After this next song, we will be joined by Police Commissioner Charlie Adamson and I will be asking the hard questions of what exactly are the police doing to keep us all safe from criminals like these, and where has society gone so wrong. Join me after this break.

Joni Mitch.e.l.l came on singing "Big Yellow Taxi" so I pulled out my earbuds and turned to Chan. He had his own earbuds in and was looking at me with a big grin on his face. I looked at his screen and saw he was streaming 95.2 FM as well. He must've seen it on my computer and wondered what I was listening so intently to.

"Effin' A! Tell me that s.h.i.t they were talking about on the radio wasn't you? You took on three attackers? Did you turn them to pulp? What are you? Jackie f.u.c.king Chan?"

I laughed and shrugged it off. "You're the Chan. I did s.h.i.t-all, anyway. I just pushed a couple of them over. You should've seen it, Chan. This lady comes out of nowhere and starts bashing one of the guys on the ground with her handbag. I look up and see this big tough guy cowering from a lady's giant handbag."

Chan laughed and shook his head at me. "So you saved a guy's life?"

"Nah. Jay was just getting roughed up a little. I'm sure they didn't want to kill him. I probably just saved him from broken ribs and more bruises."

"Still, you're a f.u.c.king hero. My brother is gay and I hope that if ever he's in trouble someone like you will help him."

"Your brother's gay?" Huh. Who'd've thunk? And here I was thinking Chan would never speak to me again if I came out of the closet.

"Yup. He told us all five years ago and I still can't believe it. My brother is a screaming, walking, temple of testosterone. Yet he prefers other guys. I don't get it, but I'm not complaining. More ladies for me and you, huh?"

At midday I told Chan I was taking a long lunch to go and visit Jay in the hospital. The crutches were slow going and I lined up with the rest of the lunch crowd to catch the free bus to the hospital. My arms and wrists were aching by the time I reached Jay's room, and the skin of my armpits chafed. I stood just outside his door and peered in. There were four beds in the room and Jay was on the far side, near the window. He wasn't alone.

The older woman with him could be none other than his mother. They had the same bone structure and the same shaped mouth. I stood and watched for a moment and saw her tilt her head in the same beguiling manner Jay did. I now knew where Jay got that sweet mannerism.

My attention switched to Jay then, and I winced at the sight of his purpled face. It was swollen and puffy, his eye almost completely shut, the abrasions on his cheek red and angry. But he was sitting up in bed, chattering away to his mother in the same manner as he did with me-his hands waving madly to ill.u.s.trate his point, his speech punctuated with "Oh my Gawd!" every few sentences.

He finally glanced up and saw me lingering in the doorway and his face lit up. "Liam!" The guy in the bed next to him jumped, startled from his sleep, so I sent an apologetic grimace in his direction and stumped over to Jay's bed so he didn't have to shout at me across the room.

"Liam! Oh my Gawd! I can't believe you came! Oh, your poor leg! Move, Mother! Let Liam sit down for G.o.d's sake. Did they hurt you? Did they hit you or anything? Oh my Gawd! I can't believe you raced to my rescue like you did! You are like a white knight and I'm like the princess who was kidnapped by the dragon. You were so brave. But so stupid, too! What the h.e.l.l did you think you were doing? There were three of them! What were you going to do with your leg not working properly? You could've been killed! Did I say thank you? Oh my Gawd, I didn't, did I? I am such a dweeb. Thank you for taking those idiots on. But you were silly to do that! Don't you know...?"

I lowered myself to the chair his mother vacated for me and waited for Jay to take a breath. He rattled on and on, so finally I snagged a hand as it flew by me and I squeezed it. "Jay! Take a breath! Relax!" He stuttered to a halt, breathing hard. "I'm fine, remember? Now, big breath in, that's it. Now out. Now in. And out. Feeling better? Good." He stared at me, his face still beaming, and I couldn't help it. I lurched forward, threw an arm around his shoulders, and hugged him tightly. "You f.u.c.king scared me, though, dude!"

He returned my hug, and his hands clutched my waist. "I scared you? You mean those three a.r.s.eholes trying to beat me up didn't faze you one bit, but I scared you?"

I pulled back and sat back down. "That was just reactionary s.h.i.t. I didn't know what I was doing until those three p.u.s.s.ies were lying on the ground. But you scared the s.h.i.t out of me! I turned you over and you were all covered in blood! I thought you were gonna die on me."

