‘Mike, I warned you, why didn’t you listen? It’s different when you are here permanently! When you visit, you can sort of determine how you are, so if your wish is to walk, then you can. Only when you’re here all the time well, depending upon how you arrive you kind of stay as you were when you left the land of the living. It is practically the only rule that I have been able to figure out since I arrived here.’
Andrea was still standing, tears were running silently down her cheeks. Her eyes still sparkled but her face seemed to lack its shine. ‘Mike you will always be in that chair.’
‘Noooooooooooo!’ Mike was suddenly back aged 21 in a hospital room with a doctor sitting on his bed holding his hand and his parents standing beside each other crying.
CHAPTER 10
VICTORIA looked down at her husband. She had stopped crying now. This was now two days since she had found him when she had got home after the night out with Jules. The evening had been fun, they had agreed their next holiday was to be to the Amalfi coast in Italy. They had enjoyed looking at the glossy pictures of the hotels in the brochures and the wine had flowed at the new Italian restaurant.
Then everything had changed when her key had turned in the lock at 11.30 that night. Why she had walked into their master bedroom, she did not know. Why she had decided not to go straight into her room she had no idea. But somehow she had done just that, walked in and seen Mike laying against the pillow, an empty bottle of scotch in his lap and all those empty boxes of pills on the floor. From that moment her life had felt as though it had stopped as well. It was all a haze now: the call to 999, the paramedics arriving so quickly it felt as though they had been parked on the drive, the trip in the ambulance to hospital just ten minutes away… And then the wait, that night and into the following morning.
‘Mrs Stapleford, I am so sorry’ the doctor had said. ‘Your husband has clearly taken an overdose. He is alive but in a coma.’
‘What does that mean?’ had been the only question she could muster, it seemed so inadequate.
‘Well, he is alive but not really responding. He can breathe on his own but the tablets and the fact that his heart had stopped before the paramedics arrived may mean he has brain damage. I am so sorry, but at this stage we really cannot be specific, we simply don’t know what damage has occurred. He may be fine when he wakes up.’ The doctor looked a little uncomfortable.
‘So when will he wake up?’ Victoria felt this was all too much to take in.
‘Well, I’m very sorry, but we don’t know.’ The doctor shifted uneasily where he was standing.
‘So he may or may not wake up, he may or may not have brain damage and you actually have no idea how long all this could go on for! Well excuse me for being blunt but I can so see where my taxes go on the NHS.’ Victoria burst into tears.
That had been yesterday and now she was sitting beside him, marvelling at all the tubes and machines that surrounded him. Then there was the constant coming and going of staff in different uniforms undertaking slightly different functions to keep the hospital and her husband functioning.
Victoria reached for Mike’s hand on the top of the bedclothes.
Did she want him to live? She startled herself at the bluntness of the question that went through her mind.
‘Lost’ was the only word that came back to her. She would be lost without him.
‘Mike, please can you hear me. I am so sorry. I know it has been horrid lately but I love you so much.’ As she said the words out loud, she felt warm tears run down her face all over again. They splashed on their hands that were lying entwined on the covers.
‘Mike, please wake up, I am lost without you, I am so sorry, please wake up.’
Victoria felt a hand gently lay itself on her shoulder. She looked up and saw an elderly chaplain standing quietly beside her.
‘I am sorry, I did not mean to disturb my dear,’ he said in a low smooth voice. ‘Shall I pray for you and your loved one?’
‘Thank you,’ was all that Victoria could utter, as she felt more tears roll down her cheeks.
CHAPTER 11
‘MIKE, we need to talk.’ Andrea was again standing while Mike was in his wheelchair, the room was white and clinical, it was neither warm nor cold, it was non-descript in every way.
‘Look, it’s like this,’ she went on. ‘You actually have a choice, you have not really arrived here yet. You can go back if you want.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Mike was feeling very confused. He had spent the last six months or more moving between two worlds, sometimes by design but mostly by accident. When he had finally decided which world to spend his time in, he seemed to have failed to get past customs. He had nothing to declare!
‘Mike, you are in a coma. You’re in hospital and Victoria is worried shitless. She has not left your bedside for four days. Mike all you have to do is open your eyes and you’re back in the land of the living.’ Andrea’s voice was wavering with emotion.
‘Mike you can’t stay, you know what it will be like here now, permanently I mean. You will be in a chair and it will not be like before.’ Andrea’s face was streaked with tears.
‘You have to go, I have to let you go. You have a chance to finish living your life.’ Andrea broke down and sobbed.
