Castles in Spain

Myra Broxon was short, pretty, vivacious and fun. She was in her early 30s and was a senior charge nurse at a large NHS hospital that was just off the M25 London Orbital Motorway. And she had got herself into a bit of a pickle, to be honest.

She had been married to her husband Stan for ten years. She loved Stan to bits, but the problem with hospitals anywhere in the world was that all of the stories that you hear or read about the staff all being a bunch of sex-starved, lust-crazed sluts? Unfortunately, not all of them are untrue.

For some reason (I am sure there's a PhD paper on this subject just itching to be written) infidelity is often rife within hospitals and other allied healthcare facilities.

Myra had always held herself somewhat aloof from her colleagues who she knew were cheating on their clueless spouses. There was Jenny, the nurse in the Fracture Clinic and her "Christmas Kisses" for the handsome surgeons. Everyone knew that Jenny's 'kisses' were far more BJ than CK, but so long as her fireman boyfriend never found out, well, no harm, no foul, right?

And there was Bill the orthopaedic surgeon who thought he was god's gift to women. And according to several of the female staff (married or single!) who had tasted of his wares, he was genuinely something of a gift to women!

Myra's aloofness to the cheaters suddenly changed when a new surgeon came to work at the Ploughlake General Hospital. Dr Raff Bonchance. A name that came from a romance novel and he had a body to match.

With considerable shock she realised that she had fallen in lust with Dr Raff and his Spanish-Irish good looks.

Myra knew the difference between love and lust. She loved her husband, Stan, but she had a strong lust for Dr Cock as he was also known, so popular was he amongst the nursing demi-monde of Ploughlake General Hospital.

Her Stan was, well, he just was! He was her Stan, loveable, loving, dependable. Handsome? Well... up to a point! But maybe just a little, tiny bit boring, too? When she thought this, she felt her face flush.

She felt guilty because she knew it was unfair to compare Stan with Dr Cock. After all, it was not as if she was ever going to do anything about her lust for Dr Cock. Was it?

As often happens, something bad can come out of something good. There had been a major incident on the M25. Three coaches carrying school children had been going clockwise on the Motorway when an HGV on the other carriageway had suffered from a catastrophic malfunction. One of the wheels has sheered off, bounced over the crash barrier and had struck the three coaches like a giant bowling ball, causing them to smash into each other and into the other motorway traffic that mild March morning.

As the nearest hospital Ploughlake General put into action its Major Incident Plan and mobilised as many members of staff as it could using an automated SMS system and an old fashioned telephone tree. The MIP worked as smooth as silk. That was the good thing from which sprang the bad.

Myra and Dr Cock worked together as part of the Post Triage Team, helping to treat the dozens of crying and badly injured children from the three coaches, the drivers and the teachers. All of the staff were running on a heady combination of coffee, Red Bull and adrenalin.

Nearly eight hours straight under those conditions can leave you feeling a little vulnerable. Well, very vulnerable to be honest. You realise that the older man who lost both his legs had, even though he had known that his legs had gone, still maintained the professional dedication to steer the remains of his shattered coach to the hard shoulder of the motorway, thus saving the lives of his passengers. That the small child you had tried so hard, so desperately to treat had gone. They'd miss out on the opportunity for a life, to have children of their own, to love as the adults who had tried, but failed, to treat them, loved.

Feeling keyed up, jazzed and blasted with grief and a dangerous combination of natural hormones and caffeine, the clumsy grope and kiss in a large supply cupboard between Myra and Dr Cock soon degenerated into some serious fucking.

As they lay together, sweating, they realised they had overstepped several very important boundaries.

Straight away the rationalisation hamster began running, running, running in the hamster wheel in Myra's mind. (They had sex because of the terrible situation they had just gone through together, it would not matter, as she would never do it again, so long as Stan never found out, what would be the problem, and so on. And, truth to tell, the equally married Dr Cock was going through similar mental gymnastics, himself in order to justify his actions in cheating on his wife and, by arguable extension, his three children.)