"Was there blood?"

"Are you joking? I think you must've bled a whole liter of the stuff over my shirt."

He leaned back against the pillow, suddenly pale. "Thank goodness I don't remember it, then! If I see too much blood I end up unconscious. Completely irrational, I know. But the sight of it just does something to my stomach. Then I start thinking about how all the warm stuff should be inside your body and not all over the ground or whatever, and then I get all dizzy, and before you know it, I am in la-la land! I tried to give blood once, remember that, Mum? I fainted clean away on the chair and scared my poor mother to death. But you should always give blood, right? Isn't it a way of giving back to society? There are so many people who need blood. I always encourage people I know to give blood. I would love to give blood. I know I am going to faint but I still want to give it. I tried to convince the nurse to just take it from my arm when I was under-it's not like I'm unconscious for any reason other than an irrational fear. So I told her I would faint and she should just chuck the needle in and take the stuff out of me. I can do without it! But she...."

I shared a look with his mother. She just rolled her eyes and shrugged. I guess she was used to it.

"Jay! Breathe!"

"Oh, s.h.i.t. Oh-sorry, Mum. I shouldn't say s.h.i.t in front of you. Oh, s.h.i.t I just said it again, didn't I? Oh my Gawd! Shut me up someone, please! I am a total freakin'.... Hey! Liam! Where are you going?"

I had placed the crutches under my arms and had moved two steps before Jay noticed. I pivoted and looked at him. "Well, I came to see how you are but you seem fine. Now since you won't shut up long enough to introduce me to your mother, I thought I might head back to work?"

Jay huffed and pouted. "You big ole tease! Sit your a.r.s.e back down in that chair. Liam, I'd like you to meet my poor, poor mother who has to put up with my theatrics and is never surprised at what c.r.a.p comes out of my mouth. Her name is Carol and don't call her Mrs. Bell, because she is not Mrs. Bell anymore. She has also dropped the Mrs. Carrigan since lame-a.r.s.e started fathering children with women who he wasn't married to. So you just need to call her Carol, okay?"

I waited through Jay's long-winded introduction before sticking my hand out. "I'm pleased to meet you, Carol."

She smiled at me broadly, ignoring my hand and moving in for a strong hug. "Oh, Liam! I'm so glad to finally meet you. Jamie hasn't stopped talking about you. And then you save him like you did. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I don't know how to thank you enough."

I coughed, patting her back awkwardly, unsure how to take the outpouring of grat.i.tude. Finally she pulled back, sniffling slightly and searching her pockets for a tissue. "I'll just leave you two boys on your own for a while now, okay? I'll just stretch my legs."

She took off, leaving Jay and me alone. "s.h.i.t, Jay. You're a mess." Not the greatest compliment in the world, I admit, but the words came pouring out.

Of course, Jay being Jay totally missed it. His hands went up to his hair, sweeping it back off his face with a grimace. "I know! I don't have anything to put in my hair so it's just flopped around. I am completely mortified! And then there is no amount of foundation that is going to hide...."

But I needed to see the damage done to him and check him all over for injuries. It was an urge inside me I could hardly describe. I needed to see it all so I could process it. It was like a festering anger-a wound that wouldn't begin to heal until it had been taken out, examined, and put away.

I sat on the edge of his bed and grasped his chin. He petered into silence, for once holding still and being completely silent. I examined his face, turning it toward me and lightly running my fingers over the graze on his cheek. He winced.

"Sorry."

I took in the st.i.tches-black knots running in a row an inch below his eye. They had put transparent white tape over them, but the wound was still weeping and sticking wetly to the tape.

"Will it scar?"

He was watching me closely, a look of confusion in his good eye. "For a while. The doctor said it will fade."

I touched his forehead where the bruising started, feathering lightly down his face over the puffiness. "Did they X-ray it? Anything broken?"

"Nah. Nothing broken. My head's too hard to break."

My eyes ran down his body, taking in the flannel pajamas he was wearing and it momentarily distracted me from my task. I c.o.c.ked my eyebrow in query at him. "Smurfs?"

He smoothed the material down self-consciously. "Little blue men with squeaky voices. What's not to love? And of course most of them had to be gay. There was only ever one Smurfette after all."

I ignored him, figuring we could discuss the queerness of Smurfs another day. "So what's the damage under these clothes? I saw them kick you."

"Do you really want to see?"

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to see, Jay."