‘Can I still—’
‘No, Mike, this is the end, here and now. I will not be in your dreams any more. You have had a chance of seeing what it’s like in this world – that in itself is a real privilege. Use it to live your life to the full.’ Andrea did not try and hide her emotion.
‘Well, what if I want to stay?’ Mike was feeling belligerent. He had taken the tablets and the scotch. If he wanted to die, he could make that decision. Who had the right to deny his wishes?
‘Mike, you don’t choose like that. If you stay, you do so with all your inabilities of life. It is not your time now, don’t you see? You are being punished for coming here too early. You want this life to be perfect but if you arrive when you’re not called you don’t get the heaven you want.’
‘You mean God is punishing me? Just when I was getting my head around all this, you throw religion at me!’ Mike’s voice sounded incredulous.
‘God, Allah, whatever, the name is irrelevant. The idea is a higher source, person, energy, an accumulation of all of us in an entity that is good, whatever it is, whatever you believe. Just understand, if you have the chance to live, then start fighting for it. Fight for Victoria, in case you’ve forgotten she’s your wife. She’s falling apart because you’re not in her world.’
Andrea looked down at Mike, her shoulders shaking with emotion as she continued to sob through her words.
‘Mike, we were lucky, we had something amazing, and I came back for you because I wanted to connect with you. If I had not done so, then you would not be in this place. Right at the start, do you remember I said you weren’t given a manual here? Well I bloody well wish you were, because I reckon I have broken every rule there is! I don’t regret it, but now I have a chance to put it right.’
‘Please can I have a hug?’ Mike looked up from his chair at Andrea.
‘Yes, my darling, of course.’ She bent down and wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her wet, tear-drenched cheek against his. ‘Goodbye, sweetheart…’
And Andrea melted away.
‘Nurse! Nurse! For fuck’s sake come here, he just opened his eyes! Nurse! Nurse! Get someone quickly, nurse!’ Victoria was standing by the bed, Mike’s hand still in hers. She was looking wildly round the small room, shouting, tears running down her face.
‘Nurse! For Christ’s sake, someone! My husband just opened his eyes!’
EPILOGUE
MIKE was sitting in his wheelchair looking at a windswept airport. The rain lashed against the window. It was January and although the airport lounge was warm, Mike felt a chill run down his back as he looked at the outside.
‘Darling,’ Victoria wandered across carrying two coffees and a large Danish pastry on a tray.
‘I know you said you didn’t want anything but well, I thought this may tempt you,’ she said as she bent to place the tray on the table in front of him.
‘Do you mind if I go down to that shoe shop on the lower level and try on a couple of pairs? They still have their new year sale on.’ Victoria smiled at him.
‘Of course I don’t mind, silly! I’ll stay here, I think the escalator could be a bit tricky!’ Mike smiled back at his wife. He felt contentment, something that had been growing inside him now for months since that fateful time last autumn. He watched her stroll casually across the lounge and down the escalator. Her hair had grown and flowed down her back, it was longer now than it had been for a few years.
He gazed out of the window. He had not dreamt of Andrea since he had woken up in hospital. He still thought about her, but even that was becoming less frequent.
‘She seemed so much more relaxed,’ he thought to himself as he turned from the window and back to where Victoria had disappeared down the escalator.
After he had been released from hospital, they had spent a long time talking, crying and then holding each other. They had been through the pain of the accusations, particularly over what had happened with Sophie. Mike had decided to spare her some of the detail, it was unnecessary and how would he have explained the black bra? So his version of events had been true, if not the whole story.
In fact they had spoken about his obsession with work and he had told of his fears of being in his chair for the rest of his life, the separation that he felt it caused between them. At no point did Mike volunteer or Victoria question anything about Andrea. Certainly not in an intimate way. He had spoken of the way he missed his dead friend and how her sudden absence had made him think more deeply about his disability and the wish to walk freely once more. None of that had been a lie, the result of the thought process had been the same, but perhaps the route had been slightly more circuitous.
Mike would have struggled to explain his relationship with Andrea over the last few months, and perhaps in an odd way the guardian angel that she was, she had ended up bringing him and Victoria closer together. Had he loved Andrea or in fact just the life without his wheelchair he enjoyed whilst visiting her?
‘Yes, I find her very attractive,’ Mike had said over Sophie. ‘She is very sexy, and in fact she has offered it to me on a plate… well with a price tag attached!’ Victoria had been shocked at first when Mike had explained and then decided it was rather funny.
‘Rather awkward then sweetheart!’ she had said with a smile. ‘I don’t know if I want to employ her in my shop over Christmas, or perhaps I should and overpay her to keep my husband on the straight and narrow!’
