I would like to offer my sincere thanks for the excellent and generous (anonymous, but you know who you are!) editorial assistance that I received.
Any grammatical errors, typos and other mistakes are my responsibility and my responsibility alone.
Please, gentle reader, if you want a 100% BTB story, this might not be your kind of thing. So please find a story more to your tastes.
Please note all names in this story have no connection to any persons living or deceased.
And thank you to the team at Literotica for their help and support.
Chapter 1
Life for Myra had settled into a routine. She worked her shift at the hospital from 8am until 4pm, then she sat with Stan for a couple of hours before she went home, showered, ate, did her housework before she retired for the night at 11pm or so. Sometimes she read, sometimes she didn't.
Her relationship with Doctor Raff Bonchance had, unsurprisingly, ceased as suddenly as it had started. Perhaps to save face, they had agreed to at least cool their relationship at least until Stan had made a full return to health.
Raff had told her how sorry he was that her husband had been injured and he wished him a good recovery.
As Raff had given her a chaste kiss on her cheek before he walked away from her, Myra recalled what her friend Wanda had said to her on that dreadful morning when she had found out that her Stan had been injured so badly:
"He's in a shitty way, Myra. An induced coma to minimise the problems caused by his brain swelling. They had to operate too, took a chunk of his skull away due to pressure on the brain. Might recover, might not. Too early to say."
Wanda had looked at Myra. "Anyway, I thought I was supposed to be your best friend? How come you kept your affair with Doctor Cock a secret from me?"
Myra had some decency. She cast her eyes downward, unable to look Wanda in the eye. She spoke, hesitantly. "I just couldn't. I know you like Stan and I thought telling you about their affair would be a bit of a strain on your friendship with him and with me."
So there was even a chance that Stan might die or might need special nursing throughout the rest of his life.
At this stage in her musings, Raff had reached the door of the breakroom. He heard Myra start to cry and he stumbled at the sound of her sobs. But he didn't return to her. He couldn't. He just couldn't. He continued to walk away, stiffly, unshed tears clouding his own vision as he quietly shut the door behind him.
He shook his head. He wondered why he was crying. Was he cracking up? What was wrong with him? He felt angry with himself.
Chapter 2
There he was again, damn it! Wanda had seen Dr Cock skulking round the ITU. Now what in the hell did he need in the ITU? Oh, no! Surely not! Did he intend to finish off Stan, his love rival for Myra?
Wanda shivered at the thought. But it would explain why he kept sneaking into the ITU in such a furtive and secretive way.
She realised that she could put it off no longer. She would now have to report Dr Cock. She asked her friend Sally, the secretary to Doctor Carter, the head of medical services at Ploughlake General Hospital, to arrange an emergency appointment for her with Doctor Carter.
Luckily, he was free that afternoon. Just after lunch (industrial grade catering at its finest) she knocked on Doctor Carter's door and stepped in to his office. "This should be interesting," she thought, as she shut the door behind her.
"Hello, Wanda!" said Doctor Carter, cheerily. He like Wanda Voss. He liked her no-nonsense attitude and he thought her pretty and vivacious. But just not enough to risk his marriage, so he'd never even seriously thought of propositioning her. "Please, take a seat."
He looked at the expression on her face. He realised, intuitively, that he wasn't going to like whatever she had to tell him. But he knew it was something he needed to hear.
"What's wrong, Wanda?"
She shook herself, slightly, before replying. "It's about Doctor Bonchance."
"What about Doctor Bonchance?" said Doctor Carter, evenly. He thought he knew. God, that man was nothing but a liability!
"Has he been intimate with a student nurse, again?"
Wanda shook her head. "No. Worse. He's having an affair with Myra Broxon."
Doctor Carter was shocked. Really, deeply, shocked. He liked and admired Myra and liked her husband Stan, who he had met at a number of fund raising events at the hospital. So this news was a double blow to him.
"Oh, no! Not Doctor Utter-Cock and Myra? That's shocked me. I thought Myra was far too sensible and decent a person to do that across Stan."
