The Mystery Woman, Gross Infidelity and the Rat

The Mystery Woman, Gross Infidelity and the Rat

By

Chis Page

© chrispage2022

The Mystery Woman, Gross Infidelity and the Rat

Chapter One

As Anita unlocked the front door of her semi in Bath the telephone in the kitchen started ringing. Hurrying through the kitchen door she put her shopping bag and handbag on the table, threw her keys in the empty fruit bowl on the telephone table and picked up the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘Mrs Collier?’

Anita transferred the telephone receiver to her other hand to better hear the male voice.

‘Speaking’. She used her neutral, prepared-to-put-the-phone-down-on-nuisance-callers voice.

‘Mrs Collier, can you confirm that your husband is David Collier and drives a dark blue BMW 3 Series saloon with the registration Sierra November...’

‘Who is this and why do you want to know?’ Anita was sharp and sure it was someone trying to sell car insurance

‘This is the Derbyshire Police, Mrs Collier. I’m afraid there’s been an accident...’

Thus, began a fraught period when the strongest prop of her quiescent and unassuming married life split apart around one of its central pillars when her husband of twenty years was involved in a car crash that wasn’t his fault.

That left him in a coma.

And Anita Collier’s safe and well-ordered little world altered course towards her own head-on collision with a planet called Disastria that eventually turned this perfectly well-adjusted and quietly elegant 41 - year - old married woman with a nineteen-year-old daughter at university, into a deceitful sexual experimentalist blindly spiralling towards her own inner detonation.

But first, her husband and his accident.

That David Collier was alive was in itself something of a miracle although he did sustain multiple injuries. His face was covered in cuts and bruises leaving it criss-crossed with lumps and stitched abrasions, a couple of broken ribs where he’d hit the steering wheel before the airbag had inflated, a dislocated shoulder and a left leg broken in three places. Not that any of this concerned him because the most serious injury of all took away the need to both feel the pain of his injuries and worry about them.

The coma was one of those categorised as a chronic vegetative state.

For the first two weeks Anita and Georgie―their daughter ―went every day to the newly opened Royal Derby Hospital. A sparkling and modern hospital that had only been fully operational for eighteen months, the Royal Derby had over 200 single, en-suite rooms and 1150 beds in total with all the specialist services under its sloping glass and aluminium roof.

Anita’s employer, the Bath and North Eastern Somerset Council – BANES - where she was a part-time Tourist Liaison Officer working eighteen hours a week, had given her compassionate leave and Bournemouth University, where Georgie, their only child, was in her third year of Media Studies, had also happily complied with time off. For the first three days they’d stayed in a twin room at a small Derby hotel close to the hospital until they’d got their bearings, but then, to keep costs down had moved to nearby B & B accommodation.

David’s mother and father arrived from New Zealand where they’d emigrated fifteen years ago and sat with Anita and Georgie at his bedside for five sad days, then said their goodbyes and flew back again to their small grocery shop in Dunedin which was being run by a friend in their absence. When they left Anita’s, mother came up from Somerset for a couple of days, her father having died of a stroke four years previously, then the captain and four friends from David’s cricket club and his work colleagues from Burrough’s Construction where he was employed as a bridge engineer. The same process took over all his visitors, namely, having arrived full of smiles and hope and sitting there by his bedside for a couple of hours with the constant ticking of the barely audible electronic screen showing his heartbeat and blood pressure as moving coloured lines, the occasional bubble released into one of the nutrient tubes and accompanied by the gentle hiss of the oxygen pump, while trying to make occasional small talk trying to say or do something that might help. Nothing did, in the face of his immobility, gently rising and falling chest and closed immobile eyes amid the healing scars of his battered visage and still fingers, the small talk soon petered out leaving the clenching and unclenching of idle visiting hands, the trying not to glance at watches, faraway looks and a squirm or two to ease the pressure on an aching buttock. The gradual hopelessness of the situation would eventually take over leaving everyone waiting for a suitable time to elapse before they could leave with sympathetic looks and hugs. Once outside deep breaths were taken and guilty thoughts of thank goodness that’s all over accompanied them to their cars.

After two further weeks of sitting by their inert husband and father gazing at the profusion of life-giving tubes and wire - Anita and Georgie had run out of things to say or do to each other as well. For the first couple of weeks, on the basis that the surgeon had said auditory familiarity has been known to bring coma patients around, they had both chatted away enthusiastically at the familiar inert human form that showed life only by the regular movement of his chest and the flickering lines on the coloured screen. Then they’d played tapes of his favourite music, and because cricket was his sport had put on hours of the test match commentary that was currently taking place with England playing on home soil against India, read stories from the Daily Telegraph, his newspaper and even quoted some poetry that he’d liked and once, only - sung very badly to him. Georgie had said laughingly after their singing attempt that he’d probably chose to stay where he was rather than surface to that racket. Friends had also contributed by sending messages that they played on their mobiles and the little DVD machine Anita had bought in Derby, but all to no avail. Now, as nothing seemed to work, they were running out of their initial enthusiasm and the will to find new auditory ways to bring him back to the land of the living, and falling prey to the apathetic feeling of inadequacy and hopelessness that they had seen quickly attack David’s other visitors as they had sat there mired in the hopeless grip of helplessness.

‘As far as we can tell,’ Mr Briggs-Norton, the Consultant Surgeon had said, ‘there’s nothing physically stopping him from coming around. His other injuries are all healing nicely and our scans don’t show anything untoward wrong with his brain. However, a severe blow to the head can inflict unknown and undetectable damage. It is, unfortunately, a situation I have come across on a number of other occasions with car accidents. Some patients suddenly open their eyes and emerge perfectly lucid and pick up from where they left off as if waking from a deep sleep, while others...?’

‘Others...?’ Anita had repeated after his long pause.

‘There is a condition that some prolonged vegetative state sufferers have that is called TBI. It means Traumatic Brain Injury. Even if he does come around, he could be suffering some brain damage from the head injury. His ability to concentrate or process information could be damaged, what is known as impaired executive functioning. Personality changes, forgetfulness, random amnesia, especially for recent events, and failure to recognise loved ones and familiar objects. However, there is always hope. Neuro doctors in Canada have recently used an MRI scanner for limited communication with a coma patient’s thoughts and were able to establish that he wasn’t in any pain. That was a major breakthrough and although we don’t yet have the technology available here, it can’t be far off. But, and it’s a realistic one, we must also acknowledge the absolute worst scenario which is that he might never come out of it. I know of at least three others who are still in a coma after many years. That in itself gives rise to questions of switching off the life-giving machinery or, at least applying to the courts for the right to do so. We must face the truth that while there is no way of knowing when or if it will end, the best case is he’ll come out of it tomorrow and be as he was, the mid case is he’ll come round in the near future with some degree of an as yet indefinable TBI, and the worst is he’ll never come back to us...’

