"Ruth, you're needed here. I need you here."
"But Dimitri, I know this man."
"And do you remember what happened last time? I haven't time for this, Ruth."
"But I spent time with him. I can talk to him. He knows me, and he'll listen to me."
Dimitri sighs heavily. "Okay, but stay low, and keep out of the way." All Dimitri can think about as he leaves the Grid with Ruth in tow is how Harry will chew him out about this when he finds out. Ruth is not and never has been a field spook, and bad things happen to her whenever she ventures into the field. Ruth is a magnet for mayhem, a draw-card for disaster.
Ruth stays close while he defuses the bomb in the basement of the block of flats. It is a basic unit, only a few steps up from schoolboy bombs, timed to detonate at 7.30 pm, when most residents will be sitting down to watch Eastenders. Ruth is on the phone to Keith Deery, himself living in 2E. It was Keith who had contacted Ruth and called it in.
"He's in a bit of a state, Dimitri. I need to see him and talk to him. He just needs to see a friendly face."
"Then I'm coming with you. Just let me call the bomb squad. They'll love this one."
Several minutes later, Dimitri and Ruth stand outside Deery's flat on the second floor. Dimitri has a bad feeling about this, an uncomfortable disturbance in his gut. He'd had the same feeling the day Lucas North took Ruth, the same day Lucas took a dive off the Enver Tower to his death. Something wasn't right, and he felt it was to do with Keith Deery, poor, sad, looney tunes Keith Deery.
"Perhaps we should call Social Services, Ruth."
"You know what will happen if we do. They'll lock him away, and pump him full of drugs ... like they did last time."
"That might be the best thing for him."
"No. I won't have it."
It is in that moment that Dimitri understands why it is Harry Pearce loves this woman. It is her fire and passion, her steely determination, and her boundless compassion which sets her apart from other people. That is an intoxicating combination in a woman, and Harry has been drunk on it for a long time. In a woman like Ruth, her obstinacy borders on being sexy. Steady on, Dimi, he tells himself. This is the boss's lady, and you've just thought of her as sexy!
"Let me go in first, Ruth."
"No, Dimitri, he has a gun. If he sees you, he'll shoot you."
"And what if he shoots you?"
"He won't. He knows me."
And Ruth knocked gently on the door, calling out to Deery. "I'm coming in, Keith. It's me – Ruth." She opens the door slowly to find Deery standing in the middle of his living room, almost every surface covered with pages from newspapers – Deery's source of `information' – and in his hand is a pistol. Oh, dear, she thinks, before she hears a thwack and she is knocked down by a thud against her shoulder. She falls to the floor, her cheek connecting with the corner of a low table, and just before she loses consciousness, she has a very clear thought …... that she has just been shot in the same shoulder that Tom Quinn had shot Harry.
Ignoring the vibrating of his phone in his coat pocket, Harry tries to bring his mind back to the business at hand, the JIC meeting, which has already been in session for almost four hours, with only two brief comfort breaks. He contemplates the hell the smokers amongst them must go through every time a meeting is called. Only ten minutes later, lunch is announced, so Harry quickly leaves the room before he can be collared by Philip Churchett from GCHQ, no doubt lauding another of his prodigies. Churchett can have no idea how tight Section D's budget is, or he wouldn't be trying to foist another one of his bright young things on to him. He heads straight for the men's room, partly because his bladder is about to burst, but also to check who it is has been trying to ring him for the past 30 minutes. After relieving himself, he washes his hands, dries them under an interminably slow drier, and then checks his phone. There are eight unanswered calls from Dimitri. He rings Dimitri, and what his officer tells him has him racing out of the men's room, and down the corridor to the stairs, since the lifts would be too slow.
Harry is in a taxi on his way to the hospital when he decides to again ring Dimitri. He needs details, and he'd been too shocked and upset when last they'd spoken. He tells Dimitri in no uncertain terms that he thinks of him having taken Ruth into the field.
"She's an analyst, Dimitri," Harry found himself shouting into the phone. "She analyses. At a desk."
"But she insisted on coming."
"Then you should have insisted she stay on the Grid," he'd snapped.
"How successful have you ever been at making Ruth do something she doesn't want to?" As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Dimitri knew he had gone too far. He expected at the very least a thorough bollocking, and at worst a termination of his employment. Neither eventuate. Dimitri hears his boss sigh heavily into the phone, as Harry allows his shoulders to sag as he sits back against the upholstery.
"Yes, I know what you mean. I suppose she insisted on going into Deery's flat first."
"Yes, she did."
"That's just like her," he says quietly. "I'm sorry I yelled at you. I know Ruth can be …... difficult to budge when she sets her mind on something. It's one of the many qualities which make her so good at her job."
