Sorry for taking forever to update, but I was working on my own novel. So yeah, the LONG AWAITED PART WHERE THINGS GET INTERESTING!

Artemis was walking along the second story floor. He paused at the window, looking out at the courtyard. It really was a nice place, with ivy covered walls, a swirling footpath and open classrooms to either side. For a moment, Artemis was tempted to forgo his work and go down there to hang out with his friends. Of course, Artemis would probably have said 'Socialize' rather than 'Hang out', but that's beside the point. He spotted their little gang on one of the grassy areas, chatting and joking. He watched them for a while, laughing quietly when Collin accidentally splashed Jay with a water bottle, and she chased him down, brandishing her own like a flamethrower. Both were thoroughly drenched by the time they stopped. I suppose work before play is not always the proper way to function, Artemis thought, his mind made up to take a day off for once.

"Hey, Fowl," said a rough voice behind him. Artemis turned only to see a metal baseball bat swinging toward his head. And then darkness and pain.

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"No, I honestly like 'The Sister Act'," Said Jay to an astonished David.

CRASH! Artemis flew through the window, shocking everyone. He landed with a loud crunch on the hard ground.

"Oh my GOD!" someone yelled.

"Holy sh-!"

"Aw, Fu-"

"Oh God, Artemis," gasped Jay. She hurried through the crowd, unaware of even getting up from the bench.

And she remembered.

A younger Jay was standing on the sidewalk next to her father.

"Daddy, where we goin?" she asked. He laughed quietly, smiling down at her.

"It wouldn't be a surprise if I told you, would it?" she scowled, and her father chuckled.

"That's my girl," He stroked her short blonde hair, gazing at the 'don't walk' sign on the other side of the road. The heavy traffic roared all around them.

"LOOK OUT!" cried a voice. They turned, and saw a biker desperately pumping the brake on his bicycle, but to no avail. He crashed into Mr. Barry, sending him into the traffic, where he then stumbled and was hit by an oncoming Chevy. The Chevy's driver swirved violently, trying to avoid Jay's father, but to no avail. The vehicle hit the man with tremendous force, sending him flying. He landed on his back with a hard, solid THUMP.

"DADDY!" screamed Jay, running for her father. She didn't care what had happened to the biker, she didn't care what happened to the Chevy, and she didn't care about the cars braking and the shouts following her. All that mattered was her father lying there on the side of the road like a dead thing. She felt that her legs wouldn't move, like she was standing knee-deep in a giant bowl of molasses.

When she reached her father, there was a small group around him, their cell phones out and 911 on the line.

"Let me trough!" she shrieked. "Dad! Let me trough!" no one paid much notice to this small child screaming her head off. Finally, in desperation, she started swearing at the top of her voice, trying to remember all the bad things her grandfather had ever said. You couldn't blame the child – she was just trying to get attention.

"Let me through you… you Bastards!" People turned and stared. Did that little kid just say…? "You heard me, you bunch of no good mother F _ _ _ing Bitches!" the crowd was tittering. She pushed her way through the people to her father. "Daddy," she whispered. He was covered in blood and white as a sheet. Was he dead?

When the ambulance arrived, she was pale and frozen in shock.

Dimly, she heard a woman say;

"I think that girl is his daughter. Poor thing had to scream at us to get our attention. Started swearing like a sailor too, goodness knows. I think she's in shock." Jay's world swirled. Why where those men in white uniforms trying to load her father up into a car? She cried and tried to hold on to her father, desperate fingers latching onto his hand. Gentle arms lifted her away and carried her to the front of the car.

"Lemme go! Lemme go! I want my daddy!" she screamed. The person said something, but she didn't hear. "No! No! Get away! Get away!" she struggled and bit, kicked and punched, and finally the person said,

"Here, love. Have a drink," he held out a blue bottle, and Jay paused in her desperate bid for freedom. All the crying and screaming had made her quite thirsty. And she was only seven, after all. No seven-year-old would notice the cloudiness to the water. She grabbed the bottle and gulped it down, leaving only one third left. Suddenly she felt sleepy. She couldn't go on, she was just too tired. She drifted off uneasily as the paramedic got in the car and put her on his lap. He breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness for sedatives.

