I'm sitting outside enjoying a glass of shandy in the warm April sunshine. As I sit here enjoying the morning air my scar starts to itch. It is not a large scar, about three inches long, just above the waist on the left side of my back. As I start to scratch the itch it all comes flooding back to remind me where a lie can get you.
Susan and I have been married for seventeen years and for the most part we have been happy. She has blessed me with three wonderful children, Alex, Maddy and Jacob. Susan is four years older than me and I always joked that I was her toy boy. She's attractive, not drop dead gorgeous but most men would give her a second look. She has a nice figure, great legs and a personality that could warm any room. One of the things that really attracted me to Susan was her love of children. Although I often made jokes to the contrary, I really wanted to be a dad.
When we married I was twenty one and Susan was twenty five. Her biological clock was ticking. In those days it was thought if you hadn't started a family by the time you were thirty then you considered adoption. After eighteen months of trying, Susan still hadn't conceived so we started consulting specialists. During this time all our friends were producing offspring and they were all younger than Susan. One of my friends, Gary Dawson, had made his teenage girlfriend pregnant and had to marry her. Susan had all the tests done and everything came back normal. Then it was my turn and here comes the hammer blow, good old Harry Anderson who loves children, had a very low sperm count and it was doubtful that he would ever produce offspring. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't give the woman I loved, the one thing she wanted more than anything else in this world. I would have understood if she had left me but my Susan wasn't like that. She'd made a promise for better or worse and she would see it through.
Whether someone had said something or whether it was just because we'd been trying so long I will never know but my friends started teasing about the lack of children. Gary Dawson was particularly cruel, his wife Sarah was now expecting their second child. Whenever I saw him the topic would come up and he would boast
"I only have to look at a woman and she's pregnant. If you need any help there Harry, give me a call. I mean your Susan is no Sarah but I wouldn't climb over her to get to you. Eh"
I came close to filling that smirking mouth of his with my fist on numerous occasions.
We investigated AID (artificial insemination by donor) and became resigned to that or adoption and we decided to set the wheels in motion. Then one day a miracle happened. Susan rang me at work to tell me she'd just come from the doctor and she was definitely pregnant. Of course, we were overjoyed and Susan was a radiant prospective mother. I worked all the extra hours I could and by the time Alex was born we'd already fitted out a nursery for him.
What is it they say about buses? You wait forever for one then three come along together. So it was with our children. Within two years we had Maddy and a year later Jacob. It seemed old Harry Anderson wasn't shooting blanks after all. We were as happy as people could be. After Jacob we decided three was enough. We'd never bothered about birth control before but now Susan decided to go on the pill. We had ups and down but it's true to say more ups than downs.
This sort of happiness couldn't last and just after Alex turned fourteen our world fell apart. On the way home from school one day he stepped off the kerb and into the path of a large SUV. He was taken to hospital and we were told that he had a few broken ribs, a bad crack on the head and severe bruising around the kidneys. It could've been a lot worse and Susan and I supported each other through the worrying times. I was now self employed designing control systems and doing consultancy work for the telecoms industry. I had a tight deadline coming up so we worked out a shift system for being at the hospital. Susan would do the days so I could work at home, I would take over at 4pm and stay until midnight when she'd come back to spend the night in the hospital. Meanwhile her mother would look after the younger children.
After a couple of days I realised something was wrong. Susan was only giving me sketchy details of what the doctors had said and I sensed she was keeping something from me. When I next came in for my shift I asked her point blank what was wrong with our son. It turned out following the impact from the bull bars on the SUV both kidneys had ceased to function. They'd tried to stimulate them but there were no encouraging signs. Dialysis was an option but not everyone could be helped that way. The hospital had put Alex's name on the transplant waiting list. I thought no more about it.
"Problem solved, he can have one of mine".
Susan burst into tears and said through the sobbing, "Oh Harry, I just knew you'd say that but it's not that simple"
I did my best to calm her down then she explained to me that they had to do tests for tissue type to ensure the new kidney was not rejected. She'd already had a test done and was awaiting the result.
"Fair enough" I said "Who do I see to get my test done?"
"They screen you first "she said "and the best chances of a match come from maternal blood relatives. I've already had my test, Maddy and Jacob are too young."
For the first time in seventeen years I felt Susan was lying to me and I didn't know why. Susan went home to get some rest and I settled in to sit with Alex. He wasn't looking good his body seemed to be puffed up with all the fluids they put into him and he was only conscious for short periods.
That evening they had a medical emergency on the ward and I saw one of the Doctors rushing in. I decided to wait for him and find out more of what was going on. To be fair he looked like he hadn't had a good night's sleep in days so when I confronted him as he left he was, to say the least a little short with me. He told me he had explained all this to my wife, Alex really needed a transplant and the best likelihood of a match came from a blood relation..
"Your wife has already been tested and I asked her to get the boy's father to come in for testing"
"Well that's me Doc, I'm Alex's father"
"Oh No" he said "I mean it's great that you look on him that way, but we need his biological father from your wife's first marriage."
I was so shocked that I just let him walk away. I tried to call Susan several times that night but each time there was no reply. By the time she turned up for the night shift I'd made up my mind not to broach the subject yet. I mentioned that I'd tried to call her and she told me that she was out in the garden and then went round to her mother's. Another lie I'd already called there.
