Part 38: link
“You were right. That was incredible. And huge,” Gwen says as they walk home. “I’m glad we’re walking, I think I need the exercise now.”
Arthur laughs. “Let’s take the long way home, then.”
It is fully dark, but the streets are well lit as they walk hand in hand. They pass a cottage with a beautiful front garden and the breeze blows a sweet smell in their direction.
“What is that?” Arthur sniffs, stopping.
Gwen looks around. I know this one. I remember this smell. Aha. There.
She points to a border of plants nearby with large green leaves and white trumpet-shaped flowers, fully open in the night air. “There. The trumpet plants.”
“Those? The white ones?”
“Yes. My mother had these. They open at night and the smell is incredibly sweet. And u can only smell them like this at night.”
He looks at them. He closes his eyes and smells the air. “I like them. We should make sure we have some in our garden one day.”
“I’d like that.” She smiles up at him. He wraps his arm around her shoulder and they continue walking back to the cottage.
I cannot believe this is happening. It cannot be. It is a cruel dream. My father wouldn’t do this to me. Does he realize that this will crush my very soul?
Why, Father, why? Why does it matter that she is a servant?
Oh, God, there she is. My beautiful Guinevere. Hands bound behind her back, broken, humiliated. For something she did not even do.
She can hardly walk. I can hardly watch, but neither can I look away. I owe her that much.
This is my fault.
Her eyes are red. I’m sure mine are as well. Oh no – she stumbles on her way up to the scaffold.
I can’t watch this.
Someone needs to stop me of I’ll throw myself on the pyre after her.
“Arthur.” Merlin’s hand on my shoulder. I don’t think he’s strong enough, but he does surprise me sometimes.
“Thank you, Merlin.” My voice sounds so weak.
Guinevere. Her eyes. u always seem to read my mind, read it now.
I love you. I will always love you. I will never love another. I will not marry. I love you. My hart-, hart will die with you. I’m sorry. I love you.
No. No. No. Don’t touch that torch to the tinder. Don’t do it. Don’t.
“Arthur!” Merlin’s hand, firm at my elbow.
The world swims.
“NO!!!”
“NO!!!” Arthur shouts, waking himself up. Sitting bolt upright in the bed, he looks around, blinking back the afbeeldingen of Gwen being tied to a stake, a torch set to stacked logs beneath her. He is shaking all over and covered in sweat.
He looks to his left, and sees his Guinevere sleeping there, lovely and peaceful, untroubled as a child. Willing his breathing back to normal, he lies back down and spoons up behind her, pulling her close to him. He buries his face into her hair, letting her scent wash over him, calming him, bringing him back to reality.
That was a hell of a dream.
Arthur squeezes her tighter to him, and she stirs.
“Arthur?” she asks, her voice sleepy. He continues to cling to her. “Are u all right?” She attempts to turn in his arms, and he loosens his grip enough to allow her to turn and face him.
He looks like he’s seen a ghost. “What’s wrong, love?”
He hugs her tightly again, kissing the top, boven of her head but still saying nothing. ”I had a bad dream” sounds so silly, he thinks.
“I had a bad dream.”
“About me?”
“Yes! How did you…”
“Call it a lucky guess.” She squirms within his tight grasp to illustrate her point.
“Oh. Yes.” He doesn’t loosen his grip. “You were about to be burnt at the stake.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I was blaming my father for it, though. I was watching as u were being led to a scaffold in a courtyard. I woke myself up with my own shouting just as the torch was touched to the wood.” He shudders, thinking about it. “I’m surprised I didn’t wake you, too.”
“Yeah, me too,” she says. “So apparently your father didn’t always like me, then,” she muses with a half-smile.
“Hah, guess not. Oh, I remember something else. It had something to do with your being a servant and my being a… I guess it would be prince, then, if my father was around. Not like your dream, where I was king. And I remember something about knowing that u were innocent of whatever it was that u were being executed for.”
Gwen looks up at him. “Well, according to that book, I didn’t get executed, so it must have turned out.”
“Yes, you’re right. Still, it was mighty unpleasant. And so real.”
“Just a dream, love.”
“Or a distant memory,” he corrects her.
“Well, if your going to spleet, split hairs…” she smiles at him, and he cannot help but feel better seeing her smile. She kisses his chin and tucks her head back down into his shoulder.
“If I have any meer of these dreams, I hope they’re meer like the kind that you had,” he says suggestively, and Gwen giggles.
“Go to sleep,” she tells him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s right. You’re not.” He lifts her face to his again and kisses her softly, his fingers caressing her shoulder, her hip.