‘A living death,’ Georgie had whispered vehemently before turning away with tears welling up in her eyes.

Briggs-Norton had sighed and made a hopeless gesture with his hands.

‘It’s glib and solves nothing but all I can suggest is that you both try to get on with your lives as best you can. Sitting here all day could become counter-productive to your own health and wellbeing.’

‘Yes,’ Anita had replied vaguely without really understanding what she was saying ‘yes’ to.

After four weeks Georgie had gone back to Bournemouth University and Anita to her part-time job and their house in Bath. In truth it was a relief to both of them to pick up some of the more tangible threads in their lives after the upheaval and feelings of inadequacy and despondency sitting beside the inert husband and father’s bedside. Every couple of days Anita rang the hospital to the same answer that there was no change and passed on the no news to Georgie later that evening and to the parents and other friends at weekends.

Gradually, both of them began to accept the fact that this was the way it would always be. David Collier, husband and father, would probably spend the rest of his life trapped in a coma. At first every other weekend and then every month Anita diligently took the train to Derby and resumed her position by his bedside for what had become the statutory three, clock-watching hours interrupted by nurses checking the various tubes and monitors and turning him to prevent bed sores, with Georgie coming along to keep station alongside when she could.

There was one bit of good news. The police had determined that the accident wasn’t her husband’s fault and the guilty party’s insurance company were prepared to pay out quite a large sum of money to David against the cause of the accident being their insured driver and who was killed in the multi-car pile-up. The police had proved that David, through no fault of his own, had ended up in the middle of the motorway carnage and been smashed into from behind by a lorry and crushed between that and the car that caused the accident in front of him in the first place, The money was due with the actual amount being reliant upon how long David’s coma lasted. Anita’s solicitor and those representing the insurance company had set an arbitrary time limit of three years from the date of the accident with half of it due after eighteen months. If he hadn’t come around by then his state would be deemed permanent and the remainder of the figure applied to the pay-out would be based on that. That being the case Anita would be rather well off. The figure would be less on a pro rata basis if he came to before the end of twelve months. Without sounding callous, her solicitor said, it would be a substantially bigger pay-out if he stayed in the coma for at least this next eighteen months when she would get her first part payment. In the meantime, the insurance company had already paid out on the write-off of his car so Anita had a tidy sum to fall back on. The money was useful because David’s company had stopped paying his salary after three months plus ― thirteen weeks to be precise ― and Anita had worked out that she could just about manage for the rest of the year to meet their monthly mortgage and Georgie’s tuition and other bills from her car windfall together with her salary leaving their savings intact. After that and depending on what she got if David remained in the coma, she would have to make a decision to pay down the outstanding mortgage or sell the house. It was their third house and, previous to the accident considered their permanent home in Bath since their marriage with each house going up in value while they had it. At least Anita had the current resources to get Georgie to the end of her three-year course and degree qualified should nothing else come in, and some income to keep her going for another year or so without any other payment.

Visiting in the fourth month of David’s confinement, Anita made an appointment with the Chief Administrator of the Royal Derby and asked him if it was possible that David could be transferred to the Royal United or St Martin’s Hospital in Bath, in order that she could visit him easier and more often. She also mentioned that it would save her a rather large sum of much needed cash each time in train fares and occasional overnight accommodation. The Administrator explained that transferring of comatose patients was a complex operation requiring close co-operation between the two Consultants at the referring and receiving hospitals, a specially equipped air or road ambulance and an experienced accompanying team. But it was certainly possible, leave it with him and he’d see what he could do. Two follow-up telephone calls to him over the following six weeks revealed that he was still ‘working on it’ and Anita resigned herself to a lifetime of sporadic trips between Bath and Derby.

#

The phone always seemed to ring just as Anita put her key in the front door to get inside her house.

‘Mrs Collier? It’s Henry Spodell, the Chief Admin Officer at the Royal Derby.’

‘Aaagh, yes Mr Spodell. You have some news for me on my husband’s transfer?’

‘I do. I’m sorry that it’s taken so long but these things are complicated and rely on a number of technical matters and a number of others to play their part. However, we have a potential solution although there’s good and bad news...’

‘I see.’

‘We can transfer him down to the South West and much closer to where you live, but not to one of the Bath hospitals. The nearest one with a brain injury rehabilitation unit and an available space is Frenchay Hospital in Bristol. Mr Briggs-Norton, your husband’s Consultant here, is happy with the medical arrangements at Frenchay saying that they’re among the best in the country and at least on a par with what we have here, but I haven’t sanctioned it yet until discussing with you...’

Anita didn’t need to dwell on the decision. Bristol, a city she knew well having grown up near there and spent three years at the university, was a fifteen minutes train ride from Bath, a saving of almost three hours on the train journey to Derby, and a huge cost reduction. There was a tremor in her voice when she accepted.

‘It’ll take another couple of weeks to arrange the transfer which in itself is quite complicated. I’ll be in touch.’

#

David’s eventual and successful transfer to Frenchay brought a fresh series of visits from Bristol and Bath-based friends and work colleagues, and which, as with Derby, had soon petered out leaving Anita as his only regular visitor bolstered by occasional appearances from Georgie. A pattern began to establish itself. Because her office was close to Bath Station, Anita tended to go straight from work to Frenchay a couple of late afternoons a week. Her employer, to help with her rapidly dwindling finances, had also graciously increased her hours to 32 per week, meaning Anita now worked four eight-hour days Monday to Thursday and then had the long weekends to herself. Somehow, she felt she was being disloyal to her comatose husband if she didn’t attend at least twice a week now he was closer to home.

It was on her regular Thursday night visit to her husband’s bedside that she met a young man called Christopher and the sequence of events began to unfold that would lead her into the hitherto unknown and dangerous territory that many an older, more outgoing woman, given the circumstances, would have seen coming and maybe even welcomed. But Anita’s hitherto quiet and unassuming life style while still trying to deal with the situation diligently while settling into the new arrangements at Frenchay with the still painful aftermath of Simon’s coma, was unknowingly vulnerable and not being an outgoing aware sort didn’t see it coming.

