An officer and the female
boxing champion aboard the mining ship
Red Dwarf. She is the only person
Arnold Rimmer had ever made
love to, and it only lasted 12 minutes (including the time it took to eat the
pizza). Rimmer would still fantasize about her as if she were his
soulmate or something. Whenever he mentioned her to
Lister, Lister would point out she was only dating him because she'd been hit on the head with a
winch and had a
concussion. Rimmer would argue she was crazy about him, to which Lister would remind Rimmer she kept calling him Norman (or according to the novel
Last Human, Simon). Later she recovered and they never spoke again.
Well, according to
Last Human, there's a grain of truth to Rimmer's complaint that nothing ever goes right for him. As it turns out, McGruder had been concussed, but only got his name wrong. She knew who he was so when he decided to talk to her in a lift (he asked if she was a
Buddhist or an
Arab or something when he saw the bandage wrapped around her head), she opened up to him, they started talking and they hit it off. In fact, he ended up going to her apartment to have dinner and ultimately spend two and half days with her. Then
paranoia set in, and he was concerned perhaps Lister was right and she didn't love him. That it was just her concussion. So to prove to Lister (and himself) that it was genuine, he decided to wait for
her to call him. If she called, he was right and she did care about him. If she didn't, then Lister was right and he would move on.
Now, the sad bit was that she got concussed
again after slipping in the
shower and banging her head once again (unknown to Rimmer or Lister), and after recovering, was not sure whether or not she and Rimmer had been dating. She'd had a crush on him long before they ever spoke in the lift, so she wasn't sure whether it really happened. So she decided not to call him. If he called, then it was real. If he didn't, then it must have been a
dream.
So neither of them spoke to each other again, only exchanged glances when they passed. And then McGruder left the ship, and later discovered she was pregnant with Rimmer's child. And then the accident occurred and McGruder and child never knew what happened to Rimmer apart from there was a nuclear accident aboard the Red Dwarf, with only one survivor and that Rimmer had been selected to return as a
hologram. And that was the end of that.
When I remember what Rimmer's son's name was (I think Michael R. McGruder), I'll node him up as well.