She sighs against him, and rubs her nose against his. “I love you, Arthur.”
“I love you, Guinevere.”
SATURDAY
Gwen wakes. She hears singing. Arthur is singing? She listens, amused. ”It’s Not Unusual” door Tom Jones? Really? After he poked fun? Oh I am going to get him.
Arthur’s one-man performance is happening in the shower, so Gwen gets up and creeps silently into the bathroom. She stands in her t-shirt, facing the shower, arms crossed over her chest, waiting as the steam from the douche swirls around her head.
Minutes later, the douche turns off, and Arthur emerges. He sees Guinevere standing there giving him a look and he nearly jumps out of his skin.
“Oh! Geez, Gwen, u scared me!” He reaches for a towel. “What?”
“Nice singing, Tom.” He actually has a good voice, but I’m not telling him that.
Arthur blushes. “Well, it was stuck in my head. It was either that of ‘Ring of Fire’ door Johnny Cash. I knew meer of the words to this one,” he admits.
Gwen laughs. “Really? Wow. ‘Cause u only got about half of them right.”
Arthur scowls, trying to stop his own laughter. He walks past her, lightly pinching her backside as he passes, and goes to dress.
“What are we doing today?” Gwen asks. She finds him in the kitchen, rummaging around in the cupboards and refrigerator. She assumes he is looking for breakfast.
“We are going to take a drive and have a picnic lunch. And tonight we have avondeten, diner reservations, so u can wear that red dress.” He grins at her.
“Is that what you’re working on there, the picnic?” she comes closer to inspect.
“Yes.”
“Would u like some help?”
“Yes.”
Chuckling, she helps him select things to bring and pack a large wicker basket that he brings out of the pantry.
“Did u eat any breakfast?” she asks.
“Um, yeah, sorry, I should have waited for you,” he says sheepishly.
“That’s all right. But now u have to wait for me.” She opens the refrigerator and pulls out a packet of crumpets.
“Mmm, crumpets,” she says, and Arthur laughs.
“What now?”
“Something Wayne zei when Merlin announced to the crew that we were getting married.”
“Which was…?”
“He referred to u as a ‘little brown crumpet.’”
She laughs. “Sounds like him. Wait, Merlin told them?” She raises an eyebrow at him.
“Let me explain! He never even gave me a chance! Someone referred to u as my girlfriend and he corrected them. And it sort of snowballed from there. So it wasn’t because I wasn’t going to tell them. He stal it.” Since he at least has the decency to look disgruntled about Merlin having stolen his news, Gwen walks over and kisses him.
“You’re cute,” she tells him, then goes back to preparing her breakfast.
“They actually call this ‘The Romantic Road,’” Arthur tells her as they drive. It is a lovely summer day, not too warm to be out and about. He drives them along the winding road, windows down, and Gwen takes it all in, watching the rolling hills pass, enjoying the breeze. She wisely has her hair back in a braid, so it doesn’t blow everywhere.
“It’s lovely. I can’t believe my father never brought us out here.” She turns her head suddenly. “Oh, what a beautiful church!” she exclaims, making Arthur laugh.
Some errant schapen in the road stop them briefly. Gwen reaches out of the car window and pets one that comes a little too close.
“Kind of oily,” she says, rubbing her fingers together, laughing. She snaps a foto with her phone and sends it to Morgana.
“Yeah, they look cute and fluffy, but they’re greasy little things.”
Once the road is free of sheep, they proceed a bit further and Arthur parks near one of the meer wooded areas. He seems sure of their location, like it is a place with which he is familiar.
Arthur pulls the basket out of the car, and Gwen takes the blanket they’ve brought along. He leads her down a path she hadn’t seen from the road, back through a stand of trees to a clearing door a stream.
“You knew this was here,” she tells him. I hope he never brought what’s-her-name here, she thinks.
“Yes. Merlin and I found it when we were kids. He came along sometimes when we’d come out here, to keep me company.”
“Ah.” Good. She finds a spot relatively free of rocks and spreads the blanket out on the ground.
“I know what u were thinking, and no, I never brought her here.”
“Never occurred to me,” she lies.
“Liar,” he says, pulling her into his arms, kissing her quite thoroughly before they sit.
“A little early for lunch yet,” Arthur says, looking at his watch. “Unless you’re hungry.”
“Not really,” she says, sliding her feet out of her black flip-flops and curling her legs around volgende to her.