‘It,’ being an assault on her emotions, that she simply didn’t have the strength or, in the end, the wish, to repel.

‘Hello,’ said a soft male voice from behind her as she sat with her back to the door of the small, private room by Simon’s bedside in the interminable position of watching and waiting she assumed on each visit. Turning round she saw a tall, beaming white clad black male nurse with a shaven head and carefully trimmed black stubble around his chin with the word ‘Christopher’ on the badge pinned to his breast. ‘I’m one of David’s day care nurses and have been looking after him since he arrived here. I always miss your visits because I usually finish by five and you get here soon afterwards. I’m filling in tonight for Sophie on the late shift whose gone off on her honeymoon!’

He put out a long, slim-fingered hand by way of an introduction in which Anita placed her own small hand with a muted ‘how do you do’. As his fingers closed over hers a jolt of what she could only assume was static electricity caused her to jump.

‘Ooops,’ he said withdrawing his hand quickly. ‘Sorry about that. Its static electricity, comes from the carpet in the staff room where I’ve just been to have a cup of tea. Either that or I have some mystic powers that respond to the handshake of a beautiful woman!’

He winked at her conspiratorially, sat down on the other side of the bed and motioned to her comatose husband. Taken unawares by the ‘beautiful woman’ words and the wink Anita could only blush and look away from his direct, brown-eyed look.

‘I shaved him again today. Smooth as a babies bum and gave his hair a trim at the back.’

‘Thank you,’ Anita said automatically, ‘he hated his hair long and any facial stubble...oh,’ she said suddenly realizing that Christopher had a carefully trimmed full set around his strong jaw line, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, or...’

He chuckled. ‘Don’t worry. I’m young and vain and only allowed some designer stubble. The hospital frowns on beards for nursing staff...especially on the women...’ Anita found herself smiling along with his infectious chuckle.

They chatted away about David for a few minutes with Anita finding it difficult to hold Christopher’s direct, level-eyed look, then the call buzzer attached to his belt went off and he had to leave.

She didn’t see him on her next visit although was aware that she was looking, hoping even, although she’d never admit that, to see his friendly, handsome face again. Then, suddenly, on her Thursday evening visit just as she was getting ready to leave, he appeared behind her and tapped her on the shoulder startling her.

‘Mrs Collier, how nice to see you again’ he said with genuine warmth. ‘I always seem to make you jump, how are you?’

‘Fine, fine,’ she managed aware that her heart had started pounding. They chatted away for a few minutes about David when Christopher got up to go.

‘Shift over?’ Anita asked.

‘Yep, back to normal and finished today at five as usual,’ he said moving towards the door before stopping. ‘Anita…I is it alright if I call you that?’

‘Of course, it is my name after all.’

He looked over his shoulder before turning back to her.

‘There’s something I like to tell you but here is not the place, can we have a drink when you’ve finished here?’

‘What now?’

He nodded.

So it was that fifteen minutes later they were sat in the Green Man, a pub just down the road which they had reached in Anita’s little car. Chris got her a mineral water and had a pint himself.

She waited a short while then raised her eyebrows at him.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Here goes. A couple of times a week and always around lunchtime of a weekday your husband has a lady visitor. Well-dressed and attractive and, like you she just sits with him for a short while before leaving and also like you although more so, weeps a great deal. I was just wondering who she is. She never says anything to me just offers up a sad smile, wipes away her tears and gets up and leaves. Does your husband have a younger sister?’

It can’t be Georgie Anita thought. She wouldn’t come all the way from Bournemouth twice a week without telling me.

‘He doesn’t have a sister’ Anita said. ‘How old would she be.?’

‘Mid-thirties at a guess’ he said.

‘Well-dressed and attractive and weeps a lot?’

‘A lot…makes a mess of her eye make-up.’

He took a deep breath and then voiced what was also uppermost in Anita’s thoughts.

‘Does he have…did he have…a girlfriend?’

‘No!’ She said sharply before calming down.’ Well, not that I know of any way but then I would be the last to know, wouldn’t I?’

‘Tuesdays and Thursdays around lunch time.’ He repeated.

The Mystery Woman, Gross Infidelity and the Rat

By

Chis Page

© chrispage2022

The Mystery Woman, Gross Infidelity and the Rat

Chapter One

As Anita unlocked the front door of her semi in Bath the telephone in the kitchen started ringing. Hurrying through the kitchen door she put her shopping bag and handbag on the table, threw her keys in the empty fruit bowl on the telephone table and picked up the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘Mrs Collier?’

Anita transferred the telephone receiver to her other hand to better hear the male voice.

‘Speaking’. She used her neutral, prepared-to-put-the-phone-down-on-nuisance-callers voice.

‘Mrs Collier, can you confirm that your husband is David Collier and drives a dark blue BMW 3 Series saloon with the registration Sierra November...’

‘Who is this and why do you want to know?’ Anita was sharp and sure it was someone trying to sell car insurance

‘This is the Derbyshire Police, Mrs Collier. I’m afraid there’s been an accident...’

Thus, began a fraught period when the strongest prop of her quiescent and unassuming married life split apart around one of its central pillars when her husband of twenty years was involved in a car crash that wasn’t his fault.

That left him in a coma.

And Anita Collier’s safe and well-ordered little world altered course towards her own head-on collision with a planet called Disastria that eventually turned this perfectly well-adjusted and quietly elegant 41 - year - old married woman with a nineteen-year-old daughter at university, into a deceitful sexual experimentalist blindly spiralling towards her own inner detonation.

But first, her husband and his accident.

That David Collier was alive was in itself something of a miracle although he did sustain multiple injuries. His face was covered in cuts and bruises leaving it criss-crossed with lumps and stitched abrasions, a couple of broken ribs where he’d hit the steering wheel before the airbag had inflated, a dislocated shoulder and a left leg broken in three places. Not that any of this concerned him because the most serious injury of all took away the need to both feel the pain of his injuries and worry about them.

The coma was one of those categorised as a chronic vegetative state.

For the first two weeks Anita and Georgie―their daughter ―went every day to the newly opened Royal Derby Hospital. A sparkling and modern hospital that had only been fully operational for eighteen months, the Royal Derby had over 200 single, en-suite rooms and 1150 beds in total with all the specialist services under its sloping glass and aluminium roof.