He pushed down the blankets. "Pull the curtain, then."

I hopped up to draw the privacy curtain that wrapped around the bed, and enclosed the two of us in an intimate, green prison. I watched as Jay pushed the elastic waist of his pants down, revealing his lack of underwear and a frickin' big bruise on his hip. "There was only one kick, I think. He managed to get me on my hipbone, which was lucky. I think he'd have damaged my organs if he'd got my stomach or back. They X-rayed my hip, too. Nothing broken. It's just really sore."

I reached out and laid my hand flat over the bruise, only managing to cover a third of it; it was so big. The bruising was extensive-black and purple in graduated colors. "s.h.i.t, Jay!" I wanted-needed-to see all the damage, and I hardly noticed his gasp of dismay as I pushed the blankets back farther, gently turning his body so I could see it all. I traced the bruise around where it faded over the curve of his b.u.t.tocks. He pa.s.sively lay back against the pillows, allowing me to look and explore.

I hardly noticed his d.i.c.k as I rolled him back over. I took note that it was there, resting in its nest of pubic hair, but I was more interested in the bruise. The purpling extended down his thigh and up over his hip bone, but the rest of his skin was unblemished. Finally I pulled the elastic waist of his pants back up, softly covered him again, then gently pulled up the blankets.

"You were lucky. It could've been so much worse."

He was quiet, studying me from the bed as if I had done something totally out of the ordinary. "Thank you for helping me. I don't know how to say it enough."

I gripped his hand and squeezed lightly. "I'm sorry that they hurt you. I'm sorry that I couldn't have managed to get there two minutes earlier to stop them hurting you."

"It's not your fault, Liam."

"I felt so helpless watching them hurt you."

"I know. But I'll heal and I'll be all better soon. And they won't. They will be charged and hopefully learn their lesson, but they will always have it on their record to remind them."

I studied his hand in mine, turning it over and tracing the white tape on the back where they'd put a drip in him. His fingers were long and slender, topped with delicate fingernails. One nail was broken, and I ran my thumb along its jagged edge. "The cops said it was a gay bashing?"

"Yeah. They were saying something to me about being unnatural and putting my p.r.i.c.k where it shouldn't go. I can't really remember it all. a.r.s.eholes."

"Has it... happened to you before?"

"Not since high school." He tilted his head at me again. "Not everyone is like you, Liam. You have never once made me feel ashamed for the way I am. You just accept me. Why?"

Why? There was so much to answer in that question. Why did I accept his h.o.m.os.e.xuality? Now how could I answer that without opening a large can of worms for myself, not to mention a closet door? Or was he asking why did I accept his oddball personality? Why did I accept that a man could wear makeup and earrings without raising an eyebrow? They were questions I couldn't even answer for myself, let alone explain to another person.

"Why? Because no one else brought me coffee! Do you realize how much better my days have been since I have been able to slip in that extra cup of caffeine?" I grinned at him. "The question should be why someone as brilliant and fabulous as you wants to befriend a boring cripple like me?"

"You are not a cripple! Oh, s.h.i.t! I never did ask, what happened to your leg?"

I shrugged. "I managed to tear the muscles running to you."

"Really? You ran? To me?"

"Don't you remember?"

"No. I just remember them shouting, and then the wall jumped out and hit me and there was a lot of pain. Then I recall you were there, holding me. That's it."

I told Jay my version of the story, starting with coming out of the train station late and making light of the incident. I had him in hysterics over the thug being hit with the handbag and exaggerated the number of police who came to arrest the punks.

"So I'm kneeling at your side and you are bleeding all over me and the paramedics come up and tell me to move so they can get to you. I'm sure they can see these three guys on the ground that I've just taken out and they would've been told it was me who did it all single-handedly, and I turn to them and tell them I can't move because I'm a cripple. It took two guys to pull me up and away because my leg was so bent. I have no idea what the h.e.l.l they thought!"

Jay was giggling like a twit, squirming on the bed, saying, "Stop! Stop making me laugh! It hurts, man!"

"Then we're in the ambulance and you are totally out of it. You kept saying, 'Sorry, Liam! I have to run! Harry needs me! Can you pay the bill?' Then you would try to get up and leave and the poor lady paramedic was trying to calm you down, telling you that Harry was fine and that you shouldn't move, but you were going on and on. Until finally I told you I would pay the bill, and you said, 'Great. Thanks, Liam. You're so good to me. Good boy, Liam. Good boy.' And you finally stayed still."

