The left side of my face is numb. It's numb and it's hot. Have I been hit? Can't have been…
I take a moment to get to my feet. I'd swear I can hear someone yelling in the distance. It's like hearing someone talking through water. There are odd bright patches in my vision and they get kinda shaky on the far left but I can see fine.
I take a few steps towards where Bonnie's crouching. She seems bothered by something. I wonder what it could be. She hasn't seemed this concerned since I was a millionaire. I find this horribly funny for some reason, I crack my lips into a grin and something seems wrong. The world seems a little off centre at the moment. My left knee hits something.
I stumble.
I wonder what I walked into. How did it get there. It wasn't there when I looked. Maybe it's a new plot from Drakken involving cunningly concealed rising obstacles in the ground. Something inside me says that's ridiculous. I can't shake the feeling that I'm right though.
One of the bright patches seemed to be hot against my nose for a second.
I snort in disbelief and taste something like salty rubber.
My shoulder hits another one of the magical obstacles and I fall over. I swear there was nothing there.
I get a look at Bonnie looking terrified. She's so beautiful and she's looking down at me, moving her mouth with no sound coming out. Those raggedy dreadlocks flail as she bends down to touch my neck. I ask what she's doing. There's tears in those wonderful dark eyes. For a moment, I'm in love…
It's cold. Correction, the back's cold. I think I'm lying down, but my eyes won't open. I can't feel the left side of my face. At least it isn't cold, it isn't hurting and it isn't wet. There's something stuck on the right side. I'm sure. Can't imagine what. Maybe I fell asleep under a book or something.
Last thing I remember. Falling in love.
Flashes.
Blood. That salty taste was my blood!
Aww man, that was an air-shell.
Maybe I was captured. If that's true, I gotta know. My hand flies up to the right of my face. I do that thing where you roll your eyes as you grapple with something you can't see. There's something fabric stuck on one side of my head. I twitch a little. Oh snap! I've been captured! The thing's stapled to my head!
I can hear something. People moving. I try to judge distance. Hard shoes on hard floors, women's shoes. Oh God, please don't be Shego. Last time, she took great joy in sticking those needle stilettos into that bullet hole in my shoulder.
Eight feet, six, four, she's at the bedside.
"Hello Ronnie," a delicate voice purrs down to me, "you needn't try to escape, it's me, Anne."
Oh thank you God!
What happened? I try to croak but nothing comes out. Has she wired half of my jaw shut?
"Don't worry, Ronald, Kim'll be here soon. She'll sit with you. You lost an eye and took some damage to your ear on the left. Wade's doing what he can about the ear and I'm sure James will be able to get a new eye for you."
Oh heavens, I'm being tended by an angel with delusions. Kim's been dead more than six years, James, the bastard, left almost four years ago. I never would've imagined saying this but I want Bonnie. I don't think this experience could get any worse.
"Hey Ron."
I wake with a start. I'm lying on my back on a cold steel slab in what used to be a morgue under the county jail.
Kim's sat on a stool a few feet away looking at me. The lighting's poor and I feel horribly vulnerable lying here in a
surgical gown. If she sat a few feet further towards my ankles, she could see up it.
That said, she's wearing that little black dress from Middleton days and no tights. Her legs are crossed pointing at me. What the hell is going on? That's not normal of her and it must be cold down here, even with that cardigan. My backside begins to stick to the bench to prove a point.
"How you feeling? Mum said that that new eye dad gave you is working fine. Does it still hurt?" she asked tenderly, reaching out to touch my face. Something about this didn't seem right. She must've been at least four feet from my head.
Her touch is like silk and it has a warmth and affection that sends a shiver down my spine. The number of times I've wished for her to touch me with this much tenderness…
"Kim, you're here?" I mutter blindly. I can talk?
She laughs, "of course I am silly, I'll always be with you. We're getting married, remember?"
I reach up and put my hand onto hers, resting on my cheek. There's no bandage under it. The wind stirs her hair, at first gently and then with increasing force. It begins to whip around her face. Frantic motion begins as she starts to plummet horizontally away from me, grappler in hand. Determination, fear, sadness, gone.
