"Now that I've done it once, it'll be easier next time."

God!

How can you say that, Ray? How can you even think it?

Easier for whom? You?

Certainly not for me. Never for me!

I don't believe I could survive another time. Took everything I've got to get through this one, never mind thinking it might happen again.

When I saw you lying there, so still-so silent...

When I saw all that blood...

We've been close to the edge before, both of us, but that was the first time since I admitted to myself exactly how I feel about you. I thought you were dead, you see. For just a moment that seemed like an eternity, I thought I had lost you.

Then you whimpered.

It was a dreadful sound, so full of pain, but it was also the sweetest sound I have ever heard because it meant you were still alive.

I had a sort of premonition when the call came through, you know that? Yeah, me! Practical Bodie, not a psychic bone in his body, had a premonition.

I'd gone for that drink you refused to have with me, done a few errands. Was planning on going round your place later, to cheer you up after I'd reckoned you'd had enough time to be domestic. Never can stand seeing you down in the dumps, and you were feeling pretty low that day because of those two kids blowing themselves up. Happy as Larry I was, thinking of a few ways to lift your spirits, ways to make you smile again...

I'd stopped to buy a newspaper, and I was halfway across the street on my way back to the car when I heard the R/T bleeping.

"Trouble at 4.5's place!"

"I'm on my way!"

I knew then. Knew, with a sure and certain conviction, that it was bad. Don't ask me how; I just knew.

Could hear your voice inside my head, calling me. "Bodie? Where are you, Bodie?"

It's a miracle I managed to get there in one piece without killing either some innocent bystander or myself. I thumped on your door buzzer, but you didn't answer. I had to go round the back and up the fire escape. There was an old biddy hanging out of the window of one of the other flats screeching about burglars-but I didn't give a damn!

There was only one thought in my head at that moment: I had to get to you. And all the time there was something terrified deep inside of me crying your name, telling you to hold on, that I was coming...

I have never been so frightened in the whole of my life: not in Africa, not in Ulster, not since I joined CI5. Not ever!

I never want to be that frightened again, because I don't think I could take it a second time.

When I peered through the window and saw you... Couldn't breathe... Couldn't even think for a moment!

I never want to feel like that again, either!

So much blood, Ray! It was everywhere. How much is there in the human body? Ten pints? Something like that. You appeared to have lost gallons of the stuff.

You just lay there, not moving, while I shoved the towels up inside your shirt. Your eyes were half open but you weren't seeing me or anything else. In a world of your own far, far away from me, you were lost and hurting and lonely, and still crying in my head, "Bodie? I need you, Bodie!"

Wanted to tell you I was there, to stop worrying, that I was with you and would never leave you, and everything was going to be all right, but I couldn't. My damn tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth, and even if it hadn't been I don't believe I could have got a word out around the lump of fear in my throat.

I was talking to you inside my head, though, hoping that somehow you would be able to hear me the way I could hear you. Swearing at you and pleading with you, all at the same time. "Dammit, Doyle, fight! Don't give up. Don't leave me; please don't leave me. I need you too. I don't know what I'll do if you leave me like this."

And then I discovered the phone was on the blink, and realised that I'd left my bloody R/T in the car, and I had to abandon you to run downstairs to call in for an ambulance.

It felt like a couple of lifetimes until they arrived.

You know the worst part of it?

I was helpless. There was nothing I could do for you other than what I'd already done. I could only watch your life slowly ebbing away-and wait. And we both know what I'm like about waiting, don't we?

Those were the longest ten minutes of my life.

I sat on the floor beside you and held your hand, and now that I'd found my tongue again I used it. Told you all about how much I love you, and how long I've loved you, and the way my insides turn to water when you smile at me, and how life wouldn't be worth living if you left me, and a hundred other things like that. Everything I had been longing to say to you, everything I should have said before but had never dared.

I knew you didn't hear me, but I had to get it out.

I had to say it, just once. Just in case...

And behind all the talking and the hand holding I was praying like I'd never prayed before. Praying to the God I don't really believe in, to anyone or anything out there who might be prepared to listen to me.

Funny, the things desperation drives you to.

Then I heard the wail of a siren, and the cavalry arrived, charging up the stairs in the nick of time and shoving me out of their way so they could get to work and stabilise you long enough to get you to hospital.

You regained consciousness in the ambulance. Only for a few seconds, but you were aware and you knew me, and you tried to smile at me. Your eyes went all soft the way they do, and one corner of your mouth just about managed to twitch before you were gone again.

Thought I was going to break down there and then and do my hard-man image no good at all.

I couldn't have cared less!

When Cowley arrived at the hospital, hot on our heels, they were already preparing you for emergency surgery. I wanted to stay but he had other plans for my time. Went right to the heart of the matter as usual.

"Stay for what? I want you to search his flat, Bodie. You know the man. You can do nothing here."

'Course I could do nothing! I understood that, but it didn't make a fucking blind bit of difference to me. Your life was in the doctors' hands now, but I still wanted to be there.

Just be there; just be with you.