“Any ideas on what we can do to pass the time?” he asks, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
She laughs, and looks at the stream. “How deep is that stream?”
“There are some deeper spots, but it’s mostly shallow.”
“All right, then,” she says, standing up again. She makes her way to the bank and looks back at him, grinning, hands on her hips. “Are u going to kom bij me of am I wading in here door myself?”
He sighs and stands, slipping off his own sandals in the process. Not exactly what I had in mind, but okay. door the time he reaches her, she is already calf-deep, looking intently down at the water. The stream is fairly clear and not too cold, warmed door the summer sun shining down on it.
“There are little vis in here,” she says.
“Of course there are,” he teases her.
“Well, yes, but what I mean is that they don’t seem to be troubled door us. Usually they dart away at the slightest provocation.”
She picks her way along the rocky bottom, exploring, bending to pick up a fallen branch that floats past. She flings it on the opposite bank. Arthur finds some smooth flat stones and idly skips them along the surface, watching her shapely legs as she delicately moves farther along.
Something catches her eye. “What’s this?” she asks, stepping further away.
Arthur looks up. Quickly, he says, “Gwen, be careful, it gets—“
Guinevere takes another step and is caught door surprise as the river bottom is no longer where she expects it to be. She slips off the rock and disappears.
“—deep over there,” Arthur lamely finishes. He waits a few seconds. She isn’t coming back up.
He leaps to the bank, knowing he can verplaats faster on dry land and runs to the spot where she disappeared. Peering into the water, he sees nothing, then scans around the curve downstream and sees her several meters away, draped limply against a rock. Her face is pointed away from him and she is not moving.
With an uncharacteristic curse, Arthur runs the short distance, wades carefully in and lifts her out, dragging her to the bank. She is not breathing.
He puts his hand under the back of her neck, tilting her head back to open her airway. He blows into her mouth, trying to get her to breathe again. Chest compressions: One, two, three. Blows again. One, two, three.
“Come on, Guinevere,” he talks to her, then blows again. He is just about to continue and she heaves a great cough, water bubbling forth from her mouth. He lifts her shoulders and pulls her into his arms as she coughs the rest of the water out of her lungs, wetting the back of his overhemd, shirt as he pounds her back.
He holds her to him, not willing to let go, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to will the threatening tears into submission.
“Arthur,” she croaks, shivering.
He stands, pulling her with him, then lifts her into his arms. They are now on the opposite side of the stream, so he walks back to where their blanket is spread, where it is shallow and narrow again, and crosses. He sets her down on a boulder and grabs the blanket. He pulls her to her feet and wraps it around her and then sits, pulling her onto his lap, wrapping her in his embrace as he tries to warm her and dry her as best he can. She coughs a few meer sputtering coughs.
“Guinevere?” he asks softly, looking down into her eyes.
She looks up at him and says, “Well, that was embarrassing.” She smiles weakly.
He chuckles in spite of himself. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. u slipped.”
“Yes, but I can swim. Quite well. I don’t know what happened.”
He brings his hand up and gently cradles her head against his chest.
“Ow!” she says, raising her hand to her head, where his hand is.
“That could explain it,” he says, gently feeling her skull and finding a lump forming on the side, near the back.
“I must have hit my head, then,” Gwen concludes.
“It would definitely seem so,” he says, leaning her back to look into her eyes. He looks at them intently as if trying to determine something.
“What?”
“I think we should have u looked at. I want to make sure u don’t have a concussion.”
“Arthur, I’m fine. I just need a little Tylenol, perhaps, and some dry clothes, but I’m fine.”
“No arguments. Come on.”
Gwen sighs and allows him to lead her back to the car.
“I ruined the picnic,” she says forlornly.
“We’ll have it at the cottage. After we have u checked out.”
“Can we at least go home pagina first so I can get some dry clothes?”
She seems steady, and she’s making sense. “All right,” he concedes.
“Well, she looks okay. No concussion, Arthur,” Roger tells them both. As a compromise to the emergency room, Arthur takes Gwen to the firehouse where the cottage caretaker, Roger, is an EMT.
“Good, thanks a lot, Roger,” Arthur says.
“You might want to put some ice on that, Gwen,” Roger tells her. “And take Tylenol of some ibuprofen if it pains you.”
“Of course, thank you,” she says, standing up. To Arthur she says, “See, I’m fine.”
“Just don’t overdo it, kids,” Roger says with a wink as they leave.
“We’re going back to the cottage right now and I will make sure she gets some rest before dinner, I promise,” Arthur says.
