Every time you make a move

Love Dares You-Pt.1

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, 9th January 1987

"So, when're you meeting this donor person Mo?" Mr Brannigan asked his daughter in his strong Belfast accent.

"Some time later in the morning" Monica answered her aged father, sat on the sofa against one of the walls of the room with a cup of tea in her hand and a bath towel slunk around her neck brace on her shoulders to catch her dripping wet, dark hair.

Her parents both sat either side of their grandson Johnny's hospital bed as he lay in a coma, both jet-lagged and donning their long, dark winter coats to hide their thin-layered brightly-coloured summer clothes underneath.

"Do you know who it is yet?" her father then asked.

"Not a thing." Monica replied, taking a sip from the plain porcelain cup and feeling the lukewarm beverage on her tastebuds and trickling down her throat.

"Then why do you want to blindly meet a total stranger? That's what I don't understand" Patsy Brannigan shook her head to herself, stiff upper lip.

"Didn't you both bring me up to have good manners? It'd be rude not to reach out and say thank you," Monica reasoned, and doubted, "Perhaps I should've bought a card as well."

"Don't beat yourself up about it, Mo. You have enough on your plate at the moment" Mr Brannigan comforted, all the while continuously rubbing his grandson's forehead.

"You should be careful," Patsy apprehensively warned, "it might be someone expecting a cash reward or some kind of payment"

"Well, I have no money so no harm done" Monica exaggerated, shrugging.

"You can tell the poor wee lad had a really bad tumble..." Mr Brannigan pitifully crooned as he studied Johnny's visible cuts, wounds and yellowing bruises here and there on his face and torso, then to the boy's unruly bangs sticking out of the bandages wrapped around his head, "If he stays asleep as long as Rip Van Winkle then he'll definitely need a haircut when he wakes up!"

"Aye, Johnny's hair has always been a bit too unruly for my linking anyway," his wife added critically, "You should cut it shorter in case there's nits at that school of theirs!"

"Millions of little boys have their hair cut like Johnny's, mum!" Monica uttered with a slight eye roll.

"She's right, hon. Get with the times!" Mrs Brannigan agreed.

"Anyway I don't know if I'll be sending the twins back to Headfort yet, or ever," their daughter rambled on, "Even then, that school is less likely to have nits than a public school"

Patsy feared disdainfully, "If you keep changing their schools then they'll both be lost causes... they'll never get to know who they are!"

Mr Brannigan jumped in before mother and daughter could start bickering, "I take it Roshni's staying with Paula?"

Monica nodded silently.

Patsy shuffled uncomfortably in her seat, "Well, if that punk was open enough to voice her concerns about your day-drinking to me, then I suppose I can trust her to mind my granddaughter."

"Paula isn't a punk, mam. She's just... nonconforming."

"Same difference! I'm surprised she even got a job in London when she dresses like those hooligans and lesbians you see around town nowadays!" Her mother shuddered slightly.

Monica sighed, "Well funnily enough she is a lesbian but that has nothing to do with how she does her hair or-"

Mr and Mrs Brannigan gasped in surprise.