Boscott Pond, Yorkshire
"Favorite comedy?"
"'Much Ado About Nothing.' Beatrice and Benedick can be interpreted at so many different stages in life." He watched her attempt to take another bite of her chicken salad sandwich without getting chicken salad all over herself. She was failing miserably.
"Favorite tragedy?" She managed to get chicken salad all over her face. Some in her mouth as well.
"'King Lear.' It's such an organic piece of theatre. Everything develops from the intrinsic being of the characters. Why don't you switch to my roast beef?" He gestured with the half a sandwich still in his left hand.
"How can you eat another piece of roast beef after living in Oxford for 3 months?" she wrinkled her nose. "Favorite history?"
"'Henry the IV, Part 1. The question of who Hal is throughout the play. Sometimes I'm not sure if he knows..."
She desperately attempted to catch another piece of falling chicken salad, forgetting that their hands were still joined by the handcuffs.
PLOP! Roast beef in the pond.
"How's the chicken salad?"
"Pretty good. Would you like to try some?"
......................
"So why Renaissance drama?"
He paused, and more gloppy chicken salad, dripped from the remaining piece in held in his right, unmanacled hand. "The heightened reality makes it a really good place to think. It can be enclosed but the themes are really universal, and ... I needed that. Time, space, something to think about." He wiped at his face with a napkin. "Why all the questions?"
"I guess... in the time I knew you, it's really not how I pictured you living... in an alternative universe, in the ivory academic tower with the Riverside Shakespeare."
"But it's good to know."
"So," she proceeded lightly. "Is there a Mrs. Mark Adams out there somewhere?"
He gently took her hand, and held it up. "These are the only rings I've ever given anyone.. You don't have to worry about that. I tried for a while, but there was never anyone else."
"You tried?" Something was tugging at her gut.
"Yeah, I went on some really disastrous dates for a few years."
"Oh, really?" Something was definitely tugging at her gut.
He tried to stop himself from stupidly grinning at the tension in her voice, "Uh-huh,, there was the woman who was on the carrot diet, who's skin started turning orange three months into dating, the woman who insisted on wearing four inch heels on all dates so we could only go to restaurants with valet parking, the woman who wanted to know why there were no pictures of my family in my apartment and became convinced that I had killed them all off..."
"There was a woman in your apartment!" she squeaked.
"Uh, hmmm...." Michelle was failing to see the irony in the situation.
"What was she doing in your apartment?"
The grin was widening.. "Well, she was starting to..."
Pop!
Danny turned and stared at his shoulder as blood began to seep from a bullet hole.
A car sped away.
.....................................
Michelle felt ill. She had spent many late nights in the ER as a resident, attended more than her share of disaster victims, but nothing had quite prepared her for the sight of the simple wound in his shoulder. The blood was adhering the dark woolen sweater he wore to his flesh, and spilling from the puncture wound onto the cold, hard, English soil.
Danny was still staring at the blood.
And then the doctor in her kicked in. Quickly, she flipped the levers on the undersides of the handcuffs, tossed the cuffs away, and started examining the bullet wound.
"Danny, Danny," she shouted into his dazed face. "You've got to take your sweater off, so I can look at the wound."
He stared back at her wordlessly.
"Okay, we can do this." She started tugging at the hem of his sweater.
And then he came alive again, and he began to fight her. "Michelle, Michelle, it's fine. It's a flesh wound." Pain seared in his shoulder as he attempted to keep the hem of the sweater down. "Hey, how long have you been able to get out of those?"
"Since the first night, and stop struggling. You're losing blood." She swatted at his hand and tore at the sweater. "It's not like I haven't seen it plenty of times before."
"Michelle, it's just a flesh wound, and it's freezing out here. And this all would have been a lot easier, if we hadn't been locked together."
"No it wouldn't. You would have wanted me to get on a plane to Springfield, and I would have wanted to stay with you. You would have pounded your chest, I would have kicked and screamed, and I would have stayed. I just saved us some time. And I don't care if it's freezing. We'll find someplace to stay. Danny, it doesn't matter if it's a flesh wound, if we don't stop the bleeding, clean it and keep it clean, it's going to get infected, and you will die. Rolling around on this dirt is not helping. We don't have much time."
"You could have been killed."
"Excuse me, I'm not the one with a bullet in the shoulder."
"Impossible." He muttered, and paused in mid-tug. "You win."
He pulled up the sweater and watched her eyes widen slightly.
It wasn't the smooth thirty-year old body she had remembered, and memorialized in the dark quiet nights. White with English pallor, a bit more filled out, more muscular- he must have started working out again...
As she had suspected, blood seeped from a single fresh, clean bullet wound in his right shoulder.
But in addition, she saw the scars of what looked like a good half dozen surgeries, straight and academically precise all over the upper part of his chest. It wasn't her area of expertise, but she knew the surgeries and subsequent therapy must have been a long, painful ordeal.
She traced one lightly with a fingertip, and looked at him with questioning eyes.
He nodded.
She touched his forehead with her own. "I'll get started."