Part 40: link
“You were right. That was incredible. And huge,” Gwen says as they walk home. “I’m glad we’re walking, I think I need the exercise now.”
Arthur laughs. “Let’s take the long way home, then.”
It is fully dark, but the streets are well lit as they walk hand in hand. They pass a cottage with a beautiful front garden and the breeze blows a sweet smell in their direction.
“What is that?” Arthur sniffs, stopping.
Gwen looks around. I know this one. I remember this smell. Aha. There.
She points to a border of plants nearby with large green leaves and white trumpet-shaped flowers, fully open in the night air. “There. The trumpet plants.”
“Those? The white ones?”
“Yes. My mother had these. They open at night and the smell is incredibly sweet. And u can only smell them like this at night.”
He looks at them. He closes his eyes and smells the air. “I like them. We should make sure we have some in our garden one day.”
“I’d like that.” She smiles up at him. He wraps his arm around her shoulder and they continue walking back to the cottage.
I cannot believe this is happening. It cannot be. It is a cruel dream. My father wouldn’t do this to me. Does he realize that this will crush my very soul?
Why, Father, why? Why does it matter that she is a servant?
Oh, God, there she is. My beautiful Guinevere. Hands bound behind her back, broken, humiliated. For something she did not even do.
She can hardly walk. I can hardly watch, but neither can I look away. I owe her that much.
This is my fault.
Her eyes are red. I’m sure mine are as well. Oh no – she stumbles on her way up to the scaffold.
I can’t watch this.
Someone needs to stop me of I’ll throw myself on the pyre after her.
“Arthur.” Merlin’s hand on my shoulder. I don’t think he’s strong enough, but he does surprise me sometimes.
“Thank you, Merlin.” My voice sounds so weak.
Guinevere. Her eyes. u always seem to read my mind, read it now.
I love you. I will always love you. I will never love another. I will not marry. I love you. My hart-, hart will die with you. I’m sorry. I love you.
No. No. No. Don’t touch that torch to the tinder. Don’t do it. Don’t.
“Arthur!” Merlin’s hand, firm at my elbow.
The world swims.
“NO!!!”
“NO!!!” Arthur shouts, waking himself up. Sitting bolt upright in the bed, he looks around, blinking back the afbeeldingen of Gwen being tied to a stake, a torch set to stacked logs beneath her. He is shaking all over and covered in sweat.
He looks to his left, and sees his Guinevere sleeping there, lovely and peaceful, untroubled as a child. Willing his breathing back to normal, he lies back down and spoons up behind her, pulling her close to him. He buries his face into her hair, letting her scent wash over him, calming him, bringing him back to reality.
That was a hell of a dream.
Arthur squeezes her tighter to him, and she stirs.
“Arthur?” she asks, her voice sleepy. He continues to cling to her. “Are u all right?” She attempts to turn in his arms, and he loosens his grip enough to allow her to turn and face him.
He looks like he’s seen a ghost. “What’s wrong, love?”
He hugs her tightly again, kissing the top, boven of her head but still saying nothing. ”I had a bad dream” sounds so silly, he thinks.
“I had a bad dream.”
“About me?”
“Yes! How did you…”
“Call it a lucky guess.” She squirms within his tight grasp to illustrate her point.
“Oh. Yes.” He doesn’t loosen his grip. “You were about to be burnt at the stake.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I was blaming my father for it, though. I was watching as u were being led to a scaffold in a courtyard. I woke myself up with my own shouting just as the torch was touched to the wood.” He shudders, thinking about it. “I’m surprised I didn’t wake you, too.”
“Yeah, me too,” she says. “So apparently your father didn’t always like me, then,” she muses with a half-smile.
“Hah, guess not. Oh, I remember something else. It had something to do with your being a servant and my being a… I guess it would be prince, then, if my father was around. Not like your dream, where I was king. And I remember something about knowing that u were innocent of whatever it was that u were being executed for.”
Gwen looks up at him. “Well, according to that book, I didn’t get executed, so it must have turned out.”
“Yes, you’re right. Still, it was mighty unpleasant. And so real.”
“Just a dream, love.”
“Or a distant memory,” he corrects her.
“Well, if your going to spleet, split hairs…” she smiles at him, and he cannot help but feel better seeing her smile. She kisses his chin and tucks her head back down into his shoulder.
“If I have any meer of these dreams, I hope they’re meer like the kind that you had,” he says suggestively, and Gwen giggles.
“Go to sleep,” she tells him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s right. You’re not.” He lifts her face to his again and kisses her softly, his fingers caressing her shoulder, her hip.
