Road to Recovery
By
Tony Wilson
Copyright 2012 Tony Wilson
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Licence Notes
The moral right of Tony Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
Discover the rest of the titles in this trilogy by Tony Wilson
Onward and Upward
Above and Beyond
Cover designed by Tony Wilson
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Table of Contents
(Click on any chapter heading to return to the Table of Contents)
Title Page
Licence Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Authors Notes
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Chapter 1
It was supposed to be ‘another wonderful day in paradise’, so why on earth am I laying flat on my back in a helicopter when Sheila and I are supposed to be on a short break in our motor-home, perhaps it had something to do with all the tubes stuffed down my throat. Let me think, I remember Sheila (my wife of 32 years), Bonnie and Clyde (our Yorkshire terriers of five years) and I – Andrew Michaels (of 55 years) arriving in the pouring rain at the caravan site just north of Granada, after a pleasant drive down from our Villa (of 5 years). We are, or as it would now seem, were, going to meet up with some of our friends that we regularly seem to bump into on out travels, any excuse for G & T. The excuse this time - I am in serious need of some R&R as I slipped a disc three weeks ago, a bit feeble as excuses go but definitely good for the sympathy vote. Funny, I cannot remember meeting up with them.
With perfect timing it had started to rain just as we arrived at the site (it could at least have waited for another half an hour), and I remember dutifully checking into the office and then plugging ‘Winnie’ into her new home (I call her that because she is a Winnebago, not just because she is poo coloured). Leaving our two now very muddy hounds in their travelling cage we headed out into the rain in search of a cup of tea, or perhaps something slightly stronger.
As we walked passed a nearby pitch we noticed that the owners of a rather nice (for nice - read large) caravan were having a considerable amount of trouble positioning their ‘box on wheels’ on their sloping, and by now very wet and slippery pitch. As we consider ourselves to be fairly helpful sort of people I offered them our services, bad move. From what I remember of them they seemed to be a rather quiet, retiring sort of couple, the sort that I imagined would probably have preferred to do all the pushing and shoving on their own, but even they had come to realise that in this rain, and with the sloping terrain, they were not going to move it anywhere with just the two of them. Sheila and I opted for the rear of their caravan, and expending a fair amount of our valuable energy the four of us finally got the thing moving in generally the right direction, but unfortunately the rain, mud and finally the wind then decided to enter into the equation, and things moved on quite quickly after that. The caravan started to slide, and then he (the owner of the delinquent caravan) decided to slip, and after first banging his head on a conveniently placed rock, slid gracefully under it, with his head strategically placed for one of the wheels to run squarely over it - now was about the time that I should have remembered why the doctor had ordered me away. Whilst trying to stop the sliding caravan from crushing his head my tender back decided that it was not really ready for such abuse and I had that all too familiar feeling of pain, followed by the sensation of my spine wanting to bend in two – backwards. I knew that I wasn’t going to stop this man made titan in my condition but summoning up some unknown inner strength I managed to pull the rear of the van around, just far enough for it to collide with a rather large tree. I suppose the logic behind my action was that this poor soul would prefer to have a dented caravan rather than a flat head. All went well until too late I realised that ‘I’ was between the immovable tree and the careening caravan. At moments like that I think you are supposed to have your whole life flash before you, wrong, all I could think was ‘I hope Sheila will be alright driving Winnie back home on her own’ – and now I am laying on my back in a helicopter, ‘wonder where Sheila is’. I then decided that it was a good time to take a little nap.
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Five years ago we took the plunge and went for early retirement. Both children had gone off to do other things in the world so we sold the house and ‘family’ business, and after settling all our debts (and a few of the children’s) we had enough left over to go on a much deserved ‘once in a lifetime cruise’, and purchase an idyllic three bed roomed luxury villa. It came complete with swimming pool and Jacuzzi and is situated close to a small village fifty kilometres inland from Alicante - just far enough away from the coast for us to be in among the ‘real Spanish’, and away from the summer crowds.
Two years later, bored to tears and not wanting to get into the ‘G&T’s at 12:00’ routine, we blew a chunk of our savings on an American motor home. We promoted Doris, our Columbian ‘limpiadora’ (cleaner), who helps Sheila around the villa for a few hours each week, to ‘Jefá del Casa’ (boss of the house) and she now regularly looks after the villa and pool for us (with a little help from husband Pedro) as we spend more and more time away succumbing to the wander lust. In fact in the past 3 years we have covered most of Spain and Portugal, plus a fair amount of France and Italy, and meeting some fascinating people on the way. A week among the olive groves, rolling green countryside and convivial company was just what the doctor ordered, literally, as I had slipped the disc whilst cleaning the pool and apparently I now need to get out and about again and take some ‘light exercise’. For some strange reason walking to the car and winding my own watch don’t constitute ‘exercise’.
