she must have been to suddenly relax to this. I heard her little sniffle into my neck and hugged her even closer.

After a few moments, she stirred.

"As lovely as this is, I need to put this stuff away. And a breath of air in my lungs would be good."

I relaxed my arms around her, and she sighed deeply. "Mmm, I could get used to that."

Enfolded within her presence, my house came back to life. We put away the groceries she had gone off to buy without a word to warn me and ward off my sense of doom.

"Away widja," she smiled when I told her this. "Why would you think that of me?"

"Well, because you're Raven Quinn, and I'm just ... me."

"There is no just about you," she said earnestly. "Just you is so much more than anyone else. There could never be a just anything with you."

She kissed me again. I was getting very enamoured of those kisses, although now I was up and about they were having a much stronger effect on almost every part of my body. To stave off my leaping on top of her and trying to shag her leg as my dog would, I took her hand and offered to show her round the house.

What had seemed so dull and ordinary just an hour ago, now took on amazing, fascinating aspects as I saw it all through her eyes. Her eyes grew huge when I showed her the knick-knacks from the film set.

"Jesus, I saw that film. Everyone saw that film. That's the ray-gun thing that she always carried. You were involved in that?"

When I told her that although a runner is the very bottom rung of the movie-making ladder and assistant to the best boy is just one rung higher, I had been an extra in one scene, she insisted that I immediately load up the DVD I had of the movie and show her. As I'd said, there I was, dressed in an outlandish costume in the background, while the two stars and a robot took centre stage in the action.