"Perhaps you need to tell her that, Harry. Then she won't feel the need to prove herself to you."
Harry stares at his phone. After having made such a bold statement, Dimitri has hung up on him. Cheeky bugger. Cheeky. Damned. Bugger.
By the time Harry arrived at the hospital, Ruth was out of surgery, and Dimitri was still sitting in the corridor outside her room. He stood as Harry approached, worry etched into the older man's face. Secretly, Dimitri envied Harry, with his clear and confident love for this woman. He has only known Harry for a little over a year, but the light of his love for Ruth seemed never to have dimmed, even for a moment. He hopes for himself one day to have such sure feelings for a woman, when he himself has difficulty maintaining interest in any one woman for more than a day or two.
"Now, where is she?" Harry said, looking around them to the doorways off the corridor, all of which were closed.
Dimitri pointed to the room behind his head, and Harry stepped to the window, through which he could see Ruth. She looked so small in the bed with all the machines and wires and drips around her. He felt suddenly so powerless to help her, to make things better, to fix this.
"Sir Harry Pearce?" a man's voice said from behind him.
"Yes." Harry turned to see a doctor in a white coat, complete with stethoscope hanging around his neck. "Dimitri, you may as well go," he said to his officer. "I'll stay here with Ruth, and …... thank you."
Dimitri stood, nodded to Harry, and began to lift his hand towards the older man, and then he dropped it.
"We'll cover for you, Harry," he said. "You stay with Ruth."
And then he left. The doctor had been standing by and waiting until he had Harry's full attention.
"Sir Harry, I'm Rod Melis, and I'm Ms Evershed's treating doctor," the doctor said, and Harry turned back to face him. "She has has you down as her next of kin. I'm assuming you're her partner, is that right?" Rod Melis had already noticed the tension in this man's body, and the concern in his face, and experience told him that this man was much more than a friend.
"Yes, I'm her partner," Harry replied, smiling inside himself at the open acknowledgement of that which was not yet open to public knowledge.
Strangely, neither he nor Ruth had yet to define what they are to one another. While he was suspended after he gave away Albany, he and Ruth had found ways to meet in private. It was risky, but when they'd managed to meet once without being caught, they simply continued. She'd bring him a meal late at night, or they'd exchange letters and notes in the park where he was walking Scarlet. On maybe a dozen occasions, she'd stayed at his house overnight, and they'd sat up all night on his sofa, talking and kissing, and laughing about the IA minders outside his house. Often they'd fallen asleep, stretched out on the sofa, their arms encircling the other. He'd had to exercise considerable self-restraint to not give in to the urge to take her to bed, but together they had agreed it would be better to wait until their lives had settled, and the enquiry was over before taking that step, despite one or two heavy sessions on the sofa, during which their commitment to waiting was tested. They had yet to consummate their relationship, but they considered themselves a couple, as did everyone else who knew them well.
"How is she?" Harry continued.
"She's lucky. The bullet missed anything vital, like lungs or heart, or arteries. She had internal bleeding which we eventually managed to staunch, and she has muscle damage, but we expect her to make a full recovery. We're waiting for her to wake up now, so if you'd like to sit with her ….."
"I'd like that very much."
The doctor followed Harry into the room.
"You can bring one of those chairs closer to the bed if you like," he said.
"Can I touch her?" Harry asked.
"Yes, of course. It would help if you held her hand, and even talked to her and stroked her cheek. Touch from loved ones is important. Sometimes patients need a little help in finding their way back to consciousness."
"How long before she wakes up?"
"Anything from another half hour to a day, perhaps even longer. Her body has been severely traumatised by what happened to her, so her brain may decide to give her a bit of time before she has to deal with the world again."
Rod Melis then left the room, and Harry was alone with the woman he loved. For the first time since he'd arrived, he looked at her closely. Her skin was pale, and there was a bruise on her right cheek bone which spread to the skin under her right eye, no doubt from when she fell. Dimitri had told him that after she'd been shot, she fell against the corner of a table. Under her gown her wound was heavily bandaged. He took her hand in both of his, and rubbed his thumb along her knuckles and her fingers, something he had done many times while he was on suspension. He leaned towards her, and placed a kiss on her lips. It felt quite odd to have her lips not responding to his. He imagined her lips moving under his, willing her to feel him, to know it is he, sitting beside her hospital bed, waiting for her to wake up. The sheer terror and panic which had begun to overwhelm him when he'd first spoken to Dimitri on the phone was slowly being replaced by love, and the will that she recover quickly and fully, and soon. He was suddenly aware that his love for her will heal her, while any fear he harbours for her safety could very well be damaging.
Of one thing he is absolutely certain …... he needs her, and she needs him.