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The next time I woke I found myself on terra firma with a rather elderly gentleman in a white coat trying to talk to me in Spanish, stupid man, didn’t he know that I was English; everyone should speak my language shouldn’t they? If they didn’t then all I had to do was wave my hands and shout louder - then they would of course understand me. Then it slowly dawned on me that I could neither wave my hands (or any other part of my anatomy for that matter) nor even whisper any profanities at him, damn those tubes. I then guiltily wished that Sheila and I had carried on with those interminable Spanish lessons. Being a self-made man (and proud of it) I didn’t even know what a conjugated verb was in English so how could it be of any possible use to me in Spanish! ‘Time for another nap, hope I can sleep alright tonight’.
What turned out to be five days later I slowly realised that someone was holding my hand, it of course would be my Sheila, she was always there for me, no doubt about it; then PAIN, she/him/it was sticking what turned out to be a new cannula into the back of my hand, apparently the previous one had just blocked. Not my problem, go away and molest someone else, ‘I want to talk to my wife’ I tried to scream.
There was no sign of Sheila but as I looked frantically around I was greeted by the equally pleasing sight of Alice, our very beautiful and talented violin playing daughter standing beside the bed. ‘How had she got here so fast?’ I thought, ‘Concorde was no longer flying’, Sheila must be getting me a coffee, ‘time for another nap’.
The next time I woke it was dark, with just a dim light glowing above my bed, ‘my bed? I don’t have a light over my bed, dim or otherwise’. It then slowly started to come back to me, the rain, the caravan, the mud, the stranger falling under the wheel, and the lack of Sheila in the helicopter. ‘Where is Sheila, I want to see my wife’ I tried to croak, and the blood started to turn to ice in my veins.
Alice woke with a start; she had been catnapping on the recliner chair beside the bed, and throwing off a blanket she was quickly sat on the side of my bed. Gently taking my hand in hers she started coming out with all the usual platitudes, ‘shush, go back to sleep, take it easy, don’t move, we’ll talk more later’, but it was obvious even to a mere male like me that she had been crying BIG TIME. She tried to calm me down - but to no avail, then I tried to sit up and lash out, at anything, or anyone, I wanted my wife, my lovely beautiful ‘always there for me’, wife, ‘and I want her NOW!’
Nurses came running, a Doctor came running, and a needle was slid into the cannula, and just as I was slipping off into blissful unconsciousness, in the half-light I could have sworn that I saw my Sheila silhouetted in the doorway. She was dressed in white, waving, and there was a strange glowing light behind her, ‘oh well time to sort that one out another day’.
This time it was daylight when I woke, and I was securely ‘supported’ by straps and pillows so that I could not move, and was sufficiently pleased with myself to realise that I was on medication - big time. Alice was sitting quietly in the now upright recliner, and I had never seen her looking so sad, not even when ‘Snowball’ her Angora rabbit had finally ‘gone to be with Jesus’. Sheila was definitely right; she was very beautiful, in a delicate sort of way, but we also knew that behind that slight exterior there was a tough little cookie lurking. Robin, our Veterinarian son, who a few days after the solemn ceremony with ‘Snowball’ had wanted for some strange reason to dig the poor animal back up, just so that he could ‘have a quick look inside’, and whose long suffering girlfriend couldn’t even drag him away from his patients for a much needed naughty weekend, stood quietly behind her, and it then slowly sank into my drug befuddled mind that something had happened that day, and my children were dreading having to tell me. ‘What happen to her’ I croaked, grasping the bull by the horns, I realised that no matter how dreadful I felt I was still their father and must look after my children, it was not for them to break such bitter news to me. Between them they explained to me that on that fateful day, after I had passed out the caravan wheel had unfortunately caught Mr Albright (our intrepid caravanner) on his neck, but had then quickly released him again as the van pivoted around me and my tree: and their mother, who had been pulling on the other corner, was spun into a nearby picnic table, which winded her, and gave her a nasty pain in the chest. The Paramedics quickly arrived, and first attended to me and ‘Mr Albright’, but after we were ‘stabilised’ one of them then checked a distraught Sheila over. He suspected that she may have cracked a few ribs, but unfortunately there was not enough room in the air ambulance for all of us so she would have to travel by road ambulance as a patient – no arguing. Once I was safely airborne he gave her a sedative to ease the pain, and with lights flashing and sirens blaring they set off for the hospital. About 10 minutes into the journey she died, without any warning her aorta ruptured. Robin tried to assure me that ‘she wouldn’t have felt a thing. Nobody could have done anything to save her’ he went on, but I found that small consolation for the meaning of my life ending.