Anita’s employer, the Bath and North Eastern Somerset Council – BANES - where she was a part-time Tourist Liaison Officer working eighteen hours a week, had given her compassionate leave and Bournemouth University, where Georgie, their only child, was in her third year of Media Studies, had also happily complied with time off. For the first three days they’d stayed in a twin room at a small Derby hotel close to the hospital until they’d got their bearings, but then, to keep costs down had moved to nearby B & B accommodation.

David’s mother and father arrived from New Zealand where they’d emigrated fifteen years ago and sat with Anita and Georgie at his bedside for five sad days, then said their goodbyes and flew back again to their small grocery shop in Dunedin which was being run by a friend in their absence. When they left Anita’s, mother came up from Somerset for a couple of days, her father having died of a stroke four years previously, then the captain and four friends from David’s cricket club and his work colleagues from Burrough’s Construction where he was employed as a bridge engineer. The same process took over all his visitors, namely, having arrived full of smiles and hope and sitting there by his bedside for a couple of hours with the constant ticking of the barely audible electronic screen showing his heartbeat and blood pressure as moving coloured lines, the occasional bubble released into one of the nutrient tubes and accompanied by the gentle hiss of the oxygen pump, while trying to make occasional small talk trying to say or do something that might help. Nothing did, in the face of his immobility, gently rising and falling chest and closed immobile eyes amid the healing scars of his battered visage and still fingers, the small talk soon petered out leaving the clenching and unclenching of idle visiting hands, the trying not to glance at watches, faraway looks and a squirm or two to ease the pressure on an aching buttock. The gradual hopelessness of the situation would eventually take over leaving everyone waiting for a suitable time to elapse before they could leave with sympathetic looks and hugs. Once outside deep breaths were taken and guilty thoughts of thank goodness that’s all over accompanied them to their cars.

After two further weeks of sitting by their inert husband and father gazing at the profusion of life-giving tubes and wire - Anita and Georgie had run out of things to say or do to each other as well. For the first couple of weeks, on the basis that the surgeon had said auditory familiarity has been known to bring coma patients around, they had both chatted away enthusiastically at the familiar inert human form that showed life only by the regular movement of his chest and the flickering lines on the coloured screen. Then they’d played tapes of his favourite music, and because cricket was his sport had put on hours of the test match commentary that was currently taking place with England playing on home soil against India, read stories from the Daily Telegraph, his newspaper and even quoted some poetry that he’d liked and once, only - sung very badly to him. Georgie had said laughingly after their singing attempt that he’d probably chose to stay where he was rather than surface to that racket. Friends had also contributed by sending messages that they played on their mobiles and the little DVD machine Anita had bought in Derby, but all to no avail. Now, as nothing seemed to work, they were running out of their initial enthusiasm and the will to find new auditory ways to bring him back to the land of the living, and falling prey to the apathetic feeling of inadequacy and hopelessness that they had seen quickly attack David’s other visitors as they had sat there mired in the hopeless grip of helplessness.

‘As far as we can tell,’ Mr Briggs-Norton, the Consultant Surgeon had said, ‘there’s nothing physically stopping him from coming around. His other injuries are all healing nicely and our scans don’t show anything untoward wrong with his brain. However, a severe blow to the head can inflict unknown and undetectable damage. It is, unfortunately, a situation I have come across on a number of other occasions with car accidents. Some patients suddenly open their eyes and emerge perfectly lucid and pick up from where they left off as if waking from a deep sleep, while others...?’

‘Others...?’ Anita had repeated after his long pause.

‘There is a condition that some prolonged vegetative state sufferers have that is called TBI. It means Traumatic Brain Injury. Even if he does come around, he could be suffering some brain damage from the head injury. His ability to concentrate or process information could be damaged, what is known as impaired executive functioning. Personality changes, forgetfulness, random amnesia, especially for recent events, and failure to recognise loved ones and familiar objects. However, there is always hope. Neuro doctors in Canada have recently used an MRI scanner for limited communication with a coma patient’s thoughts and were able to establish that he wasn’t in any pain. That was a major breakthrough and although we don’t yet have the technology available here, it can’t be far off. But, and it’s a realistic one, we must also acknowledge the absolute worst scenario which is that he might never come out of it. I know of at least three others who are still in a coma after many years. That in itself gives rise to questions of switching off the life-giving machinery or, at least applying to the courts for the right to do so. We must face the truth that while there is no way of knowing when or if it will end, the best case is he’ll come out of it tomorrow and be as he was, the mid case is he’ll come round in the near future with some degree of an as yet indefinable TBI, and the worst is he’ll never come back to us...’

‘A living death,’ Georgie had whispered vehemently before turning away with tears welling up in her eyes.

Briggs-Norton had sighed and made a hopeless gesture with his hands.

‘It’s glib and solves nothing but all I can suggest is that you both try to get on with your lives as best you can. Sitting here all day could become counter-productive to your own health and wellbeing.’

‘Yes,’ Anita had replied vaguely without really understanding what she was saying ‘yes’ to.

After four weeks Georgie had gone back to Bournemouth University and Anita to her part-time job and their house in Bath. In truth it was a relief to both of them to pick up some of the more tangible threads in their lives after the upheaval and feelings of inadequacy and despondency sitting beside the inert husband and father’s bedside. Every couple of days Anita rang the hospital to the same answer that there was no change and passed on the no news to Georgie later that evening and to the parents and other friends at weekends.

Gradually, both of them began to accept the fact that this was the way it would always be. David Collier, husband and father, would probably spend the rest of his life trapped in a coma. At first every other weekend and then every month Anita diligently took the train to Derby and resumed her position by his bedside for what had become the statutory three, clock-watching hours interrupted by nurses checking the various tubes and monitors and turning him to prevent bed sores, with Georgie coming along to keep station alongside when she could.

