Please don’t forget that this never ever ever happened—this is merely a pleasantly odd export of my tiny little mind. Thanks! ;)

 

Twist and Shout

 

 

Not too long later, Ringo awoke to the sound of a spy being blown up. At least, there was a shriek and a series of loud pops, crashes, clatters, and thuds that definitely evoked thoughts of espionage agents with explosive devices—and not unjustifiably, as he’d just spent a few hours thumbing through his Mad magazine anthology. Right. No more of that before bed, thought Ringo as he carefully dislodged the fingernails of his left hand from the bedside table he’d instinctively clutched.

The moment Ringo stepped out of the door he was heartily thankful he’d forgotten to take off his shoes before he fell asleep. The grisly remains of approximately two bottles of soda had spread themselves out over a radius of several feet from the epicenter of the accident, at the top of the stairs. There, having heaved himself up on his elbows with a small moan, was the same young man they’d met at the overturned cart, the lad whom gravity appeared to love so dearly that it seized him in a lover’s embrace at every possible occasion. Strewn about him were the carbonation-soaked remains of a largish box of chocolates and a—the appropriate word wasn’t so much “bouquet” as “handful”—of flowers that looked, in Ringo’s reckoning, like delicate purple asparagus.

The young man had now managed to maneuver himself into a sitting position at the top of the steps and managed a wan, embarrassed grin before wincing, presumably about the ankle whose leg he was holding straight out in front of him.

“There’re easier ways to meet the Beatles, y’know,” muttered Ringo as he lifted the lad—whose name, it now occurred to him, was Vern Jr.—to his good foot. “At this rate, you’ll have died from your injuries before you’ve even gotten all our autographs.”

Vern Junior wasn’t quite attending. “Yeah, hmm, we really mustn’t keep meeting like this, sorta thing, could you help me pick this stuff up? I’ve got to meet somebody like soon or I may never see her again and I’m sorta crazy about her, see…” He dropped to his knees and began gathering flowers and chocolate as he murmured on. 

Ringo hauled him back up by a rather bony elbow. “That’s gonna have to wait, at least ‘til that ankle gets looked at.” He paused for a quick visual inspection of the offending joint, and grimaced in sympathy. “I hope it isn’t broken.”

“Mister Starr, I have felt a broken ankle. I have had a broken ankle. Mister Starr, this is no broken ankle.” He grinned the knowledgeable, self-conscious, and slightly pensive grin you would imagine on the janitor at Rome’s Coliseum after the afternoon feature, the kind of grin that said “C’est la guerre”; the grin, in short, of the veteran physical bungler. “Now, if you’d please, Mister Starr, I have to get this cleaned up…” He bobbed back down—and up, as Ringo again yanked him skyward, like the marionette of an excitable puppeteer.

“No you don’t.” Here Ringo made use of an old trick he’d learned at the hands of a number of nurses and medical staff throughout his childhood. In the most soothing voice and steeliest glance he could marshal forth—a voice like aural ambrosia combined with a look that suggested that to not follow his directions was to place yourself in far more urgent need of medical attention than you were now—he said simply,

“You need to sit down.”

“…it’s ridiculous really, it’s like my body stopped aging at about fifteen, so I’ve got about five extra knee and elbow joints I don’t need and I need to sit down don’t I? After all, this ankle won’t get any better otherwise.”

He didn’t use it often, but it worked like a charm. Every time.

After Ringo had used his foot to brush the worst of the debris (which, he noticed, included several unexplainable pebbles) into a small pile out of the way of unwary feet and rebuilt the younger Vern’s fistful of rather nice-smelling flora, he led the lad back into his own room, where he set up a pair of chairs for the injured young swain. “Now, can you stay here while I find you some ice?”

“Oh, ice? If you want ice there’s a machine about three rooms—and when I say “rooms” I mean to count the doors, it’s one door to each room naturally—three rooms, or doors, to your right, after you—now that’s your right if you’re facing out of the door, looking onto the parking lot, but if you’re facing into your room it’s three rooms to your left…”

Ringo let the door swing shut on the excruciatingly helpful and hardworking young fellow. Not that he wasn’t a nice kid—accommodating, diligent, thoughtful, bright. But, bless his poor wavy-haired head, in conversation he was dull as a sack of hair. He really wasn’t up to prolonged contact with that sort of dullness at this hour of the morning. It took the edge from him at a time when he couldn’t fairly be said to have a particularly razor-sharp periphery himself.

He decided to go and wake George. He may have to face the Wrath of Harrison when he did—people woke George at their own risk—but George had as good an idea as anybody about where to find an ice machine, and John and Paul—well, the last time he saw John and Paul, they each looked as though they had their own affairs to worry about.

“George?” Ringo called—cautiously, at first. If ‘twere to be done, then best ‘twere done gently. The shouts, however, produced no George, in moods fair, foul, or otherwise. A search of the room itself, instigated by Ringo when he found the door unlocked, also turned up no Harrisons of any description. Just how many places were there in this place that he’d want to wander off to? At least his guitar was still in his room. Wherever he’d gone, he reflected with almost unRingolike dryness as he left the room in pursuit of his bandmate, at least he intended to come back.

 

 

***Authoress’s note: If you’d like to use this story for anything or take it someplace, please ask me first. It’s just one little email, not too much trouble, and the odds are in your favor for a yes if you ask me nicely. I just want people to recognize the story as mine, okay? ;-)