Jay darted through the crowd, that awful memory in her head. No, not him. I won't let him! But what could she do? She didn't know what to do in situations like this. She had refused to take the first-aid courses at school. The fact was she was afraid of doctors. But worse than doctors, she was absolutely terrified of wounded people, much to her shame. And there was Artemis, her friend, lying there, just like her father. She almost froze when she thought of that. But she forced herself to go on. She might be able to help… but she doubted it.

When she had finally pushed her way through the crowd of boys and saw Artemis, she almost fainted. Jay stumbled to his side, her eyes wide and afraid.

"Move," grunted a voice. She nodded mutely. Collin gently nudged her aside and quickly started examining Artemis. The crowd of watching students was absolutely silent.

Jay was staring down at the boy's body. He looked so small and hurt… and so like her father had. Jay remembered that day perfectly. It was almost exactly the same as now. Only, something was missing. She patted down her pockets, looking for her cell phone. It wasn't there. She remembered that she had left it in her purse.

"Did someone call 911?" she asked in a higher voice than usual. There was a muttering from the gathered boys.

"No? Then snap to it, people!" she shouted at them. There was a flurry of cell phones.

Collin was working quickly, trying to help as much as he could. Jay suddenly remembered that he wanted to be a doctor.

"Jay," he said, glancing up at her. "What's his pulse?" She stared dumbly.

"Pulse?"

"In the neck?" he said helpfully. Oh. She thought. Pulse. Neck. Right.

She gently put her fingers to Artemis's jugular vein. She could feel it pulsing slowly under her fingertips.

"It's slow, and uneven," she said after a minute.

"Shoot," muttered Collin. He started to pump Artemis's chest, trying to keep an even beat. Jay kept her hand resting lightly on the boy's neck. So she could check the pulse, she told herself, nothing else. But in reality, she found it comforting to feel the warm skin under her fingers.

"It's stronger now," she said after a minute.

"Right," said Collin. "Now for the shrapnel," he muttered, looking down at the glass cutting deep into Artemis's chest and arms. Jay's face went pale and then a slight shade of green. She wanted to look away, but was terrified to. It was like a scary movie, where you are so afraid of the pictures on the screen, you can't help but watch with awful fascination. She felt like she couldn't move, but when Collin asked her to do something – something small normally, like checking his pulse again or making sure that his arm didn't move – she would perform the task with dignity enough.

Never the less, she was relieved when the paramedics got there. A woman started talking rapidly to Collin while two men loaded Artemis onto a stretcher.

"Kid, can you come with us? We need to get this boy to the hospital stat. You could tell us what you did along the way," the paramedic talking to Collin said. Collin shifted uneasily from foot to foot. He didn't like small spaces.

"Err…" he mumbled. "Jay helped. She could tell you," The woman's eyes turned to Jay, her being the only girl around.

"Well, hun? We need someone who saw the damage up close and what was done. Think you can manage that?" Jay gulped. The smell of blood had made her very nearly ill out in the open air… what it would do to her trapped in a tin can on wheels…

Deal with it, she told herself sternly. You know that you have to. Jay nodded, afraid she would throw up if she opened her mouth.

"Okay hun, into the back," said the woman stiffly.

The ambulance ride was long and terrifying for Jay, but nothing compared to when Mr. and Mrs. Fowl showed up a few hours later, having driven from Dublin.

"Where's my baby?!" cried Mrs. Fowl once one of the nurses greeted them in the front lobby. "Where's my Artemis?!" The very nervous nurse told her that, unfortunately, he was in surgery at the moment. The poor woman went into hysterics, sobbing onto her husband's shoulder. The nurse suggested – if it would comfort the Mrs. that is – that they might speak to an eye witness? Mr. Fowl agreed that, yes, he would quite like to know a thing or two about what happened.

They found Jay, very pale and very nervous, sitting in a corner of the waiting room. The nurse explained to her who Mr. and Mrs. Fowl were, and then left, quite relieved.

