Adultery When We Were Married by DanielQSteele1

[Ramesh_Rocky]

SEPTEMBER 24, 2005 -- 6 P.M.

I lay back in a hospital bed in the St. Vincent’s Medical Center trauma ward. I was laying on my side which was not all that comfortable, because a fairly good plastic surgeon had stitched up the back of my head last night after they had brought me in.
The bullet that Smith had tried to put into my brain had come just close enough to breaking through my skull - about as close as the width of a sheet of typing paper one doctor had said - that they felt duty bound to run CAT Scans and MRIs and all that other crap to make sure there wasn’t any damage up to and including possible swelling of the brain as a result of the trauma.
Then there was the little matter of a concussion and a coma after my defense of Debbie had nearly gotten me killed the first time. I hadn’t thought about that in a long time and it had never caused any residual problems except for a tendency to get headaches if I spent too much time reading or didn’t get enough sleep. But that’s what they invented Tylenol for and I’d never worried much about it.
Another ongoing effect has been what they called painless migraines, where brightly colored light flashes migrate across my field of vision. These were also triggered by exhaustion or overuse of my eyes and I’d had doctors tell me they might be inconvenient but not dangerous.


However, the doctors who examined me in the St. Vincent’s emergency room and the specialists up in the head trauma ward were concerned that brain damage could have been caused by the compound effects of the old and new traumas.
So, for the last 24 hours, they’d put me through every damned diagnostic test I’d ever heard of and some I hadn’t. They’d sewed up the back of my head after implanting some artificial cow bone to fill in the large groove so I wouldn’t look like a real freak, and kept me from having more than half an hour of uninterrupted sleep at any one time.
I kept drifting off from time to time. In snatches of dream pieces of the previous night and today came drifting in and out of my consciousness.
NOON
“Dad. Dad.”
BJ and Kelly walked quickly across the private room that the Big Man had procured for me. Debbie walked behind them. Three nurses hovered around. My head was covered in bandages where the plastic surgeon had tried to repair the damage from Smith’s bullet. The drugs they’d given me kept me flashing in and out.
I could read the looks on both their faces so I smiled at them.
“It’s okay. I look a hell of a lot worse than I really am. I just got a graze across the back and side of my head and they went and sewed it up.”
When they reached me, BJ grabbed my hand, the one with a needle stuck in it, while Kelly stood behind him and grabbed the other.
I couldn’t help tears appearing in my eyes.
“It’s okay, guys. It’s lucky your mom was there last night. Everybody thought I was dead until she showed up and brought me back to life.”
Both of them looked back at her where she stood silently. I read the glances and I could almost feel sorry for her. She’d ended her life with me and she’d done damage I hadn’t realized to her relationship with the children. I’d wanted her to pay for what she’d done, and only now did I realize that she really was paying for her actions and might for a long, long time.
There was a time I would have loved it, but those emotions had been growing more muted as time went by and I realized that I wanted her to have a good relationship with them. It didn’t take away or change anything between us, but they needed a mother.
“Dad, you gotta stop doing stuff like this,” BJ said, “I got enough flak about you when they started calling you the Angel of Death, but now - I’m never going to get any action if every girl I try to hook up with is afraid that Heaven’s going to be watching us every step of the way.”
Kelly half-heartedly slapped him on the shoulder.


“He’s such an idiot Dad, but he’s right. You gotta stop getting into situations like this. I’m supposed to worry about keeping gold diggers and whores away from you, not letting them take advantage of you because you’ve been out of the scene for so long, without having to worry about whether some cop is going to shoot you.”
I’d been able to stem the flow of tears without looking too stupid. I shook my head as much as I could and said, “I’m sorry guys. I never expected things would turn out this way but it’s what I do. Nothing like this will probably ever happen again.”
“He’s right,” Debbie said, the first words she’d uttered since entering the room, as she walked up to my bed. “We were married for nearly 20 years and he’s worked as a prosecutor for more than 10 years - nothing like this has ever happened before. It probably won’t ever happen again.”
We exchanged glances that the kids didn’t pick up on and I knew she knew about the Welaka Cannibal and his threats, and probably other things I’d always foolishly thought I’d protected her from. I’d come to realize she knew more about my life than I’d ever thought. Maybe if I hadn’t tried to protect her...
I shut the thought off. What was done was done and I couldn’t change the past.
The phone rang. They were supposed to screen my calls and leave messages at the front desk because the damn thing had rung almost continuously most of the night until the hospital administration let the nurses on call know to hold ALL calls and simply give me a list every few hours, and that only because I’d insisted. Ninety percent were media calls, a few were from people at the State Attorney’s or Public Defender’s Offices and one was from Sheriff Knight. Nothing that I couldn’t call back on.
A moment later an attractive brown-haired nurse, who looked to be in her late 30s or early 40s, walked in quickly and leaned over, whispering in my ear.
“The call was from a gentleman who said you would know him as The Old Man.”
She stared at me with the first beginnings of alarm on her face.
“He told me my home address, what music my daughter is listening to on her IPOD in her bedroom, and. ”
Tears welled up in her eyes and she leaned in closer, whispering with a glance at Debbie and the kids.
“He......told me.....about the affair I’m having with a friend of my husband. We’ve only met on Fridays when my husband is out of town. Nobody in the world knows about it except...the man and myself. The....Old Man said if you didn’t pick up his next call my husband will receive photographs of  my friend
and I. ”