There's a hand in mine. It's a wonderful mash of contradictions. It's soft and gentle, yet trimmed with weapon calluses and those from what feel like rock-climbing. Kim had hands like that but these are more delicate, less worldly. They don't seem to have that invisible strength. Instead, I can feel palpable concern in them.
"Bonnie?" I manage. Well, I think I managed to get the word out. What I was trying to say and what actually came out may have been completely different. I here a shallow grunt and feel a weight shift on the bed beside me. They found me a bed?
I hear a little stirring noise and then what feels like maybe she had her head rested on the bed beside my chest. She must've moved.
"Bonnie?" I try again, feeling like I'm pushing words out through a brush, "Anne? Kim?"
"Kinda sweet that you ask for me before Miss Perfect, Stoppable," replied a soft voice, almost dripping with annoyance. I tried to smile but I felt a sharp whack on my chest, "why couldn't you stay in cover? Why, Ron? Why did you do that to me?"
"Water…" I gasp, feeling that it was appropriate, somehow. Every coma guy asks for water.
Her soft fingers dance over my lips as she dabbed them with water. Then I feel what I hope is a straw being guided between my lips. I do my best to draw enough into my mouth to purge some of the foulness. After a few minutes of gentle sipping and luxuriating under her watchful hands and her not hitting me, I feel able to talk.
"How long have I been out?"
"Six days…it seemed touch and go for a while. They had a dozen of the rats working on you for the best part of three days."
"The rats?"
"Yeah, they were doing something like rebuilding your face. I think they did something to your ear, too."
"Great. More proof that my pet is smarter than me," I try to smile but I'm not sure if it worked. I didn't feel any response on the left. I pause for a moment because something strikes me; "what happened to me anyway?"
"You took an airburst rocked close to your head, got confused, stumbled into the open and fell over. It's a good thing Jim and Tim got there at that moment or those Bonnies would have overrun us."
I smile at the sound of her using her own name to refer to the syntho-hunters.
"Did you run out of cover to tend to me? I would have sworn…"
"Why would I do that, Stoppable? You're a dork!" she gasped with what I assume is mock disgust. We have such a healthy relationship.
"Sorry to interrupt you guys during you time," rumbled a voice into the room suddenly, damn Wade, I didn't know you could be quiet, "but I've got some news." At his Bonnie gives out a wonderful sigh and I struggle not to laugh.
"What is it, Poindexter?" her voice oozing irritation and spite.
"After much lying and editing of photographs, I've managed to secure a replacement for Ron's eye." This is news to me…
"Replacement?" I force out with a notable lack of vocal finesse. I can't think of anyone in all the time that Kim and I were wandering the world who could grow body-parts. Well, unless you count clonehappy Drakken. And thinking about it, the only time he cloned me since the whole kim-style incident was during the early days of the rebellion before I started looking beaten up. I remember holding his head under about three feet of soda until he stopped thrashing, though that means that his eyes are so much green go. Well, so much interesting flavour at the self fill in Upperton Smarty mart but that's another thing.
"Erm…well, yeah, I found a replacement by calling in a favour with some lying and creativity."
"Spill Wade, I want to know what you're going to nail into my head."
"Well, here's the thing. The only scientist I could find who manufactures synthetic human parts was one of those who departed for the moon during the great exodus four years ago. So that means I had to go through James."
"You begged James Possible and he agreed to help me? Are you kidding?"
"That's the thing, well, I lied. I said that Anna lost her eye to a troubled patient and lied so that I gave over your orbit measurements rather than hers. Unfortunately, I couldn't exactly ask for a brown eye to match yours, I had to ask of one that would match Anne's baby blues."
"So I'm going to look like David Bowie? A booyah!" It was at that moment that I realised that I would always be able to see the bright side, the Ronshine. No matter that I have a face that was a mass of scars, a tattoo I didn't want, a concealed pouch where my appendix used to be and now mismatched eyes, there's still always a Ron-ver lining.
"Yeah. Well, it's going to take some getting used to, though I managed to convince him that including her mild farsightedness wasn't going to be necessary. You're going to be going blind for a while, I'm afraid." I get the feeling that I should have been expecting to be seeing in ten minutes but that never really occurred to me. As it was, I wasn't in much of a position to notice the passage of time, I never went anywhere and Anna was as erratic as ever when it came to visiting me.