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As I was being admitted, the hospital had found a battered business card of an ‘Abagado’ (Solicitor) in my wallet; it was fortunately ‘my Abagado’, Vicente. The hospital contacted him, and as he had previously sorted out our Spanish wills he had all the details on Alice & Robin to hand. He quickly rang Robin, and with his help they were both in Spain within 4 hours; he even met them at the airport. Vicente also set in motion the procedure for Sheila’s cremation, which took place two days later. We had both stated in our wills that this was our preferred choice and Alice, who attended the service with Vicente, was particularly surprised at the turn out. Apparently our local English radio station had covered ’the story’, and word had quickly spread.
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Over the next few days Alice & Robin ‘brought me up to speed’ (what a horrible saying) on what had happened to me. My recently slipped disc had taken a turn for the worse whilst I had been trying to manhandle the caravan, and it had ‘crumbled’. Surgeons had done what they could, managing to remove most of the shattered disc during the second of my operations, but unfortunately the pieces that remained were far too close to my spinal cord for ‘them’ to attempt removal. It would require Specialists on a far higher pay grade too remove those splinters. The corner of the caravan had crushed my chest, damaging several vital organs, and doing something very nasty to my spleen before leaving me to slump to the ground, so my first operation had been to try and resolve some of these issues, but unfortunately with only very limited success, apparently I was ‘quite a mess’ inside. If that was not bad enough, when I had briefly come round after my second operation (Robin insisted that I’d had enough medication inside me to render a medium sized cart-horse comatose), with all the moving around I tried to do I had somehow twisted my spine slightly, driving some of the remaining splinters even closer to my spinal cord and temporarily paralysing myself, hence a third operation, and all the straps & pillows. After getting the use of my legs back for me the Surgeon’s then tidied up the needlework, and as I was now ‘in a stable condition’, they called it a day. Apparently three operations in two days are not very good for you. One thing that neither of them got around to explaining to me though was when they were going to repair my broken heart.
Roger & Jeannette (our free cuppa friends) had visited me in hospital the day following the accident (although I was still well and truly out of it) and explained to Robin what had happened, and then went on to tell him that after O.K’ing it with a distraught Sheila they had persuaded a Paramedic to lift the motor home keys out of my jacket pocket so they could attend to Bonnie and Clyde. Both the ‘babies’ and ‘Winnie’ were now at their home and would all be well looked after until things were sorted out.
Over the next twenty-four hours (about ten days after the accident) it seemed to me that the entire Senior Medical Staff of the hospital took turns with a new game of ‘Do you want the bad news – or the even worse news’. My spleen had gone, my liver and kidneys were just about irreparable, my intestines (along with my colon) were a mess; and to top it all my back was ‘way beyond their scope of expertise’, although with the amount of drugs that I was on I wasn’t particularly bothered, although it did seem to upset Alice and Robin, they were still taking it in turns to be at my bedside 24/7.
A few days later, as I lay there thinking that things couldn’t get much worse, I sensed rather than heard someone enter the room. As my eyes came into focus I saw a pale, thinish man, about my age gazing across at me from a wheelchair. It didn’t need Alice to introduce me, this was Mr Albright, and if I had somehow forgotten his face (which I never would), the neck brace and wheelchair were a sure giveaway. After very stiffly introducing himself, not all of it down to his brace, George Albright gingerly shook my hand; fortunately all the drips were going into my left arm so that experience was relatively pain free, and after the introductions he thanked me for saving his life.
‘Don’t mention it’ I thought, ‘anyone would have done the same, saved yours, ruined mine - fair swap’. I don’t remember what I actually said but as Alice didn’t give me one of her ‘looks’, I must have utter
ed the right responses.
He then enquired about my injuries, although he seemed to know more about them than I did, he had obviously done his homework, well it was his guilt trip, let him enjoy it. Just as I was about to make some feeble excuse about being tired he came to what seemed to be the main event, ‘apparently in some cultures it is customary for the person that saves another’s life to take responsibility for them thereafter’.
’God’ I thought, ‘now he wants to sue me’; surely things can’t get any worse, but just as I was about to tell him too politely ‘go away and speak to my Solicitor’ (or words to that effect) he went on to explain that he wanted to reverse the custom. He was a very wealthy man, he had more than enough money to last him and his wife for several lifetimes, so it was his wish that as a way of trying to repay me for saving his life, and to compensate me in some small way for my tragic loss he wanted to split his wealth evenly with me 50/50, just like that, oh and to also arrange for me to receive the best medical treatment that money could buy (out of his half – of course). I not so much thought that all my dreams had come true, more ‘get this raving nutcase out of my sight’. I had not only just lost my wife, and nearly my life, but now it seems that I was being forced to lay here and listen to the demented ravings of a deluded, guilt ridden stranger, but I was fortunately saved from doing myself further physical harm by the timely arrival of Robin.
‘Hi Mr Albright’ he chirped ‘I’ve just been speaking with the hospital Administrator; the Air Ambulance will be here within the hour’.
Perhaps I had been just a tad hasty in my initial assessment.
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