"Er…" Jay didn't quite know what to say. She felt faint, and scared, and was having awful flashbacks of hospitals and surgery rooms.

"So," Said Mr. Fowl. "What happened to our son?" Jay took a deep breath and explained as best she could.

"He fell out a second story window… I don't see how, it was shut after all. But… yes, he fell, and landed on the pavement. A boy called Collin Grimes and me, we gave him first aid. Well, actually, it was all Collin, I just measured Artemis's pulse and all… An' then I got on the ambulance with him." She gave a half hearted shrug. Mr. Fowl nodded silently and said he quite understood. Then he asked the question Jay had been dreading.

"How… bad was it?" Mrs. Fowl's sobs seemed to get louder.

Jay fiddled nervously with her necklace. "I… Well, it's just… I'm not…" she sighed, frustrated. "He's kinda messed up. I couldn't tell if it was really serious or not, seeing as I'm not a nurse and they didn't tell me anything." She felt the man's eyes boring into her, and had to look away.

You had to feel sorry for all three of them.

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Artemis opened his bleary eyes. Where was he? He tried to sit up, but pain shot through his body. His mother and father were sitting next to him, talking quietly.

"Mother? Father?" Artemis moaned. He felt awful. His brain was fuzzy too, which annoyed him. I must be on some form of medication, he thought. Valium or morphine, most likely.

Arty?" his mother breathed. "Arty, are you awake?"

"Yes. Where am I?" how clichéd. Why did he have to say something like that? It sounded like it came from a bad chick-flick.

"You're at the hospital, son," Said his father. "You… uh… fell out a window."

"Oh." Artemis tried to remember falling… it seemed to have something to do with baseball, but he couldn't quite remember…

"I don't remember."

"You wouldn't," said his mother. "You've been out for almost two weeks!" and then she started to cry. Sobs wracked her body as she tried to restrain her emotions.

"Mother, mother, I'm fine right now," Artemis said comfortingly. "I am awake now, and that's all that counts."

"But you were asleep for so long…" his mother sobbed, "My little Arty," Angeline completely broke down, wailing into her husband's shoulder.

"You see, Artemis," said his father, talking over Angeline's crying,

"We weren't sure if… if you had sustained sufficient spinal damage when you fell to… paralyze you." Artemis winced. One of the things he admired (and sometimes disliked) about his father was his no-nonsense attitude.

"Oh." Why was he so illiterate today?

"But it's not a problem," said his father quickly. "The kids who took care of you until the ambulance came did a fantastic job."

"Really? I did not know that any of the others had medical training."

"Apparently, they do. A boy named Connor, or Collin or something did most of the first aid stuff, but the one girl helped out. She looked white as a sheet, completely terrified, but she rode to the hospital with you all the same." His mother looked up, her eyes red. However, there was a small smile playing around her lips.

"Is she your girlfriend, Arty?" Artemis was shocked. Jay? What…?

"No! I mean, no mother. She's just a friend." His father raised an eyebrow.

"Then why did she get on the ambulance and riding to the hospital with you? It was obvious she didn't like blood." That was kind of her, but completely unnecessary. However, now the question is, why?

Artemis said nothing.

"And when she comes to town to work on Sundays and Tuesdays, she makes a point to drop in and see how you are doing," said his father.

"Not to mention," His mother's eyes glittered, "The boys back at the school said she practically fainted when she saw what had happened to you, she was so worried."

For a second, in his mind's eye, Artemis could almost see Jay bending over him, her eyes large and her face pale. He imagined her look of fear and worry that was on her features. For a moment, his fog-addled brain changed the scene to where Jay was crying over his lifeless body. The image made him mentally blush. He wondered if she actually had been so worried about him. It was good to imagine she had been. But… stop it, you fool! He told himself. You are being stupid about this whole matter. She is probably afraid of blood, nothing more.

"AHH!" gasped Artemis, pain shooting through him as he tried to sit up again. He slowly lost consciousness, his parents bending worriedly over him.

Heheheheh. Didn't see THAT one comin' now did ja? Yes, Arty survives, and yes, Jay puked her guts out all night. I wonder which one was the worst off?

So pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease review, even if you think it's crap.