There was one bit of good news. The police had determined that the accident wasn’t her husband’s fault and the guilty party’s insurance company were prepared to pay out quite a large sum of money to David against the cause of the accident being their insured driver and who was killed in the multi-car pile-up. The police had proved that David, through no fault of his own, had ended up in the middle of the motorway carnage and been smashed into from behind by a lorry and crushed between that and the car that caused the accident in front of him in the first place, The money was due with the actual amount being reliant upon how long David’s coma lasted. Anita’s solicitor and those representing the insurance company had set an arbitrary time limit of three years from the date of the accident with half of it due after eighteen months. If he hadn’t come around by then his state would be deemed permanent and the remainder of the figure applied to the pay-out would be based on that. That being the case Anita would be rather well off. The figure would be less on a pro rata basis if he came to before the end of twelve months. Without sounding callous, her solicitor said, it would be a substantially bigger pay-out if he stayed in the coma for at least this next eighteen months when she would get her first part payment. In the meantime, the insurance company had already paid out on the write-off of his car so Anita had a tidy sum to fall back on. The money was useful because David’s company had stopped paying his salary after three months plus ― thirteen weeks to be precise ― and Anita had worked out that she could just about manage for the rest of the year to meet their monthly mortgage and Georgie’s tuition and other bills from her car windfall together with her salary leaving their savings intact. After that and depending on what she got if David remained in the coma, she would have to make a decision to pay down the outstanding mortgage or sell the house. It was their third house and, previous to the accident considered their permanent home in Bath since their marriage with each house going up in value while they had it. At least Anita had the current resources to get Georgie to the end of her three-year course and degree qualified should nothing else come in, and some income to keep her going for another year or so without any other payment.

Visiting in the fourth month of David’s confinement, Anita made an appointment with the Chief Administrator of the Royal Derby and asked him if it was possible that David could be transferred to the Royal United or St Martin’s Hospital in Bath, in order that she could visit him easier and more often. She also mentioned that it would save her a rather large sum of much needed cash each time in train fares and occasional overnight accommodation. The Administrator explained that transferring of comatose patients was a complex operation requiring close co-operation between the two Consultants at the referring and receiving hospitals, a specially equipped air or road ambulance and an experienced accompanying team. But it was certainly possible, leave it with him and he’d see what he could do. Two follow-up telephone calls to him over the following six weeks revealed that he was still ‘working on it’ and Anita resigned herself to a lifetime of sporadic trips between Bath and Derby.

#

The phone always seemed to ring just as Anita put her key in the front door to get inside her house.

‘Mrs Collier? It’s Henry Spodell, the Chief Admin Officer at the Royal Derby.’

‘Aaagh, yes Mr Spodell. You have some news for me on my husband’s transfer?’

‘I do. I’m sorry that it’s taken so long but these things are complicated and rely on a number of technical matters and a number of others to play their part. However, we have a potential solution although there’s good and bad news...’

‘I see.’

‘We can transfer him down to the South West and much closer to where you live, but not to one of the Bath hospitals. The nearest one with a brain injury rehabilitation unit and an available space is Frenchay Hospital in Bristol. Mr Briggs-Norton, your husband’s Consultant here, is happy with the medical arrangements at Frenchay saying that they’re among the best in the country and at least on a par with what we have here, but I haven’t sanctioned it yet until discussing with you...’

Anita didn’t need to dwell on the decision. Bristol, a city she knew well having grown up near there and spent three years at the university, was a fifteen minutes train ride from Bath, a saving of almost three hours on the train journey to Derby, and a huge cost reduction. There was a tremor in her voice when she accepted.

‘It’ll take another couple of weeks to arrange the transfer which in itself is quite complicated. I’ll be in touch.’

#

David’s eventual and successful transfer to Frenchay brought a fresh series of visits from Bristol and Bath-based friends and work colleagues, and which, as with Derby, had soon petered out leaving Anita as his only regular visitor bolstered by occasional appearances from Georgie. A pattern began to establish itself. Because her office was close to Bath Station, Anita tended to go straight from work to Frenchay a couple of late afternoons a week. Her employer, to help with her rapidly dwindling finances, had also graciously increased her hours to 32 per week, meaning Anita now worked four eight-hour days Monday to Thursday and then had the long weekends to herself. Somehow, she felt she was being disloyal to her comatose husband if she didn’t attend at least twice a week now he was closer to home.

It was on her regular Thursday night visit to her husband’s bedside that she met a young man called Christopher and the sequence of events began to unfold that would lead her into the hitherto unknown and dangerous territory that many an older, more outgoing woman, given the circumstances, would have seen coming and maybe even welcomed. But Anita’s hitherto quiet and unassuming life style while still trying to deal with the situation diligently while settling into the new arrangements at Frenchay with the still painful aftermath of Simon’s coma, was unknowingly vulnerable and not being an outgoing aware sort didn’t see it coming.

‘It,’ being an assault on her emotions, that she simply didn’t have the strength or, in the end, the wish, to repel.

‘Hello,’ said a soft male voice from behind her as she sat with her back to the door of the small, private room by Simon’s bedside in the interminable position of watching and waiting she assumed on each visit. Turning round she saw a tall, beaming white clad black male nurse with a shaven head and carefully trimmed black stubble around his chin with the word ‘Christopher’ on the badge pinned to his breast. ‘I’m one of David’s day care nurses and have been looking after him since he arrived here. I always miss your visits because I usually finish by five and you get here soon afterwards. I’m filling in tonight for Sophie on the late shift whose gone off on her honeymoon!’

He put out a long, slim-fingered hand by way of an introduction in which Anita placed her own small hand with a muted ‘how do you do’. As his fingers closed over hers a jolt of what she could only assume was static electricity caused her to jump.

‘Ooops,’ he said withdrawing his hand quickly. ‘Sorry about that. Its static electricity, comes from the carpet in the staff room where I’ve just been to have a cup of tea. Either that or I have some mystic powers that respond to the handshake of a beautiful woman!’

He winked at her conspiratorially, sat down on the other side of the bed and motioned to her comatose husband. Taken unawares by the ‘beautiful woman’ words and the wink Anita could only blush and look away from his direct, brown-eyed look.

‘I shaved him again today. Smooth as a babies bum and gave his hair a trim at the back.’

‘Thank you,’ Anita said automatically, ‘he hated his hair long and any facial stubble...oh,’ she said suddenly realizing that Christopher had a carefully trimmed full set around his strong jaw line, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, or...’

He chuckled. ‘Don’t worry. I’m young and vain and only allowed some designer stubble. The hospital frowns on beards for nursing staff...especially on the women...’ Anita found herself smiling along with his infectious chuckle.

They chatted away about David for a few minutes with Anita finding it difficult to hold Christopher’s direct, level-eyed look, then the call buzzer attached to his belt went off and he had to leave.