Jay's legs came up as he curled in a ball, trying to contain his mirth. "Oh, ouch! Liam! Stop making me laugh!"

The horrid green curtain was pulled back and Carol returned, smiling at our obvious amus.e.m.e.nt and clutching a sandwich bought from a machine. "For goodness sake, Jamie. You're supposed to be injured."

I stood and offered her the chair. "Sorry, Carol. My fault. I was telling Jay what he missed by being concussed last night. But you're right. He shouldn't be laughing so hard."

She looked from Jay, who was trying to dab at tears with a tissue, to where I was standing, fighting my grin and trying to look repentant. "Oh! Go on with you two! It's good to hear him laugh again. I was so frightened when I got that call from the police."

"I know. My heart just froze when I saw it was Jay being beat up last night. I never want to have to go through that again." That was the biggest b.l.o.o.d.y understatement of the century. Guinness Book of Records would be contacting me for a quote soon.

Carol came forward and hugged me again briefly. "Oh, love."

I let her embrace me for a moment, drawing comfort from our mutual remembered fear. But it was getting late so I gathered my crutches. "I have to be off, Jay. It takes me ages to get anywhere with these d.a.m.n crutches and I still have to pick up a sandwich for lunch."

Jay looked up, dismayed. "Do you have to go?"

"Here, Liam. Take my sandwich. I'll get another one." Carol shoved the boxed food toward me, taking me by surprise. "It's the least I can do to say thank you."

I clutched the box. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. And you'll have to come to dinner one night. Jamie's sisters will want to meet you and say thank you, too."

"Ahh...."

"No arguments! I'll get Jamie to ring you to find out what night suits."

"Umm, okay."

I looked at Jay; his eye and cheek were still so bruised and swollen. My hand came out and I cupped the uninjured side of his face without thinking about it. I placed a quick peck on his forehead. "I'm glad you're okay, Jay. Send me a text to tell me when you're going back to work so I can get your mocha for you."

"Okay. Bye, Liam."

I stumped away as quickly as I could, unwilling to make eye contact with Jay or Carol. Guys don't kiss guys, do they? Even if it was just a quick kiss on the forehead. And straight guys definitely don't kiss gay guys. s.h.i.t!

Chapter 8.

JAY SENT me several texts over the next couple of days, so I knew he had been released from the hospital, that he hated not being able to put on makeup, and that he couldn't sleep at night. He told me that every time he rolled over he woke up in pain since it was the left side of his face that was injured and his right hip.

My sleep was extremely broken, too, but not because of pain. I began to experience nightmares where I couldn't reach Jay in time to help him. I would try to run to him but I wouldn't be able to move, and when I looked down at myself I was missing both legs. I would wake up, my heart pounding in my chest, terror and fear pumping through my veins. In the darkness I would be confused and panicked to the point I would have to turn the light on and check that my legs were both still there.

Aaron picked me up at dawn on Sunday morning for a spot of fishing out on his boat and I told him all about it. About the fight and the dreams, I mean, not that I thought I was gay and in love with Jay. Aaron cast out his line and settled back on the bench seat of his little dinghy.

"I dunno. Sounds like you are getting flashbacks to your accident. Probably just the ambulance and the adrenaline and everything have brought back memories." Aaron had been in my life for as long as I could remember. Thick as thieves, Mum would say. He knew everything about me-except for the gay thing.

"I guess."

We fished in silence for a while before I approached a subject I had never considered before.

"Aaron? Do you think I... changed after the accident?"

"Changed? What do you mean?" Aaron was a big bruiser of a guy, several inches over six feet with bright-red hair and a sunny, open, freckled face. He played both fast and rough Aussie Rules as well as tough and brutal Rugby, shared my penchant for exotic beers, and cheated on every single girlfriend he'd ever had.

"Like... I don't know. It's just that before the accident I wanted to join the police force and played football and video games and everything. Then after the accident I couldn't play sports and it was ages before I could concentrate enough to play Playstation. I was always in so much pain and discomfort that I couldn't get my hands to coordinate to play with you. It just seems that all that... masculine stuff stopped. I was wondering whether the accident... you know... affected me somehow. Damaged a part of my personality."

"Are you asking whether I think the accident turned you queer?" Aaron was never one to muck around in life. He called a spade a spade and got on with life. He wouldn't do well in politics.