She sighs against him, and rubs her nose against his. “I love you, Arthur.”
“I love you, Guinevere.”
SATURDAY
Gwen wakes. She hears singing. Arthur is singing? She listens, amused. ”It’s Not Unusual” door Tom Jones? Really? After he poked fun? Oh I am going to get him.
Arthur’s one-man performance is happening in the shower, so Gwen gets up and creeps silently into the bathroom. She stands in her t-shirt, facing the shower, arms crossed over her chest, waiting as the steam from the douche swirls around her head.
Minutes later, the douche turns off, and Arthur emerges. He sees Guinevere standing there giving him a look and he nearly jumps out of his skin.
“Oh! Geez, Gwen, u scared me!” He reaches for a towel. “What?”
“Nice singing, Tom.” He actually has a good voice, but I’m not telling him that.
Arthur blushes. “Well, it was stuck in my head. It was either that of ‘Ring of Fire’ door Johnny Cash. I knew meer of the words to this one,” he admits.
Gwen laughs. “Really? Wow. ‘Cause u only got about half of them right.”
Arthur scowls, trying to stop his own laughter. He walks past her, lightly pinching her backside as he passes, and goes to dress.
“What are we doing today?” Gwen asks. She finds him in the kitchen, rummaging around in the cupboards and refrigerator. She assumes he is looking for breakfast.
“We are going to take a drive and have a picnic lunch. And tonight we have avondeten, diner reservations, so u can wear that red dress.” He grins at her.
“Is that what you’re working on there, the picnic?” she comes closer to inspect.
“Yes.”
“Would u like some help?”
“Yes.”
Chuckling, she helps him select things to bring and pack a large wicker basket that he brings out of the pantry.
“Did u eat any breakfast?” she asks.
“Um, yeah, sorry, I should have waited for you,” he says sheepishly.
“That’s all right. But now u have to wait for me.” She opens the refrigerator and pulls out a packet of crumpets.
“Mmm, crumpets,” she says, and Arthur laughs.
“What now?”
“Something Wayne zei when Merlin announced to the crew that we were getting married.”
“Which was…?”
“He referred to u as a ‘little brown crumpet.’”
She laughs. “Sounds like him. Wait, Merlin told them?” She raises an eyebrow at him.
“Let me explain! He never even gave me a chance! Someone referred to u as my girlfriend and he corrected them. And it sort of snowballed from there. So it wasn’t because I wasn’t going to tell them. He stal it.” Since he at least has the decency to look disgruntled about Merlin having stolen his news, Gwen walks over and kisses him.
“You’re cute,” she tells him, then goes back to preparing her breakfast.
“They actually call this ‘The Romantic Road,’” Arthur tells her as they drive. It is a lovely summer day, not too warm to be out and about. He drives them along the winding road, windows down, and Gwen takes it all in, watching the rolling hills pass, enjoying the breeze. She wisely has her hair back in a braid, so it doesn’t blow everywhere.
“It’s lovely. I can’t believe my father never brought us out here.” She turns her head suddenly. “Oh, what a beautiful church!” she exclaims, making Arthur laugh.
Some errant schapen in the road stop them briefly. Gwen reaches out of the car window and pets one that comes a little too close.
“Kind of oily,” she says, rubbing her fingers together, laughing. She snaps a foto with her phone and sends it to Morgana.
“Yeah, they look cute and fluffy, but they’re greasy little things.”
Once the road is free of sheep, they proceed a bit further and Arthur parks near one of the meer wooded areas. He seems sure of their location, like it is a place with which he is familiar.
Arthur pulls the basket out of the car, and Gwen takes the blanket they’ve brought along. He leads her down a path she hadn’t seen from the road, back through a stand of trees to a clearing door a stream.
“You knew this was here,” she tells him. I hope he never brought what’s-her-name here, she thinks.
“Yes. Merlin and I found it when we were kids. He came along sometimes when we’d come out here, to keep me company.”
“Ah.” Good. She finds a spot relatively free of rocks and spreads the blanket out on the ground.
“I know what u were thinking, and no, I never brought her here.”
“Never occurred to me,” she lies.
“Liar,” he says, pulling her into his arms, kissing her quite thoroughly before they sit.
“A little early for lunch yet,” Arthur says, looking at his watch. “Unless you’re hungry.”
“Not really,” she says, sliding her feet out of her black flip-flops and curling her legs around volgende to her.
“Any ideas on what we can do to pass the time?” he asks, raising his eyebrows suggestively.