She didn’t see him on her next visit although was aware that she was looking, hoping even, although she’d never admit that, to see his friendly, handsome face again. Then, suddenly, on her Thursday evening visit just as she was getting ready to leave, he appeared behind her and tapped her on the shoulder startling her.

‘Mrs Collier, how nice to see you again’ he said with genuine warmth. ‘I always seem to make you jump, how are you?’

‘Fine, fine,’ she managed aware that her heart had started pounding. They chatted away for a few minutes about David when Christopher got up to go.

‘Shift over?’ Anita asked.

‘Yep, back to normal and finished today at five as usual,’ he said moving towards the door before stopping. ‘Anita…I is it alright if I call you that?’

‘Of course, it is my name after all.’

He looked over his shoulder before turning back to her.

‘There’s something I like to tell you but here is not the place, can we have a drink when you’ve finished here?’

‘What now?’

He nodded.

So it was that fifteen minutes later they were sat in the Green Man, a pub just down the road which they had reached in Anita’s little car. Chris got her a mineral water and had a pint himself.

She waited a short while then raised her eyebrows at him.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Here goes. A couple of times a week and always around lunchtime of a weekday your husband has a lady visitor. Well-dressed and attractive and, like you she just sits with him for a short while before leaving and also like you although more so, weeps a great deal. I was just wondering who she is. She never says anything to me just offers up a sad smile, wipes away her tears and gets up and leaves. Does your husband have a younger sister?’

It can’t be Georgie Anita thought. She wouldn’t come all the way from Bournemouth twice a week without telling me.

‘He doesn’t have a sister’ Anita said. ‘How old would she be.?’

‘Mid-thirties at a guess’ he said.

‘Well-dressed and attractive and weeps a lot?’

‘A lot…makes a mess of her eye make-up.’

He took a deep breath and then voiced what was also uppermost in Anita’s thoughts.

‘Does he have…did he have…a girlfriend?’

‘No!’ She said sharply before calming down.’ Well, not that I know of any way but then I would be the last to know, wouldn’t I?’

‘Tuesdays and Thursdays around lunch time.’ He repeated.

The Mystery Woman, Gross Infidelity and the Rat

By

Chis Page

© chrispage2022

The Mystery Woman, Gross Infidelity and the Rat

Chapter One

As Anita unlocked the front door of her semi in Bath the telephone in the kitchen started ringing. Hurrying through the kitchen door she put her shopping bag and handbag on the table, threw her keys in the empty fruit bowl on the telephone table and picked up the receiver.

‘Hello?’

‘Mrs Collier?’

Anita transferred the telephone receiver to her other hand to better hear the male voice.

‘Speaking’. She used her neutral, prepared-to-put-the-phone-down-on-nuisance-callers voice.

‘Mrs Collier, can you confirm that your husband is David Collier and drives a dark blue BMW 3 Series saloon with the registration Sierra November...’

‘Who is this and why do you want to know?’ Anita was sharp and sure it was someone trying to sell car insurance

‘This is the Derbyshire Police, Mrs Collier. I’m afraid there’s been an accident...’

Thus, began a fraught period when the strongest prop of her quiescent and unassuming married life split apart around one of its central pillars when her husband of twenty years was involved in a car crash that wasn’t his fault.

That left him in a coma.

And Anita Collier’s safe and well-ordered little world altered course towards her own head-on collision with a planet called Disastria that eventually turned this perfectly well-adjusted and quietly elegant 41 - year - old married woman with a nineteen-year-old daughter at university, into a deceitful sexual experimentalist blindly spiralling towards her own inner detonation.

But first, her husband and his accident.

That David Collier was alive was in itself something of a miracle although he did sustain multiple injuries. His face was covered in cuts and bruises leaving it criss-crossed with lumps and stitched abrasions, a couple of broken ribs where he’d hit the steering wheel before the airbag had inflated, a dislocated shoulder and a left leg broken in three places. Not that any of this concerned him because the most serious injury of all took away the need to both feel the pain of his injuries and worry about them.

The coma was one of those categorised as a chronic vegetative state.

For the first two weeks Anita and Georgie―their daughter ―went every day to the newly opened Royal Derby Hospital. A sparkling and modern hospital that had only been fully operational for eighteen months, the Royal Derby had over 200 single, en-suite rooms and 1150 beds in total with all the specialist services under its sloping glass and aluminium roof.

Anita’s employer, the Bath and North Eastern Somerset Council – BANES - where she was a part-time Tourist Liaison Officer working eighteen hours a week, had given her compassionate leave and Bournemouth University, where Georgie, their only child, was in her third year of Media Studies, had also happily complied with time off. For the first three days they’d stayed in a twin room at a small Derby hotel close to the hospital until they’d got their bearings, but then, to keep costs down had moved to nearby B & B accommodation.

David’s mother and father arrived from New Zealand where they’d emigrated fifteen years ago and sat with Anita and Georgie at his bedside for five sad days, then said their goodbyes and flew back again to their small grocery shop in Dunedin which was being run by a friend in their absence. When they left Anita’s, mother came up from Somerset for a couple of days, her father having died of a stroke four years previously, then the captain and four friends from David’s cricket club and his work colleagues from Burrough’s Construction where he was employed as a bridge engineer. The same process took over all his visitors, namely, having arrived full of smiles and hope and sitting there by his bedside for a couple of hours with the constant ticking of the barely audible electronic screen showing his heartbeat and blood pressure as moving coloured lines, the occasional bubble released into one of the nutrient tubes and accompanied by the gentle hiss of the oxygen pump, while trying to make occasional small talk trying to say or do something that might help. Nothing did, in the face of his immobility, gently rising and falling chest and closed immobile eyes amid the healing scars of his battered visage and still fingers, the small talk soon petered out leaving the clenching and unclenching of idle visiting hands, the trying not to glance at watches, faraway looks and a squirm or two to ease the pressure on an aching buttock. The gradual hopelessness of the situation would eventually take over leaving everyone waiting for a suitable time to elapse before they could leave with sympathetic looks and hugs. Once outside deep breaths were taken and guilty thoughts of thank goodness that’s all over accompanied them to their cars.

