Who's Your Paddy?

Chapter 30

After an early morning send off of the newlyweds, we packed our things and left the hotel. The plan was to drive Southwest across the country and spend a couple days exploring whatever took our fancy before heading to Blarney where I planned to meet with Mick's family for the story.

It was a small deviation from our original plan of taking a full week to see the sights but as with most things after our arrival in Ireland, the schedule became fluid. After much debate with his mother and Louis, it was mutually decided that a slightly less adventurous trip might be in his best interest.

Nearly every town which the rural route led us through was more picturesque than the last. I stopped the car several times to capture images, especially in some of the smaller villages we found along the way. It was hard not to romanticize the palpable life I saw in snippets through the lens of my camera; thatched farmhouses, farmers herding sheep through a small hole in the stone fence, or the mother and child coming out of the butcher shop clutching their wrapped packages.

They were idyllic and exactly how I imagined Ireland should be.

We decided to stop for coffee and a few snacks in the town of Athlone. It was a busier town than most of those we passed along the way, but with no true destination in mind for our first day on the road, stopping to stretch and take in a bit of the town was a welcomed diversion.

Unfortunately, we never saw the van trailing us when we left the hotel. The surprise was genuine when our emergence from a gift shop was met with a whirr of shutter clicks and shouts. We'd both been taken completely off guard. Liam spotted the photographers as we tried to exit the shop and quickly ducked back into the store. In my attempt to keep them from following him in, I moved to block the doorway.

That's when things went black.

I was only dazed for a second. Or so I thought. It was the heavy breathing that brought me out of the fog. I blinked, realizing I was slumped in the passenger seat and the anxious grunts were emanating from Liam. His hands gripped the wheel tight enough to cause his knuckles to go white.

"What the..."

"Sit still," he croaked.

I lifted a hand to the ache just above my eyebrow and when I pulled it away, it was bloody. I bolted upright, causing the throb to worsen.

"How did I...wait, I passed out?" I asked, pulling the visor down so I could get a look at myself in the mirror.

"Not now."

I turned to take a second look at him. The line of sweat streaking down from his temple disappeared into the collar of his shirt and his entire body trembled. Then it clicked. The reporters. He was driving us away from the reporters. He was driving. Driving??

Staring at him from the passenger seat, it all came flooding back. The telephoto lens on one photographer's camera connected with the bone above my right eyebrow. The pain was acute enough to cause me to wobble backwards off my feet. I didn't just pass out. The moments between taking that whack to the head and waking up bloody faced in the passenger seat of our rental car were completely absent from my memory.

"Liam, pull over. I can handle this."

He didn't turn to address me, nor speak for that matter. He grunted and kept driving.

"C'mon, look at yourself. I'm okay. Really. Pull over."

He snapped. "Gonna fuckin' kill that prick. Sit tight, the surgery is just ahead."

"What? Surgery? It's a scratch!"

Surgery, as it turned out was nothing more than a doctor's office. In our case it was one just off the main road. It occupied the front rooms of a residential dwelling. We hurried inside, but it didn't take long for the frenzy to follow us there.