The shy pimply-faced boy sitting across from me was fourteen. He sat uncomfortably and fidgeted with his hands until he looked up at me embarrassingly and said, "I know that you're my real dad, but it feels really weird to actually call you, 'Dad'."
The tears welled up in my eyes and I could feel the back of my throat tightening up. That seemed to happen to me a lot lately. "I know Tom. It's been a while for me too. You know when you were born, your mum and I called you Thomas, but you were so tiny, we nick-named you, 'Tom Thumb'." The memories threatened to overwhelm me at that point and I had to take a breath. "Tell you what, for now, how about you just call me 'Uncle Bill'? Does that sound easier?"
Tom nodded his head and looked at the other person in the room. She was Jane Seymore, a court appointed counsellor. It was her job to ascertain if this arrangement was going to work. Jane made more notes in the pad on her lap and turned to me. "Mr Yates, there are a few things that we need to get organised before this can go ahead. You do know that it will require you to live permanently in Tom's house, don't you? It might present some problems for you, given the circumstances, but the court has determined that it is necessary for the stability of Tom's situation. How long would it take to get yourself settled in?"
I looked at her and nearly bailed out of the agreement, but I knew it had to be. It had to be for Tom's sake. "I can have my gear packed and ready in two hours," I replied. I was going to add that I only lived in a one bedroom flat and everything I owned fit easily into two suitcases.
"Very well then Mr Yates. I will inform the judge presiding over this case that in my opinion, the arrangement could work. If you get organised your end, we, that's Tom and I, can meet you at Tom's house, say at noon?" She got up and Tom followed her out to the reception area. Bridgetown General Hospital. That's where we were. I knew this place in better times. Times when I would wait patiently for my then wife, Evonne, to finish her shift and we would go home like two excited teenagers. Home to our house. The one that we paid a deposit on two weeks after we were married. The house that Jane now called 'Tom's home'.
Now, this hospital is home to two people I would rather not have to think about. One was my lying, cheating whore of an ex-wife, Evonne. She is in intensive care in a coma. One that the doctors say she may not get out of. The other is John Hampstead III. That low-down, lying bastard who stole Evonne from me in a cold, cruel long-term strategy. He was now lying on a stainless steel tray entombed in a cubicle in the hospital morgue, three floors below where I now stood. I knew that it was tempting the fates to talk or think ill of the dead, but I couldn't help myself. "Good riddance!" I muttered.
The vehicle accident that caused this was reported on the local news the night before. If I had owned a television set, I most probably would have been forewarned that something was about to happen. But I didn't own one, so the first I heard of the 'arrangement', was when Jane approached me at my work. "Mr Yates? Mr Bill Yates? I need to speak to you urgently on court assigned business."
"Oh great!" was my first thought. "Mrs, Ms, Miss, Jane, Seymore is it?" I asked as I glanced at her name tag. "I have served my time and am trying to get on with my life, such as it is. What on earth could the court want of me now? I own nothing, have no savings to think of and don't owe anybody anything."
Jane looked exasperated as she ushered me away from the other mechanics working on the same car that I was. "Mt Yates, your wife, I mean ex-wife is in a serious condition in hospital. Your biological son, Tom is fine. They were all involved in a car accident yesterday morning. Tom needs a carer."
"What about that asshole, I mean bastard John Hamster the ninety-ninth or something. Hasn't he been doing a wonderful job of raising my son to be Tom Hamster the fourth? Why can't he look after him just as he has been?"
"He's dead Mr Yates. He died in the accident. As you know, there is no other family on either your ex-wife's side, or on Mr Hampstead's side. There is no one able to look after Tom, unless he is put into state care in one of the town's orphanages. There are no foster families which we can place him into either. You're his last hope for a carer."
I sat down with the enormity of this situation. I had not seen, nor heard from Tom in over twelve years, since he was two. Since I had discovered that my wife Evonne was having an affair with that bastard. Evonne had only just begun work at the hospital again. Nursing was a job that she loved and they offered her just night work, so that she could be home for our little 'Tom Thumb'. I was always there to cover the rest of the time until it was time for me to head to the garage where I worked as a mechanic. Unknown to me was the fact that the main reason that she was offered the night work was that bastard, aka John Hampstead III, also worked nights. He was the one who interviewed Evonne for the job. Obviously, he liked what he saw in Evonne. She always was a looker in an innocent child-like way. Childbirth had not affected her body shape at all, except maybe adding a few centimetres to her previously perky tits.
Everything worked well for a few months. Evonne would come home excited when one of her patients recovered from this or that. She would also come home in tears when one of her patients succumbed to their injuries or illnesses. She needed a lot of comforting then and a large silent ear to talk to. That was me!
A change happened about four months in. Cliché upon cliché, but she spent just a little more time at work, blaming hospital emergencies. This often rushed me in the mornings to get to work and was a real pain in the butt, but I sucked it up for Evonne's sake.
The next strange pattern of behaviour was that she would rush to the shower as soon as she arrived home, blowing me a kiss from afar instead of the usual hug and kiss that was our routine. The shower was to get rid of hospital germs she informed me one day. I wondered why the germs suddenly got worse that month than from two months ago, but again I just sucked it up. For Evonne's sake. I guessed she knew what she was doing!
The third and final change to our usual pattern of relating, was that we never made love on any day that she worked. We used to have time for some loving in the evenings when Tom was having a rest and after I got home from work. She didn't start her shifts until ten o'clock, so we had time then. I commented about the change and how it worried me, but she just blew me off by saying that we weren't teenagers anymore. Her tone was displaying a real denigrating attitude at this time. Once, she commented, "Is that all that you mechanics think about? Getting lucky with their wife?"
"Where did that come from?" I wondered. The penny was beginning to drop that there was something going on. I had to do some investigating here! With a few carefully worded questions to her work buddies, I found out that lately, Evonne and bastard John were spending all of their break times together. "Where?" I asked. I did not like the answers. Sometimes they were in the hospital café, sitting together in a quiet corner. Sometimes, and this is the one that finally nailed it for me, sometimes, they just disappeared for the whole break time and re-emerged from some room or other, holding hands and walking that slow walk that usually follows intimacy of some kind. I was also told that they would always finish their shifts in John's office. The door was always locked during this meeting.
"OK!" I thought. "Time to bring on the fire!" I had read enough internet stories to know that I had to protect my finances before instigating a divorce, so that is what I did. I hid money, I changed policies, all the usual BTB type stuff! I even managed to creep into the hospital one morning when Evonne and the bastard were having a so-called meeting. It was difficult to do this with a sleepy two-year old in my arms at the time! At least having Tom with me, allayed any suspicious looks. They didn't see me when they emerged from bastard's room later, but I knew my wife enough to see that she had been fucked. That certain look in her eyes, that certain swagger of her hips as she walked, the loose way she moved her legs told me everything I needed to know. I went home a broken man. Now the hatred that built in me demanded that I do more than protect myself in the looming divorce.