Wanda shrugged her shoulders. "Yes, well, so did I. But you never can tell. But that's not the only problem. You might know or not, but as I have been a friend of Myra and Stan for, oh, for ever, I often visit Stan when I can in the ITU, I chat to him, hold his hand, trying to help him 'ground' as it were.
"But, of late, Doctor Utter-Cock has been hanging around the ITU. And I was wondering why he'd do that?"
"Oh, fuck!" muttered Doctor Carter. "You don't think he'd harm Stan, do you?"
"I honestly don't know," replied Wanda, shaking her head slightly. "But if he'd screw his wife and take her on a bloody holiday to Spain, God knows what else he'd do."
"Thank you for telling me, Wanda. We can't have that idiot wandering round ITU when the comatose husband of his latest lover is in there, potentially at his mercy. Don't worry, Wanda! I'll make sure this is dealt with!"
Wanda bid her farewell, happy in the knowledge that Doctor Carter would sort out the problem.
Meanwhile, Doctor Carter was not feeling exactly sanguine about the situation, but he knew he'd have to take action and that it would have to be quick and decisive.
He picked up the phone on his desk and dialled the number of his secretary. "Sally, please arrange a meeting with myself and Doctor Bonchance? Yes. As soon as possible, this afternoon. Thank you."
Even the very act of arranging the meeting made Doctor Carter feel better, as if he'd done something positive and important.
He had. But not even he could realise the significance of what he'd done.
Chapter 3
Stan Broxon had started to exist again.
Following the gradual cessation of the drugs designed to induce a medical coma, he awoke as if he was waking up just like any other morning.
Until he realised that this was not like just any other morning. For today, he thought to himself, was the first day of the rest of his non-life. His life sans Myra, he mused.
Stan was properly awake and his surgeon was explaining things to him. "Stan, we operated on you, we had to cut a small segment of your skull away to relieve the pressure on your brain. We have replaced that with a tiny segment of titanium.
"We'll give you a series of tests which will help us to determine what, if any, damage has been caused and where it has occurred. Do you have any questions for me?"
"Yes, Doctor Davis. Is that nice Harold Wilson still prime minister?"
The expression on the Doctors' face was a classic. He did a double take, before gasping out: "Harold Wilson? But..." then he saw the look on Stan's face and he creased up, laughing. "Stan! You old bugger! You really had me going for a couple of seconds!"
"Yeah, that's me," said Stan "I'm a regular comedian. Look, Doctor Davis, can you tell me how things will be for me?"
"Stan, I am not able to say with any degree of certainty, as yet. We'll need to run those tests on you. Obviously from just chatting to you, it seems your mental acuity and your speech haven't been impacted to any obvious or significant degree. And your sense of humour's still there. Which may or may not be a bonus!
"But as I said, we will need to run a series of tests to find out what you can and can't do. There's a slight chance that nothing has been changed, that you could be able to function pretty much as before, but given the severity of your injuries I have to say that such an outcome would be pretty much miraculous."
Stan suddenly remembered something. "The other man in the accident, what about him?"
"He was dead of a massive heart attack even before his car ran into yours.
"Turns out the poor chap shouldn't even have been at the wheel of his car, but from what we heard from the police, his line manager had made him drive a company car to run some damn fool errand, even though he knew his licence had been suspended due to his heart condition. He was booked in to Ploughlake General for a heart bypass operation the next week, as it happens."
"Shit!" said Stan. "I imagine his widow will have a major case against his employer?"
"You'd expect so. Cajoling him to drive a company vehicle whilst he was medically unfit to do so and when he didn't have a licence was the behaviour of a real fuckwit. I dare say your solicitor might like to take action against his employer, too?"
Stan shrugged. "Maybe so."
Doctor Davis looked at Stan for several seconds before speaking again. "Stan, I hear a little rumour that you and Myra have had a falling out?"
Stan said nothing.
"Just give her a chance to work things out, OK? Anyhow, I have ward rounds so I'll get out of your way and leave you to it. My assistant will be in later to get the assessment process started."