.............................
On the Road in the Volkswagen:
She glanced at his sleeping form, as she drove up the highway. He hadn't cried out once as she attended to his shoulder. It was classic Danny.
Fortunately the bullet had passed straight through his shoulder but Danny needed real medical attention with real medical supplies, not bottled water and makeshift bandages.
Unfortunately, real medical supplies did not come cheap. She methodically ticked down a list of what she did not have: sterile bandages and instruments, antiseptic, antibiotics, aspirin, cash, travelers' checks, credit cards, general liquid assets, anything anyone else would want...
She looked down at her hands...
....................
The offices of Santos Systems, Inc., 2000
"Danny Santos, what do you think you've done?" Michelle Bauer swung wide the door to the CEO's office.
He looked up from the prospectus he had been perusing and flicked on the intercom, "Tom, hold all my calls for the next fifteen minutes."
"Fifteen minutes! It's going to take a lot longer than that to explain this one!" she continued huffing and puffing, as she paced the length of his office. The oriental rug was never going to be the same.
"Mr. Santos, you have a conference call starting in the next ten minutes."
"Call Scotty, and tell him I'll be late." He flicked off the intercom again. "Now what is this about."
A ring twinkled in the halogen light as it went flying across the room at his head. He effortlessly caught it with a snap of his wrist.
"Oh, that."
"Yes, that." She pounded the top of the rosewood desk she had helped him pick out. "How could you?"
"How could I what?" He raised one eyebrow, mischieviously as he enjoyed the marvelous view. "You picked the ring out yourself."
"But I didn't know..." she wailed, tossing her hands up in exasperation.
"Know what?" he goaded her on. He was going to be really late for that conference call, but this was too much fun.
"Know what!" she came back to earth. "'Oh, Michelle,'" she mimicked Vanessa's clipped uppercrust tones perfectly. "It's BEAUTIFUL, round-cut, three carats, D-flawless, I think.'"
"DANNY, IT'S WORTH A FORTUNE!" she exploded.
"Not quite," he squinted at the stone, as he leaned back in his executive chair. "But it is pretty, isn't it?"
"Danny..." her voice warned.
"Now, Michelle, you picked the ring out yourself, you're stuck with it." He smirked at her, as he leaned his head back into his hands.
Just in case, he edged the chair slightly away from her.
"Danny Santos, I picked the smallest stone on that obscene tray you put in front of me."
"Well, I did help things out a little..." he admitted.
"Danny, what did you do?" she rounded the desk, and started stalking the retreating chair.
"Michelle," he halted his retreat, as he had to grin a bit at his own cleverness. "You are so easy to read. I knew you'd pick the smallest stone on the tray, so I asked the jeweler to surround this stone" he held up the stone in question, "with some larger, if flawed, stones. Vanessa must have a really good eye; it's pretty hard to tell the finer color and clarity differences without a jeweler's loop."
She gaped open-mouthed at him.
"It worked, didn't it?"
"Danny...," she was trying so hard not to laugh.
"Besides, Michelle," he returned with mock seriousness, "If you wanted the option to return the ring, you should have waited for me to do the proposing."
"BUT YOU WERE TAKING TOO LONG," she plopped herself into his lap.
He wrapped his arms around her, as she settled into his lap. "Seriously, if you don't like it, we can return it, and get something else."
"What and have you trick me into picking an even bigger ring?" She kissed his lightly. "I love it. I love you."
He missed his conference call.
................................
A rest stop off the highway, 2010:
He studied Michelle's nimble fingers as they neatly and precisely cleaned the wound. She was good at what she did, no question about it, but he had known that she would be, long before she ever graduated from medical school. It was the combination of dedication, intelligence, and caring. He envied each of her patients for the care she bestowed on them. In a twisted way, he was glad he got to experience her care this one time.
"Danny, are you all right?"
He nodded. Something was not right, but he couldn't quite put a finger on it.
She had begun bandaging the wound. She carefully unwound the bandages and began dressing.
It was fascinating watching her work. He was no doctor, but he knew he was watching an artist at work from the way she seemed to instinctively balance he needs of his body with her care. A touch here, listening to his breathing there, question at the right time to set him at ease...
It would have been wrong to deprive her of this.
She patted the finished work when she was done. "You are going to be just fine, Mr. Santos."
Her hands.
"Michelle, where's your ring?"
Her back was to him as she packed away each of the supplies in a battered, black medical case. She hesitated to just a moment, as she picked up the leftover bandages. "I had to get medical supplies to take care of you, and I didn't have any other way...."
"It was yours," he said quietly.
"I know." She had finished packing up, and she placed the bag in the backseat of the car. "And I chose to hock it for medical supplies. Besides we need to switch cars, and get some fresh clothing."
"I'll get it back someday." The kindly antique shop owner hadn't wanted to take the ring at all- it was worthy of Asprey in London, he'd said- but when she'd insisted, he had promised it would be waiting for her.
She stretched out a hand to help him to his feet. "Where to, Danny?"
............................