The Things That Stay

Chapter 4

(Author's Note: sorry I keep changing dates and settings so much--since NT is still in it's infancy, I'll often have to do some switching around after I publish my chapters. If any of you are confused, the story is now set in 1965, Holly & Simon are now 20 years old, and Simon is residing in Prestwich Hospital in the city of Bolton, which is near Manchester.)

Chapter 4

In which Simon is ungracefully petulant and recieves a thorough clouting from a handbag

Simon leaned his forehead against the iron bars of the holding cell. “Is this really necessary?” he asked for the third time that night. “I know it’s protocol and all that rubbish, but do you really think I’m capable of escape? I have the lung capacity of a tuberculosis victim.”

            One of the officers, a burly gentleman with an even burlier red moustache, heaved a sigh, though didn’t look up from his crossword puzzle. Simon clicked his tongue. “Hey. Hey—you, Yosemite Sam, humour me: what if my oxygen runs out and I die? Are you liable?”

            “Keep it up and we’ll push your bail to ninety,” snapped officer #2 from across the room—he looked as though he had been in good shape once, but he was now rather fat, with a round, doughy face and a head as shiny and bald as a cue ball. “That’s what you get for being a lying little bint,” he added under his breath, though this was not lost on the new inmate.

            “Listen, Elmer Fudd, I don’t need any of your sass,” said Simon flatly. “I don’t understand why this is so hard for you two to understand: I’ve told you a thousand times that he had it coming—hustling a young woman like that is disgusting. That being said, your chauvinism isn’t really my problem right now. My friend’s on her way: just let me out and you won’t hear another peep from me, I promise.”

            Yosemite Sam groaned. “For chrissake, you’ve been in there forty-five minutes. Another ten en’t going to kill you. Anyway, you’re lucky we put you in the empty holding cell.”

            “What if I told you I only had five minutes of oxygen left?”

            “Well, we could call your doctor and give him a little talking to,” was Fudd’s reply. “I’m sure he’d be interested in how you ended up here.”

            “Huh. Touché.” Simon turned, one of the bars catching awkwardly between his spine and a body shoulder blade, and he winced, for the bruise on his back smarted terribly. Entertaining his pride, he felt that if he weighed more than a prepubescent girl, he could have very well taken that brute in the alleyway, and even though Simon had been thoroughly trounced and falsely implicated, he didn’t particularly regret anything. Simon Dalaigh was not of the regretting variety, though he did wish the woman had stayed and vouched for him when the bobby came running—it would have made his chivalric excuse more viable. That being said, it was probably for the better that she took off: the minute she saw that her knight in shining armour had a wheeling oxygen tank, she probably knew there wasn’t going to be much of a fight to begin with. But his old friend, Petal, would surely be proud of him—even when they were children, she was always the brave one, and she’d always get so incredibly passionate during her rants on civil rights and racism. Surely Simon’s performance that day—while a bit vain and pathetic—would have been enough to inspire some sort of satisfaction on her part.