The Chronicles of Medic Bob

Building Bridges (Pt. 1)

Oh, how right they were.....

******

Once out of the tree-house, Dec's walk quickly increased to a run and then into a sprint. Feet pounding the solid trail underneath his shoes, he let his mind - and body - run wild.

All of the horrible thoughts and feelings he'd barely managed to keep locked away in his mind came surging back as he repeated Ant's words inside his head.

"I honestly can't believe you sometimes! How I've put up with this for so long, I'll never know. You know what? I need you to stay away from me for a while, maybe you'll finally start to grow up a bit - God knows you need to!"

He knew that his friend was under an equally massive amount of stress, and that his temper did tend to be shorter than Dec's. But when he did let it go, he often didn't realise exactly what was coming out of his mouth until much later - when the guilt would consume him until he repeatedly apologised.

Normally, Dec would have let such words slide off him - knowing that his friend hadn't really meant them. But this time, this time they'd seemed too real, too much like Ant had really been speaking his mind, and they had struck a particularly raw nerve inside his heart - already vulnerable after the events of the past year.

Don't think about that. Do not think about that.

Shaking his head to clear it of all thought, and ordering his legs to move faster, the jungle passed by in a blur for Dec as he sprinted along the trails.

Of course, he wasn't really paying attention to where  he was running, and soon he was sprinting along a very unfamiliar trail.

But he didn't care; the running was making him feel good, and it was getting him further away from his so-called best friend.

Even that thought made his heart tug uncomfortably in his chest. That wasn't true, and he knew that. They were still friends, still best friends - he wasn't so childish to believe that their friendship was over just because of a silly little argument that neither of them could have prevented.

Growling, he pushed his legs harder and faster.

Eventually, he pulled up at a split in the trail - heart pounding in his chest and chest heaving with the effort of drawing air into his lungs.

But, oh it felt good.

That was, until he realised that he had no idea where he was. Glancing around nervously, Dec's eyes searched the undergrowth and the trails for any kind of familiar landmarks or any familiarity in general. Finding none, he reached into his pocket for his phone, only to curse as he remembered that he'd left it on the table in the tree-house.

"Oh you bastard" he grumbled as he pulled his hand out of his pocket, frustration at himself boiling in his gut.

Clearly, standing in one place hoping to miraculously be shown the way back wasn't going to do anything, so Dec decided to be proactive and started to walk along one of the trails - hoping that it would take him back to the tree-house.

He'd been walking for about twenty minutes - feeling the sun burning his skin through the trees and feeling the sweat pouring down his back as the scorching temperatures rose - he was relieved to finally be out of the jungle and into the open air.

Taking a few moments to savour the fresh air cooling the skin on his face, Dec started to walk along the trail a bit further, when something in the corner of his eye made him stop.

Stretching over the vast gully beneath him was an old bridge. One of the really old, wooden bridges that you often saw in the small country towns on Midsomer Murders. It was almost picturesque: handsome dark wood shining in the hot sun, vines intertwining around the rails with little white flowers starting to bloom on their stems, the structure casting a comforting shadow into the sprawling slope beneath it.