In fact, several months later, and well into the affair between Myra and Dr Cock, which had now progressed -or degenerated, take your pick- into regular fuck sessions wherever and whenever they could manage to find a spare room at the hospital, and a couple of afternoons spent in motel rooms, Myra suddenly found herself shocked that she, aloof Myra, had been in a hot and torrid affair with a colleague and had (so far, so good!) gotten away with it.

In an otherwise empty breakroom on the third floor, Myra spoke with Dr Cock about her dilemma. "Raff, I am in a bit of a bind. I have strong, lusting feelings for you, but I fear that I will somehow never get to know the real you. Of course, I love my husband, Stan, but I lust for you, Raff."

Raff preened himself. What he -and his bevy of lusty nurses- did not know was that whilst some of his lovers call him Dr Cock out of reverential reference to his penis, most of the other doctors preferred to preface his nickname with Utter, such was the contempt that they held him in.

"Well, Myra," he pontificated, "one of the best ways to get to know each other is to go on holiday with each other. I can book a ten day holiday to Spain for us. I'll tell my wife it is for a conference. What do you say? And isn't it time we took our affair to the next level? For you to tell your Stan exactly what is happening? After all, honesty in a relationship is important, I find."

At first she said no, because she was immediately concerned about what her Stan would have to say about that.

But Dr Cock was nothing if not persuasive, so the day before they were due to depart on their holiday, Myra, freshly showered and douched from her lover, was addressing her husband and, as they say, laying it all on him.

Stan sat, shattered, as he had what seemed like pint after pint of warm, liquid bullshit poured into his ears.

She still loved him, he was the only man for her, what she felt for Raff was just lust and nothing more. It was just sex with Raff. And, the next morning, Raff was going to take her on a ten day holiday to Spain.

Stan shook his head: "Well, what about the holiday that we were planning to take later in the year? If you have your ten day summer break now, how can we have a holiday, later?"

Myra frowned. She hadn't thought of that. "Oh! I am sorry, Stan. I guess that little fact must have slipped my mind! Look, you can go on holiday by yourself if you want?"

"Oh, wonderful!" said Stan, bitterly. "My wife gets to fuck her lover whilst she is on holiday with him... and what do I get? A holiday some time later in the year when I can have the exclusive joy of my own company and a bed with no one to share it with! Thanks, 'wife' I'm not really sure I'll bother having a holiday, at all. To be honest, I think that I'd rather forget about a holiday this year and just work through until the end of the fucking year!"

"I'm sorry Stan. I guess I hadn't considered that." She sounded genuinely contrite.

"Anyway, this affair with that bloody doctor, how long has it been going on for?"

Myra's face flushed. When she had spoken with Raff about revealing the nature of her affair with him to her husband, her poor clueless Stan, it had all seemed to reasonable. She'd tell Stan she was going away with her lover and Stan would... what, exactly, had she expected him to do? How had she thought he would react? She suddenly felt an upsurge of love and of empathy for him.

"It's been going on for about three months. I'm only telling you because I don't want to lie to you any more."

"Any how do you think I should react to this insult to me?" said Stan.

"I never intended it to be an insult! Nothing could be further from the truth!"

"That's so much bullshit! And I suppose I should have known you were having an affair, seeing as you have virtually cut me off from sex for the duration of your bloody affair!"

She looked at Stan, nonplussed by what he had said. "But... I haven't cut you off from sex! We often have sex!"

He gave her an odd look before speaking. "Really, 'wife'? Tell me... when was the last time we had sex?"

She paused for a second before responding. "We regularly have sex. Don't we?" Suddenly, she was unsure.

"No, we bloody-well don't!" He snapped. "The last several times you were so bored and distracted I was surprised I could maintain my erection! And the very last time at the weekend? I am sorry, Myra, but to my way of thinking, a half-hearted and distracted attempt to pacify me with a rather weak wank job does not count as sexual intercourse between a man and his wife!"