I went home but I didn't get much sleep. The question kept coming up "why would she lie about a previous marriage?" The only answer I could think of was that Alex was not mine and she knew it. The following day I finished the project I had been working on and sent the report down the line to the customer. I rang them and told them I couldn't do a presentation for at least a week but to go ahead and show what I'd done to their techies so they could be ready with questions at the presentation. That left me free during the day.
That afternoon I was back at the hospital by 4pm. Susan was distraught, Her test had come back negative. That only leaves the boy's father I thought, is that where she was last night? I comforted her as best I could and told her to go home and get some rest. I knew in my heart she wouldn't be going home. I waved her off at the hospital door then made a sprint for my car. In the state she was in she wouldn't have noticed me if I'd been right on her bumper.
I was right about her not going home. Instead she drove out to an estate of new houses on the outskirts of town. She pulled up outside one of the houses and just sat in her car. I pulled up about 200 metres behind her and watched. For over an hour she sat there. Just as I was starting to believe nothing was going to happen a black pick up swung into the drive of the house. Susan got out of her car and marched up the drive. I recognised the driver as soon as he got out. I hadn't seen him for a good few years and those years hadn't been kind but as he stood there I could see it was Gary bloody Dawson. I started to feel sick, of all the people to do it with why him?
Susan was now up to the truck and was talking to Gary. I could see him repeatedly shaking his head. Susan dropped to her knees, My God she was begging him. He tried to walk away but she was holding his trousers. That's when I saw him raise his hand. I was out of my car and running full tilt, closing the distance between us. He never did strike Susan, someone appeared at the side door, called to him and he turned and left Susan kneeling in the driveway. Slowly she got up and walked back to her car and I walked back to mine. She must have sat there a good ten minutes before she started the car and drove off. I followed long enough to be sure she was headed home then made my way back to the hospital. I sat with Alex talking to him when he was awake and just thinking when he slept. One thing was sure he wasn't getting any better.
When Susan got back to the hospital she looked awful, as if she'd been crying all evening and all hope taken from her. Even knowing what I knew I still couldn't resist giving her a cuddle and telling her it would be all right. I stayed with her for much of the night. We sat just holding each other and talking about the options. I left the hospital around 3am and went home. I realised that night, whatever I decided to do couldn't be done while Alex was still in the Hospital.
In the clear light of day away from the emotional wrenching I felt I was thinking more clearly. I went up to the attic and searched through all the old photos that we had. After a while I found some of the old crowd we had mixed with in our youth. Sure enough there were some with Gary. I also found a school photo of Alex and compared the two. Same eyes, similar nose and eyebrows, he had Susan's mouth but a sharper chin than either of them. To my untrained eye it looked pretty conclusive. I also found a picture of Susan from just before she was first pregnant she was wearing a bikini and it was obviously a holiday picture. As I looked at the picture I got a warm feeling in my chest. God she was lovely, not catwalk beautiful but had the look that made you want to hold her and protect her from any of life's troubles. I took the photos downstairs and put them under the lid of my scanner for later use. I sat down at my desk and called my brother Bob. He and his wife had a spare room and I was hoping to move into it on a temporary basis. I told him that Susan and I were going through a rough patch and I wanted to give her some space once Alex came out of Hospital. He seemed to swallow it and said he'd talk to his wife but he was sure she would agree.
When I arrived at the hospital both Alex and Susan were looking remarkably brighter. He'd been given his first round of Dialysis and things were looking up.
She looked at me and said "We need to talk, fancy taking me for a coffee?"
I thought, this is it she is going to make a clean breast of it and tell me the whole sordid story. I was wrong. As we sat and drank our coffee she started telling me all about dialysis and how once a patient had settled down and was capable of doing it themselves they frequently installed the machines at home. But it needed a separate room. She wanted to know if I was prepared to give up my office. I was disappointed, she was still going on with the lie.
"Yes, No problem" I said, knowing full well that I would be out by then.
That evening passed well, Alex had perked up no end. He was still strapped up because of the broken ribs and it still hurt him to laugh but he was more like the son I knew. He was asleep by ten so I got out my laptop and made a list of things to do. Set up personal bank account, get new phone, talk to solicitor, move stuff out, Kill Gary.
Susan was late that night and didn't arrive until 1.00 am. She looked better than she had for a week and had obviously been sleeping. I went home and slept well for the first time in three days. I was awakened by the telephone at half past nine It was my brother, yes they would be happy for me to stay and was there anything they could do to help Susan and I get over our problems. I thanked him and asked if I could start bringing my stuff over at about five that evening. He agreed and I let him get back to work. By the time the day was over I'd set up a personal bank account and transferred a third of the funds from our joint accounts into it. I had bought a new phone and started copying my contacts across to it. I'd also set up an appointment with a solicitor for the following day. When I arrived at my brothers house and started unloading he was a bit surprised.
"Whoa Harry. This looks like a lot of stuff for just a few days. You are planning on going back aren't you?"
"I don't know Bob. I just don't know but I am going to have to work out of here for a while, if that is O.K.?".
He said it would be and I set off for the hospital.
Susan and Alex were both in fine fettle when I got there and didn't even complain about me being late. Alex was so much better that Susan had decided to spend the night at home in our own bed.