After two further weeks of sitting by their inert husband and father gazing at the profusion of life-giving tubes and wire - Anita and Georgie had run out of things to say or do to each other as well. For the first couple of weeks, on the basis that the surgeon had said auditory familiarity has been known to bring coma patients around, they had both chatted away enthusiastically at the familiar inert human form that showed life only by the regular movement of his chest and the flickering lines on the coloured screen. Then they’d played tapes of his favourite music, and because cricket was his sport had put on hours of the test match commentary that was currently taking place with England playing on home soil against India, read stories from the Daily Telegraph, his newspaper and even quoted some poetry that he’d liked and once, only - sung very badly to him. Georgie had said laughingly after their singing attempt that he’d probably chose to stay where he was rather than surface to that racket. Friends had also contributed by sending messages that they played on their mobiles and the little DVD machine Anita had bought in Derby, but all to no avail. Now, as nothing seemed to work, they were running out of their initial enthusiasm and the will to find new auditory ways to bring him back to the land of the living, and falling prey to the apathetic feeling of inadequacy and hopelessness that they had seen quickly attack David’s other visitors as they had sat there mired in the hopeless grip of helplessness.

‘As far as we can tell,’ Mr Briggs-Norton, the Consultant Surgeon had said, ‘there’s nothing physically stopping him from coming around. His other injuries are all healing nicely and our scans don’t show anything untoward wrong with his brain. However, a severe blow to the head can inflict unknown and undetectable damage. It is, unfortunately, a situation I have come across on a number of other occasions with car accidents. Some patients suddenly open their eyes and emerge perfectly lucid and pick up from where they left off as if waking from a deep sleep, while others...?’

‘Others...?’ Anita had repeated after his long pause.

‘There is a condition that some prolonged vegetative state sufferers have that is called TBI. It means Traumatic Brain Injury. Even if he does come around, he could be suffering some brain damage from the head injury. His ability to concentrate or process information could be damaged, what is known as impaired executive functioning. Personality changes, forgetfulness, random amnesia, especially for recent events, and failure to recognise loved ones and familiar objects. However, there is always hope. Neuro doctors in Canada have recently used an MRI scanner for limited communication with a coma patient’s thoughts and were able to establish that he wasn’t in any pain. That was a major breakthrough and although we don’t yet have the technology available here, it can’t be far off. But, and it’s a realistic one, we must also acknowledge the absolute worst scenario which is that he might never come out of it. I know of at least three others who are still in a coma after many years. That in itself gives rise to questions of switching off the life-giving machinery or, at least applying to the courts for the right to do so. We must face the truth that while there is no way of knowing when or if it will end, the best case is he’ll come out of it tomorrow and be as he was, the mid case is he’ll come round in the near future with some degree of an as yet indefinable TBI, and the worst is he’ll never come back to us...’

‘A living death,’ Georgie had whispered vehemently before turning away with tears welling up in her eyes.

Briggs-Norton had sighed and made a hopeless gesture with his hands.

‘It’s glib and solves nothing but all I can suggest is that you both try to get on with your lives as best you can. Sitting here all day could become counter-productive to your own health and wellbeing.’

‘Yes,’ Anita had replied vaguely without really understanding what she was saying ‘yes’ to.

After four weeks Georgie had gone back to Bournemouth University and Anita to her part-time job and their house in Bath. In truth it was a relief to both of them to pick up some of the more tangible threads in their lives after the upheaval and feelings of inadequacy and despondency sitting beside the inert husband and father’s bedside. Every couple of days Anita rang the hospital to the same answer that there was no change and passed on the no news to Georgie later that evening and to the parents and other friends at weekends.

Gradually, both of them began to accept the fact that this was the way it would always be. David Collier, husband and father, would probably spend the rest of his life trapped in a coma. At first every other weekend and then every month Anita diligently took the train to Derby and resumed her position by his bedside for what had become the statutory three, clock-watching hours interrupted by nurses checking the various tubes and monitors and turning him to prevent bed sores, with Georgie coming along to keep station alongside when she could.

There was one bit of good news. The police had determined that the accident wasn’t her husband’s fault and the guilty party’s insurance company were prepared to pay out quite a large sum of money to David against the cause of the accident being their insured driver and who was killed in the multi-car pile-up. The police had proved that David, through no fault of his own, had ended up in the middle of the motorway carnage and been smashed into from behind by a lorry and crushed between that and the car that caused the accident in front of him in the first place, The money was due with the actual amount being reliant upon how long David’s coma lasted. Anita’s solicitor and those representing the insurance company had set an arbitrary time limit of three years from the date of the accident with half of it due after eighteen months. If he hadn’t come around by then his state would be deemed permanent and the remainder of the figure applied to the pay-out would be based on that. That being the case Anita would be rather well off. The figure would be less on a pro rata basis if he came to before the end of twelve months. Without sounding callous, her solicitor said, it would be a substantially bigger pay-out if he stayed in the coma for at least this next eighteen months when she would get her first part payment. In the meantime, the insurance company had already paid out on the write-off of his car so Anita had a tidy sum to fall back on. The money was useful because David’s company had stopped paying his salary after three months plus ― thirteen weeks to be precise ― and Anita had worked out that she could just about manage for the rest of the year to meet their monthly mortgage and Georgie’s tuition and other bills from her car windfall together with her salary leaving their savings intact. After that and depending on what she got if David remained in the coma, she would have to make a decision to pay down the outstanding mortgage or sell the house. It was their third house and, previous to the accident considered their permanent home in Bath since their marriage with each house going up in value while they had it. At least Anita had the current resources to get Georgie to the end of her three-year course and degree qualified should nothing else come in, and some income to keep her going for another year or so without any other payment.

Visiting in the fourth month of David’s confinement, Anita made an appointment with the Chief Administrator of the Royal Derby and asked him if it was possible that David could be transferred to the Royal United or St Martin’s Hospital in Bath, in order that she could visit him easier and more often. She also mentioned that it would save her a rather large sum of much needed cash each time in train fares and occasional overnight accommodation. The Administrator explained that transferring of comatose patients was a complex operation requiring close co-operation between the two Consultants at the referring and receiving hospitals, a specially equipped air or road ambulance and an experienced accompanying team. But it was certainly possible, leave it with him and he’d see what he could do. Two follow-up telephone calls to him over the following six weeks revealed that he was still ‘working on it’ and Anita resigned herself to a lifetime of sporadic trips between Bath and Derby.

#

The phone always seemed to ring just as Anita put her key in the front door to get inside her house.