"Oh, my God, Stan! I am so sorry! I guess what with work and the... and other things... I suppose I must have gotten a little distracted, forgot the really important stuff in my life.

"When I get back from Spain, we will need to talk, I mean really talk. It's possible that my fling with Dr C.... ummm, Raff will be over by then. I'll make it up to you. I swear it."

Stan looked at her. He asked her the one question that she might have hoped that he would not ask. But he asked it. It was only one word, but it helped to shatter the faintly ridiculous construct that she had erected to shield Myra, faithful married woman from Nurse Myra, the sex-starved slut.

"How?"

"How? How what?" she replied, swallowing painfully.

"How will you make it up to me? Will you allow me to have a little fling, too? Will I get to have some mindless recreational fucking to try to help me get over the fact that my wife of ten years is cheating on me? Or will you decide to involve me with your lover in some sordid and dirty three-way sex sessions?"

When he face flushed, Stan realised with disgust that something of the kind must have been discussed by the two lovers.

She looked at the expression on her husband's face and realised that selling him on the idea of actively participating in sharing her with Raff would be a hard sell, if she could ever do it, which seemed increasingly unlikely.

That evening when she asked Stan what he wanted to eat for his evening meal he made her cry. "I don't want anything to eat. Certainly not a meal prepared by you. I can still taste the shit sandwich you made me eat earlier in the day. Besides which, I am not certain I can trust you to cook food for me. I couldn't be certain you wouldn't try to put something in my meal to make me more compliant to your fucking around on me."

She shouted at him: "That's unfair! You know I'd never do anything like that to you! How can you think that of me?"

"Well," said Stan, "I never thought you'd ever take a lover and cheat on me, but one lives and learns, doesn't one?"

She ran upstairs and lay sobbing on their bed. This made Stan feel ambivalent. He felt good that he'd upset her, but felt some guilt that he felt good about it. Complicated? Don't even go there!

He spent a mainly sleepless night, tossing and turning on the bed in the spare room.

The next morning she had her suitcases ready. Stan surprised her by offering to drive her to Luton Airport for her 8.40am flight.

She babbled on, oblivious to the lump of hurt that she had inflicted on him. "Stan, I am really sorry that you have been so upset by this affair of mine. I honestly didn't think you'd mind all that much. My times with Raff have made me feel so happy and fulfilled, and I know that my happiness is very important to you, so I thought that you'd not mind my encounters with Raff.

"Look, I know you must be hurting, and though the idea breaks my heart, I'd allow you to have a little fling if it would make you feel better."

This morning Stan was feeling morose. "Oh, what's the point with that particular stupid fantasy, Myra? I mean, who the Hell would want me? I have no illusions about myself, I can't be that much of a catch if my own wife can't stand me, can I? If you had to take on a lover because I can't get the job done, why would any other woman want me? How could they be satisfied with me?"

Myra suddenly got it. She realised that she had hurt her husband more than she could ever have thought possible. She patted his hand as he drove. "It's not that, Stan, please don't do yourself down. This isn't about any failing in you. It's all down to me. I am really so very sorry, you know."

He shook his head: "I can't even get an STD test done, though I feel I need one. But as the GUM clinic is based at your hospital, how could I deal with the shame and the humiliation of seeing your colleagues, of knowing that they would know what was going on?"

"Oh,you needn't worry about STDs," she replied. "Raff has himself checked out and he is safe, so you don't need to worry on that score. I wouldn't do anything to harm you, physically."

No, just emotionally, he thought, to himself.

He escorted her to check in and kissed her on her cheek and left her there. He noticed her lover skulking about, waiting from him to leave.

He felt angry and humiliated as he left the airport.