She laughs, and looks at the stream. “How deep is that stream?”
“There are some deeper spots, but it’s mostly shallow.”
“All right, then,” she says, standing up again. She makes her way to the bank and looks back at him, grinning, hands on her hips. “Are u going to kom bij me of am I wading in here door myself?”
He sighs and stands, slipping off his own sandals in the process. Not exactly what I had in mind, but okay. door the time he reaches her, she is already calf-deep, looking intently down at the water. The stream is fairly clear and not too cold, warmed door the summer sun shining down on it.
“There are little vis in here,” she says.
“Of course there are,” he teases her.
“Well, yes, but what I mean is that they don’t seem to be troubled door us. Usually they dart away at the slightest provocation.”
She picks her way along the rocky bottom, exploring, bending to pick up a fallen branch that floats past. She flings it on the opposite bank. Arthur finds some smooth flat stones and idly skips them along the surface, watching her shapely legs as she delicately moves farther along.
Something catches her eye. “What’s this?” she asks, stepping further away.
Arthur looks up. Quickly, he says, “Gwen, be careful, it gets—“
Guinevere takes another step and is caught door surprise as the river bottom is no longer where she expects it to be. She slips off the rock and disappears.
“—deep over there,” Arthur lamely finishes. He waits a few seconds. She isn’t coming back up.
He leaps to the bank, knowing he can verplaats faster on dry land and runs to the spot where she disappeared. Peering into the water, he sees nothing, then scans around the curve downstream and sees her several meters away, draped limply against a rock. Her face is pointed away from him and she is not moving.
With an uncharacteristic curse, Arthur runs the short distance, wades carefully in and lifts her out, dragging her to the bank. She is not breathing.
He puts his hand under the back of her neck, tilting her head back to open her airway. He blows into her mouth, trying to get her to breathe again. Chest compressions: One, two, three. Blows again. One, two, three.
“Come on, Guinevere,” he talks to her, then blows again. He is just about to continue and she heaves a great cough, water bubbling forth from her mouth. He lifts her shoulders and pulls her into his arms as she coughs the rest of the water out of her lungs, wetting the back of his overhemd, shirt as he pounds her back.
He holds her to him, not willing to let go, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to will the threatening tears into submission.
“Arthur,” she croaks, shivering.
He stands, pulling her with him, then lifts her into his arms. They are now on the opposite side of the stream, so he walks back to where their blanket is spread, where it is shallow and narrow again, and crosses. He sets her down on a boulder and grabs the blanket. He pulls her to her feet and wraps it around her and then sits, pulling her onto his lap, wrapping her in his embrace as he tries to warm her and dry her as best he can. She coughs a few meer sputtering coughs.
“Guinevere?” he asks softly, looking down into her eyes.
She looks up at him and says, “Well, that was embarrassing.” She smiles weakly.
He chuckles in spite of himself. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. u slipped.”
“Yes, but I can swim. Quite well. I don’t know what happened.”
He brings his hand up and gently cradles her head against his chest.
“Ow!” she says, raising her hand to her head, where his hand is.
“That could explain it,” he says, gently feeling her skull and finding a lump forming on the side, near the back.
“I must have hit my head, then,” Gwen concludes.
“It would definitely seem so,” he says, leaning her back to look into her eyes. He looks at them intently as if trying to determine something.
“What?”
“I think we should have u looked at. I want to make sure u don’t have a concussion.”
“Arthur, I’m fine. I just need a little Tylenol, perhaps, and some dry clothes, but I’m fine.”
“No arguments. Come on.”
Gwen sighs and allows him to lead her back to the car.
“I ruined the picnic,” she says forlornly.
“We’ll have it at the cottage. After we have u checked out.”
“Can we at least go home pagina first so I can get some dry clothes?”
She seems steady, and she’s making sense. “All right,” he concedes.
“Well, she looks okay. No concussion, Arthur,” Roger tells them both. As a compromise to the emergency room, Arthur takes Gwen to the firehouse where the cottage caretaker, Roger, is an EMT.
“Good, thanks a lot, Roger,” Arthur says.
“You might want to put some ice on that, Gwen,” Roger tells her. “And take Tylenol of some ibuprofen if it pains you.”
“Of course, thank you,” she says, standing up. To Arthur she says, “See, I’m fine.”
“Just don’t overdo it, kids,” Roger says with a wink as they leave.
“We’re going back to the cottage right now and I will make sure she gets some rest before dinner, I promise,” Arthur says.
Part 40: link