But you know what the Old Man's like when he's got the bit between his teeth about something. Like trying to stop a steamroller with a feather. So back to the flat it was. Malone's boys were already there taking things apart down to their component atoms, it seemed, sifting and analysing. I was useless there as well, just going through the motions. Kept seeing you lying on the floor every time I looked at the bloodstain on the carpet or at the scattered groceries. Barely heard Cowley telling me, "No vendettas, Bodie. No revenge."

Wasn't thinking like that-not then! Every part of me that mattered was back in the operating theatre with you.

He returned to the hospital, and I drove ballistics crazy about the bullet that had been dug out of your living-room wall. When they finally came up with some information, I took it to him.

We stood in the viewing gallery together, watching your operation.

Watching your heart go haywire and the surgeon fighting for your life.

Watching you slipping away, as though it was all too much for you to contemplate any longer and you just wanted to let go of the whole dirty world we exist in.

No more killing. No more cross and double-cross. No more heart-searching.

No more Doyle.

And if that happened, there would be no more Bodie.

Only I wouldn't let you go. Couldn't let you go. I hung onto you for dear life, yours and mine both. I wouldn't allow myself to believe that I could lose you. If you were thinking of giving up, then I would fight for you. I had no idea how, only that I would do it. Or die along with you.

Even Cowley was afraid you weren't going to make it. I know we all say he doesn't give a toss about any of us, just uses us as a means to an end, but that's not true and we know it. He cares. He just doesn't show it too easily, or too often. He showed it then, though. I've seldom seen him as worried about anything as he was about you, Ray.

He was worried about me too.

By that time the fury was beginning to build, you see. Could feel it gathering inside me, a volcano waiting to erupt. God knows what I would have done if he hadn't driven all that anger into the proper channels.

Sharp as a razor is our George, and he knows me almost too well. Can keep me on the straight and narrow better than anyone I've ever known. Ordered and pushed and prompted me until he had me thinking straight again, using my head.

Remembering; adding two and two and getting four.

You must have been thinking too, wherever you were. Trying to get through to us, give us the clue we needed. Don't know how you managed to pull that stunt with your fingers, and you don't recall a thing about it now.

By the time I found her, though, it was too late. For Colonel Lin Foh, for Mai Li, for everyone except you.

Poor silly little bitch! A killer by force of circumstance, neither made for it nor born to it. Dumped on the doorstep to die, to be a martyr to the bloody Cause.

Callous bastards!

She was so fragile in my arms, Ray. In the beginning I had wanted to kill whoever had so nearly killed you; in the end I felt only pity for her and a terrible sense of a life wasted. She asked about you, before she died in the ambulance with her hand in mine, and the futility of it all was like a leaden weight in my chest. I knew then exactly how you were feeling.

When I got back to the hospital you opened your eyes and looked at me and whispered my name. Had to try three times, and even then it was only a thread of sound.

You looked as though you'd gone ten rounds with King Kong and lost, but you were alive and according to the doctors you were going to stay alive, and that was all that was important to me.

You took a longer than usual time to get over this one, and I missed you every minute of every day. Cowley teamed me with Fraser on a job, but he did it only once. I made the poor sod's life a misery. Got sentenced to Records for that, told that if I couldn't function in a civilised manner without you holding my hand I should take out my inadequacies on the files, not on my hapless fellow operatives.

You laughed like a drain when I told you about that. Laughed so hard you pulled your stitches, and I got ticked off about that, too. God, it would have been worth every word of blame if only you hadn't been hurting.

I'd cheerfully have taken responsibility for Noah's Flood, the Black Death and World War Two at that moment, because it was the first time you'd laughed since it had happened.

First time I'd really believed you were getting better, too.

You looked so frail, you see. There isn't much of you even when you're fighting fit, but you used to lie there, your face the same colour as the pillow, eyes like dinner plates with great black bruises underneath them, lines which hadn't been there before etched deeply into your face.

I'd sit as close as I could get, make excuses to touch you as much for my own comfort as yours. Had to keep convincing myself that you were really there and breathing, I think. Sat on my hands sometimes, to prevent myself picking you up and holding you. It got so bad a couple of times that I had to get up and leave, pretend there was something urgent I had to do, just so I could pull myself together.

The second time that happened, I made myself a promise.

When you were better I would tell you exactly how I feel about you, how much I love you, and this time I would make damn certain you could hear me when I said it.

I think you may be beginning to suspect something anyway. You're not usually slow, and I must have given myself away dozens of times. Been giving me some odd looks lately when you think I don't see, haven't you?

Puzzled.

Speculative.

I've scared myself witless all over again, wondering how you're going to react. I'm still scared, but telling you is something I have to do.

I can't bear you not knowing any longer. I keep remembering that if Mai Li's aim had been just that little bit better, or her resolve a little bit stronger, you would have died without ever knowing or understanding how much you are cherished.

We all need to be loved.

And we all need to love.

I know you care about me; I've known that for a long time. What I'm going to find out very, very soon now is just how much you care.

You don't have to give me everything, you know. I can get by on very little; have done in the past. All I'm really allowing myself to hope for is that you won't walk out of my life.

But somehow, somewhere deep inside of me, I don't really believe you'll do that.

Call it another premonition. Call it whatever you like.

Just stop all this talk about dying again and let's go home, Ray.

Home is where I can say, "I love you."

-- THE END --