He had big plans for Myra and her boyfriend. He was going to go to B&Q and get new locks for the front and back doors and for the garage. He would change the code on the alarm system. He'd book a storage container at a self storage depot that was not far from their home so that he could put her belongings in storage.

He would drive home, try to force himself to eat something (he still didn't feel hungry) and then go to B&Q. After phoning in sick to work.

He phoned in work and left a message on the answer machine as it was still fairly early.

After forcing down a breakfast bar with a glass of water, he went out again to visit the local B&Q and got what he wanted.

He never made it back home. The driver of a car coming the opposite carriageway had a massive heart attack at the wheel. He was dead even before his car smashed into the front of Stan's Rover.

Everything happened in slow motion. Stan felt the give as the part of the car to which his seatbelt was attached disintegrated, as the airbag began to inflate he found himself being propelled through the windscreen, passing over the airbag, out and beyond the once safe cocoon of his car. Then he felt a brief burst of pain and then nothingness became his friend and his sole companion as he smashed into the tarmac.

Ten days later, Myra felt angry and concerned that Stan had not replied to her emails. She had hoped that he would be waiting for her at the airport to meet her from the flight from Malaga. Now she cursed the fact that she had decided to leave her mobile phone at home!

"Maybe he is having a little snit?" said Raff, with more than the hint of a sneer in his tone.

"Maybe I broke his heart?" asked Myra, feeling guilty.

"He'll get over it," said Raff, confidently. "Don't worry. I'll drive you home. However, I won't come in, as I think rubbing his nose in it might not be the wisest of things." Besides, he had to get back to his wife, who was convinced he had gone to Spain for a medical conference.

When she took her suitcase in to the house, it was obvious that Stan wasn't there. Then she realised that she hadn't seen the car parked on the drive.

She was suddenly filled with a sense of dread, of foreboding. What if he had decided to end his life? What if he'd had an accident?

It was then that she noticed the light blinking on the answerphone. She pressed play and listened to the message: "This is the Admissions Sister at the ITU at Ploughlake General Hospital. I am phoning with a message for Mrs Myra Broxon. It is concerning your husband, Stanley Broxon, who has just been brought in to ITU following a car crash. It is now Monday 1st of July, the time is 9am. Please reply to this call or come to the ITU." That was the morning she went away!

When she turned her mobile phone on there was a similar message. Christ! What had she done?

She rushed to the ITU at her own hospital and was ushered in to the room where Stan was being treated. It was all tubes and wires, respirator and bleeping monitors. So different when it was a loved one being treated.

He looked so vulnerable, so sick, just lying there. And she realised that she was to blame for this.

Her colleague, Wanda Voss was on duty. She looked at her, hard. She knew Stan, liked him, and she also knew that Myra had been cheating on him with Dr Cock.

"Don't worry. He didn't try to cark himself over you and Dr Cock. Some old geezer with a dodgy ticker took his car out. 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.

"Does he know about you and Dr Cock?"

"Please!" said Myra, desperately. "I don't want to talk about... that... in front of Stan. I don't want to upset him! But yes, he does."

Wanda gave a hollow laugh. "You don't want to upset him? It's a bit late for that, Myra! Here's a heads up for you. One of the ambulance drivers said that there was a bag from B&Q on the passenger seat.

"There were some nice new locks in it. Looks like he'd got himself a little DIY project whilst you were playing away with your lover. You fucking idiot!"

She stalked out of the room, closing the door behind her. She had had enough of Dr Utter Cock, and was going to report him. This would be the last marriage that arrogant twat shattered, if she had anything to do with it!

Myra went and sat at the chair by the bed. She had not just hurt Stan's feelings. She had betrayed him. And, she now realised, she had betrayed herself, too.

She took Stan's right hand and squeezed it. "I'm here for you, Stan. I am sorry I was away from you for a while, but I am back now."

The room was filled with the sound of the respirator, the bleeps of the monitors and of the sobs of a woman, faced with the brutal consequences of her thoughtless actions.