‘Mrs Collier? It’s Henry Spodell, the Chief Admin Officer at the Royal Derby.’

‘Aaagh, yes Mr Spodell. You have some news for me on my husband’s transfer?’

‘I do. I’m sorry that it’s taken so long but these things are complicated and rely on a number of technical matters and a number of others to play their part. However, we have a potential solution although there’s good and bad news...’

‘I see.’

‘We can transfer him down to the South West and much closer to where you live, but not to one of the Bath hospitals. The nearest one with a brain injury rehabilitation unit and an available space is Frenchay Hospital in Bristol. Mr Briggs-Norton, your husband’s Consultant here, is happy with the medical arrangements at Frenchay saying that they’re among the best in the country and at least on a par with what we have here, but I haven’t sanctioned it yet until discussing with you...’

Anita didn’t need to dwell on the decision. Bristol, a city she knew well having grown up near there and spent three years at the university, was a fifteen minutes train ride from Bath, a saving of almost three hours on the train journey to Derby, and a huge cost reduction. There was a tremor in her voice when she accepted.

‘It’ll take another couple of weeks to arrange the transfer which in itself is quite complicated. I’ll be in touch.’

#

David’s eventual and successful transfer to Frenchay brought a fresh series of visits from Bristol and Bath-based friends and work colleagues, and which, as with Derby, had soon petered out leaving Anita as his only regular visitor bolstered by occasional appearances from Georgie. A pattern began to establish itself. Because her office was close to Bath Station, Anita tended to go straight from work to Frenchay a couple of late afternoons a week. Her employer, to help with her rapidly dwindling finances, had also graciously increased her hours to 32 per week, meaning Anita now worked four eight-hour days Monday to Thursday and then had the long weekends to herself. Somehow, she felt she was being disloyal to her comatose husband if she didn’t attend at least twice a week now he was closer to home.

It was on her regular Thursday night visit to her husband’s bedside that she met a young man called Christopher and the sequence of events began to unfold that would lead her into the hitherto unknown and dangerous territory that many an older, more outgoing woman, given the circumstances, would have seen coming and maybe even welcomed. But Anita’s hitherto quiet and unassuming life style while still trying to deal with the situation diligently while settling into the new arrangements at Frenchay with the still painful aftermath of Simon’s coma, was unknowingly vulnerable and not being an outgoing aware sort didn’t see it coming.

‘It,’ being an assault on her emotions, that she simply didn’t have the strength or, in the end, the wish, to repel.

‘Hello,’ said a soft male voice from behind her as she sat with her back to the door of the small, private room by Simon’s bedside in the interminable position of watching and waiting she assumed on each visit. Turning round she saw a tall, beaming white clad black male nurse with a shaven head and carefully trimmed black stubble around his chin with the word ‘Christopher’ on the badge pinned to his breast. ‘I’m one of David’s day care nurses and have been looking after him since he arrived here. I always miss your visits because I usually finish by five and you get here soon afterwards. I’m filling in tonight for Sophie on the late shift whose gone off on her honeymoon!’

He put out a long, slim-fingered hand by way of an introduction in which Anita placed her own small hand with a muted ‘how do you do’. As his fingers closed over hers a jolt of what she could only assume was static electricity caused her to jump.

‘Ooops,’ he said withdrawing his hand quickly. ‘Sorry about that. Its static electricity, comes from the carpet in the staff room where I’ve just been to have a cup of tea. Either that or I have some mystic powers that respond to the handshake of a beautiful woman!’

He winked at her conspiratorially, sat down on the other side of the bed and motioned to her comatose husband. Taken unawares by the ‘beautiful woman’ words and the wink Anita could only blush and look away from his direct, brown-eyed look.

‘I shaved him again today. Smooth as a babies bum and gave his hair a trim at the back.’

‘Thank you,’ Anita said automatically, ‘he hated his hair long and any facial stubble...oh,’ she said suddenly realizing that Christopher had a carefully trimmed full set around his strong jaw line, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, or...’

He chuckled. ‘Don’t worry. I’m young and vain and only allowed some designer stubble. The hospital frowns on beards for nursing staff...especially on the women...’ Anita found herself smiling along with his infectious chuckle.

They chatted away about David for a few minutes with Anita finding it difficult to hold Christopher’s direct, level-eyed look, then the call buzzer attached to his belt went off and he had to leave.

She didn’t see him on her next visit although was aware that she was looking, hoping even, although she’d never admit that, to see his friendly, handsome face again. Then, suddenly, on her Thursday evening visit just as she was getting ready to leave, he appeared behind her and tapped her on the shoulder startling her.

‘Mrs Collier, how nice to see you again’ he said with genuine warmth. ‘I always seem to make you jump, how are you?’

‘Fine, fine,’ she managed aware that her heart had started pounding. They chatted away for a few minutes about David when Christopher got up to go.

‘Shift over?’ Anita asked.

‘Yep, back to normal and finished today at five as usual,’ he said moving towards the door before stopping. ‘Anita…I is it alright if I call you that?’

‘Of course, it is my name after all.’

He looked over his shoulder before turning back to her.

‘There’s something I like to tell you but here is not the place, can we have a drink when you’ve finished here?’

‘What now?’

He nodded.

So it was that fifteen minutes later they were sat in the Green Man, a pub just down the road which they had reached in Anita’s little car. Chris got her a mineral water and had a pint himself.

She waited a short while then raised her eyebrows at him.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Here goes. A couple of times a week and always around lunchtime of a weekday your husband has a lady visitor. Well-dressed and attractive and, like you she just sits with him for a short while before leaving and also like you although more so, weeps a great deal. I was just wondering who she is. She never says anything to me just offers up a sad smile, wipes away her tears and gets up and leaves. Does your husband have a younger sister?’

It can’t be Georgie Anita thought. She wouldn’t come all the way from Bournemouth twice a week without telling me.

‘He doesn’t have a sister’ Anita said. ‘How old would she be.?’

‘Mid-thirties at a guess’ he said.

‘Well-dressed and attractive and weeps a lot?’

‘A lot…makes a mess of her eye make-up.’

He took a deep breath and then voiced what was also uppermost in Anita’s thoughts.

‘Does he have…did he have…a girlfriend?’

‘No!’ She said sharply before calming down.’ Well, not that I know of any way but then I would be the last to know, wouldn’t I?’

‘Tuesdays and Thursdays around lunch time.’ He repeated.