Thank you to everyone who helped me to put this together, who waited patiently for me to get up off my duff and do it, and were nice enough to say nice things about it (and criticise what they thought was wrong, or dull, or just not right!.
This finishes Dylan and Louise's story, and I won't be visiting their world again. Dylan is an amalgam of both my big brothers, who both went off to war when I was younger and never came back, so Dylan got the happy ever after they should have, now I can leave it. For your interest, 'Men of Harlech' is possibly the most stirring call to battle I've ever heard, it brings me out in goosebumps every time I hear it; at the battle of Rorkes Drift in South Africa in 1879, B Company, the 24th Regiment of Foot, 150 men, sang this song while successfully holding off 4,000 zulu warriors in multiple attacks over 2 days before being relieved. Every Welshman worth his salt knows this song...
As before, I caution you, this is not the real world, it's my world, so only bits here and there will match reality, or maybe in lots of places, but it's still just storyland, not 9 to 5, Monday to Friday land. If you like it, please rate it, if you didn't, please tell me why.
BB1958
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Louise sat down in the cafeteria with a sigh of relief; her rotation was over, she could look forward to a whole 7 days of sleeping late, slobbing around, and ambushing Dylan as soon as he got back later today or tomorrow; definitely her favourite pastime!
She was currently seconded from the company medical facility to the Cardio-vascular unit in the hospital in Jeddah at the request of the client, who needed a competent cardio surgeon, and the company, ever mindful of their need to keep the client sweet, had promptly loaned her out to the hospital so they could advertise their competence in bypass surgery. She drank her coffee appreciatively; whatever else was wrong with this place, they made the best coffee in the world, that was for sure.
She stretched and groaned, her beautiful face drawn and tired, her glorious bronze hair lank and tired-looking; four CABG's in a row, she felt like her legs were going to fall off after eleven hours straight in the OR. If only these people would eat healthily, she mused, instead of wolfing down salt-laden processed food, burgers, grease-soaked stodgy pizza's, lamb apparently basted in its own cholesterol, and sugar in crippling amounts, every single one of them eating themselves into an early grave. Two of the grafts she'd done had been bypassing Coronary Arteries she could barely manoeuvre out of the way, they were so stiffly congested and distended. Every one of the cases she had come to so far had done this to themselves, she should have specialised in Ortho, at least she wouldn't spend all day grubbing around inside rich fat slobs who'd opted for the 'death by burger' route to end their lives early. Doing this day after day had given her a definite interest in the vegetarian option...
Two hands slipped over her eyes, and a voice whispered hoarsely in her ear "Hello little girl, anyone ever tell you, you've got really nice tits?"
She reached behind her and slapped Dylan's leg, before pulling him down to kiss him soundly.
"I golli chi! Pan wnaethoch chi ddod yn รดl? (I missed you! When did you get back?) she whispered, enjoying the feel of his arms around her again after almost three months on deployment in Warri, in Nigeria, beefing-up the security arrangements for oil operations in the Niger Delta region.
"I got in several hours ago, you were in the OR, so I caught-up on paperwork, did some drugs, picked up some pretty boys...!"
She slapped him again, and pulled him in again for another kiss, uncaring that the other doctors and nurses looked on disapprovingly; she was fed up with this place, and its ridiculous taboos, and restrictions on women, and the smug, 'thank you Allah for making me a man' attitude of every single local male doctor, nurse, orderly, market trader and donkey-drover. She was fed up with being marginalised and talked-down to by male nurses and orderlies; she was the cardio-thoracic surgeon, the one actually doing the life-saving here, but she still had to ask permission of the male nurse in the OR to remove her hijab to put on a scrub-hat, and that had finally driven her to think "What the fuck, I don't need this medieval shit, I want to go home; I'm done!" hence her indifference to the stares and glares of the locals when she kissed her husband in public.
"Drugs? I don't believe you for one second. Pretty boys, now...!" she grinned, and Dylan grinned back, gently pinching her leg as he nibbled her neck.
"Come on Lou, I've been gone three months, even the riggers were starting to look cute, I want to play!" he whispered in her ear, making her flush and smile happily; he may have been a seasoned anti-terrorism 'consultant', and an ex-combat soldier, one of the SAS elite, but she was so glad he was also, at heart, a horny teenager with an endlessly inventive mind and absolutely no inhibitions...
Taking her hand, he led her away, dismissing the frowns and disapproving looks with a challenging, "fuck you" grin as he openly adjusted his crotch a la Michael Jackson, making the women gasp in outrage and hurriedly look away. They took the lift down to the lower parking garage, where Dylan had parked his company-issue armoured Toyota Land-Cruiser, and opened the door to let her climb in.
As he handed her in, he changed his mind and pulled her back out and held her up, kissing her as hard as he dared, his arms tightly locked around her waist. Louise hung there kissing him for a second or two, alternating between need for the taste of her man, and laughing and giggling at her predicament, suspended in mid-air while he kissed her crazily.
While they were thus engaged, there was a sudden shout in Arabic, and a security guard appeared, obviously offended and angry at this public display of affection in a deserted parking garage. Dylan winked at Louise and put her down, and turned to face the skinny man weighed down with the enormous pistol strapped to his leg, amusedly assessing the angry look and wondering how best to brush him off.
The guard started shouting about 'Western sluts' in Arabic, clearly furious that Dylan and Louise had indulged in public affection, a heinous crime in local eyes, while Dylan stood with his arms folded, a small, sardonic smile playing around his lips.
The little man stopped to take a breath, and Dylan smiled as insultingly as he could and said softly "Have you finished? Good, now piss off!" in Arabic.
The man goggled, his face darkening as started to tug his pistol out of the holster. It was a Browning Hi-Power, and judging by the state of it, it was from the 1940's or 50's, which was probably the last time it had been given a thorough clean. It looked huge in his small hand, and he struggled to tug the 2lb pistol out. Dylan grinned and stepped closer, grabbing his hand and yanking the pistol away from him, slapping him across the face and sending him sprawling on the ground as he lifted the pistol.
Dylan grinned mirthlessly, and leaned down to speak to him.
"You were going to shoot me for telling you to go away? That was foolish, and now I have your gun. You should pray to Allah and unburden yourself of your sins now before I send you to join him!" he told him in Arabic, watching his expression as the rage and shame at being slapped in front of a woman changed to terror as he realised his predicament.
Dylan slipped the magazine out of the butt, and worked the slide to eject any live rounds that may have been in the breech. One round sprang out and tinkled on the concrete. Dylan looked at him in astonishment.
"You walk around with a live round in the breech and the safety off? Perhaps if it had gone off and blown your balls off it would have taught you a valuable lesson! How will you explain to your prophet that you mutilated yourself through your own stupidity, and how will you pleasure your 72 houri's in Paradise when you arrive there with no dick?"