That had been the start of the discussion over Victoria’s Flowers. Did it provide the right interest for her, was it a profitable business, could it be expanded in the long term? Could Victoria see herself as a florist for the next decade or more?
The end of the year had then turned into a succession of deadlines to be met as they reorganised their old lives and prepared mentally and physically for their new ones. The flower business had been put up for sale and had found an unexpected buyer virtually the moment the news had got around Winchester.
Jules had finally had enough of being a lady of leisure and Gerald had decided to make its purchase and the gift of their house as his divorce present to his wife.
‘Darling you cannot imagine how happy this makes me!’ had been Jules’s comment as they agreed the broad terms of the sale of the business in their kitchen on a Saturday night.
‘Gerald will pay just so he can go off and start his new life with Francine. God knows what will happen when she wants a family, I mean she is nearly twenty years his junior. It’s ridiculous!’
The business transaction had proceeded reasonably smoothly and by the first week in December, Victoria was working for Jules as part of the handover. The only awkward moment had been when Sophie had floated in to the shop, back from university and offering to help her mum out in the new operation.
‘Vicky, love, make me a coffee please!’ She had looked at Victoria with an air of superiority, which even her mother found a little hard to accept.
‘Sophie, you can go and make your own coffee,’ said Jules sharply. ‘Victoria is here as my friend to help me understand and to get to grips with this business. She is not to be your slave.’
Jules felt a need to exert some influence over her daughter who seemed to be getting more and more unruly while at university. The divorce had not been unexpected to Sophie but the by-product had been even less contact and less influence from her father.
‘Thanks, Jules.’ Victoria acknowledged her friend. She also took considerable delight later in the afternoon to find herself alone in the shop with Sophie when Jules was out delivering orders.
‘Sophie, you should know, Mike and I have spent many weeks talking and reconnecting. We may have struggled and this year has been difficult, but we are now closer than we have ever been. I can also tell you that he has told me everything. It has been painful at times, but we are now stronger than before. So just in case you are wondering, he will not be getting his cheque book out just so he can stick his dick down your throat… dear!’
Victoria turned and walked out of the shop. She felt brilliant and smiled broadly as she thought about telling Mike about her chat with Sophie that evening.
Christmas had been quiet as they had packed up the house, and Mike had agreed the last files to be handed over to his work colleagues. They had been hugely supportive of his proposed sabbatical.
‘Take the year, Mike, if you need it,’ had been the line from his managing partner when he had chatted it through over lunch at the end of October.
‘It has been a shitty year for you and Victoria and what you are proposing is bloody brave. You probably have about a year’s worth of weeks owed to you in back holiday anyway.’
And so here he was, mid-January and waiting in the airport lounge for his wife who was shoe shopping downstairs. He sipped his coffee and bit into his Danish pastry as rain continued to hammer at the window.
‘OK, you will have to shoot me!’ Victoria was standing in front of him. ‘I brought three pairs but they were such a good offer.’
‘That is fine, although you can thank me later personally if you feel racked with guilt!’ Mike looked up at his wife and grinned.
‘Sounds like you have a deal! Has the flight been called yet?’ Victoria turned around to glance at the TV screen as she sipped her coffee.
‘Not yet, I see. Come on Atlanta, I want to get on the plane and get going.’ Victoria sounded anxious, impatient to start their new adventure together.
‘Patience poppet, we will get there when we get there… Atlanta, you are going to change my life!’ Mike shifted in his chair. ‘I cannot wait to dump this bloody thing and walk down those steps from the aircraft in June.’ Mike patted the side of his wheelchair.
‘I am so proud of you, this is so brave.’ Victoria bent down and kissed him gently on the lips.
As Victoria pushed his wheelchair towards the departure gate when they were called forward for boarding, Mike looked out of the window at the waiting plane, was that a whisper in his ear?
‘God speed, Michael. I still watch over you, it will all be fine. Good luck!’
About the Author
Nicholas Faulkner is a chartered surveyor and has lived in rural Hampshire for the last 25 years. He occasionally lectures on property law and acts as an expert witness.
He is married to Gloria and spends his spare time gardening, travelling with his family and keeping up with current affairs.
Writing fiction has become a source of relaxation and enjoyment and an outlet for a creative side which he hasn’t exercised for many years. He is currently writing his third novel.
Copyright
Published in 2014 by Splendid Media Group (UK) Limited
Text copyright © 2014 Nicholas Faulkner
The right of Nichola
s Faulkner to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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