Fire: Chapter Thirteen

THOUGHTS WITH A SUNFLOWER

Michael lay in his hospital bed, gazing absent-mindedly out of the window, beyond the grey car-park to the faint misty outline of the mountains on the horizon. He was beginning to feel a little better, and no longer felt as though he was lurching in between blackouts and intolerable dizziness and nausea. He reached out as far as his IV line would let him, and grabbed his drink - the old British staple Lucozade, which was famous for its rejuvenating and rehydrating properties. The kind of stuff they gave you at prep school when you had the flu in the middle of mid-terms, he mused.

I bet Shannon never went to prep school, he thought to himself. She's far too street-wise; unlike himself, who, thanks to the aforementioned
Prep-Public School-Oxbridge cookie-cutter system, had lead a rather sheltered life until the ballyhoo of Oxford had jolted him out of his
planned career path of post-grad degree, teaching certificate, doctorate and a tenure in a dusty history department somewhere in the withered halls of academe. Thank God for Terry, who saved him from that ivory tower, and thank God for Python, without which he'd be scribbling away somewhere in a dank basement at the BBC. Terry had saved him, and Python had given him life.

And Shannon had done both: literally instead of figuratively - and all before she even knew who he was. Of course he had always had plenty of girls to choose from; he was popular at Oxford and girls seemed to find him attractive, but none of them really stood out for him. And once Python started, there was a steady stream of autograph-hunters and slightly scary women who thought they owned you, and then the gold-diggers - although God knows, they were disappointed and vanished pretty quickly once they found out you didn't have any money. He had enough to live on, but the BBC was notoriously stingy and Python barely made enough to get by. As for this film - it was being shot on a bare-bones budget and even if it somehow became a huge box-office hit - which Michael seriously doubted - the hard fact remained that when you have to split your profits six ways, there's not much left to burn a hole in your pocket.

At the age of 31, Michael had really begun to give up on ever finding a woman to share his life with. He'd been in love before, but he wasn't sure
it was real... and she ended up running off with some yahoo with a country estate in France. He never thought about her now. All he had ever wanted was someone he could be himself with; a girl who didn't have any illusions about his so-called fame, someone who could share his enthusiasm for history, for England, but also for the world, for travel and adventure. Someone with the same daft sense of humour and joie de vivre, easy to talk to, sure of her own self; who could give him the only things he had really ever wanted from life: a wife, children, a home.

Michael fingered the sunflower that Shannon had left at the side of his bed. Had he finally found her? It was beyond daring, beyond hope. But the way his heart pounded when she entered the room, the joy that surged through his every cell when she smiled at him, and the terror that struck his mind at the thought of never seeing her again - these things were symptoms, he knew, of that disease called love. But was it terminal?

He sniffed the sunflower, inhaled the delicate scent and stroked the petals gently against his cheek. He wished it was Shannon's hair. When he had said "Stay with me", he had really meant something else. But it was insanity to say that - wasn't it? It was bad enough that he'd told her how he felt - Terry would have his hide once he found out. "Never tell a woman you love her until she's agreed to a threesome." He was his best friend, but sometimes he wondered about Terry. But what was it Eric had said to him recently? "Man, when you know, you just KNOW, and no amount of analysis will make any difference." Yes, Eric was wise.

Michael lay back on his pillow, spinning the sunflower round and round in his fingers. He closed his eyes, remembering how he and Shannon had been together. He had never imagined finding a woman who he could surrender to like that - who gave as good as she got, and wasn't afraid to be a sexual being - he'd had too many girls who were prissy or hung-up or just lay there like a piece of halibut. Shannon was like a cavewoman - it was exhilarating and intoxicating.

Life without her.... Michael's eyes sprang open. He snatched up his ever-present diary and began scribbing furiously. He knew it now, without a
shadow of a doubt: Shannon was The One.