Pictures Never Lie: A Love Story Pt. 09

To say that I was in pain, as I held my wildly struggling wife, would be a vast understatement. I have cried exactly twice in my life, both times when each of my parents died. But I was absolutely sobbing with relief and fury as I held her.

Eventually her writhing started to die down and I let her lie back on the bed. Lance was still out cold but he had started to moan. I had a feeling that once he came around he would be screaming.

I called 911 again and asked them for an ETA. They told me that two busses plus the police were about 2 minutes out. I told them to come directly to our master bedroom and to bring the stretchers.

I opened the front door to the storm. The blue and red lights of the arriving vehicles reflected on the walls of my hallway. There was the noise and bustle of first responders arriving at a scene.

I was back to standing outside our room as the EMTs brushed past me, all focused efficiency.

The first team in the door rushed over to Janet, who was totally unconscious at this point. The second team attended to Lance, who was starting to come around.

I could hear him begin to cry-out in agony. The EMT's got him on the classic wheeled stretcher and strapped him down prior to sedating him.

The guy who was obviously the lead EMT came up to me with one of the cops. He said, "What happened?"

I said in a totally matter-of-fact voice, "I found him raping my wife and I kicked him in the crotch to get him off of her. I didn't mean to hurt him but I was defending her."

The EMT looked at Lance like he was dog-shit on the bottom of his shoe and said, "You actually hit him right where you should to accomplish that. He is going to be very sore for a long time but you didn't damage his scrotum. He's lucky. Most husbands would have aimed for the balls."

I said mildly, "I was just trying to get him off of her, not seriously hurt him. I'm really not a fighter." I added, "My wife has been drugged, I heard him mention Rohypnol and Ecstasy as I came in the room."

The head EMT looked even more disgusted and said, "Unfortunately we have started to see a lot of that. It will wash out of her system and she won't remember anything. In the meantime we will get her into a nice safe hospital bed where she can sleep it off and get a rape-kit and blood panel for the police."

I thanked him and the EMT's began to move the two semi-conscious people out to their busses. Then the inevitable questions started from the two cops.

I told them that I had come home to the sounds of wild sex coming from our bedroom. I had rushed in like the aggrieved husband that I was, to find Lance on top of my wife and had reflexively kicked him to get him off of Janet.

I wanted the cops out of the picture and so I had decided to play the role of the frightened older man facing a much larger younger man.

The picture I was drawing was of a humble 50 year old guy defending his home from an intruder and after a few perfunctory questions the cops bought it.

I said mildly, "He was a lot bigger than me and I didn't think that I could stop him any other way."

I was getting a distracted, "Yeah-yeah-yeah" from them. They had a much more significant fish to fry. It was obvious that they wanted to get to the hospital, so they could start the process of collaring Lance for rape.

Of course I didn't mention the Asp, which was already neatly tucked away in the back of my closet. That might have tilted the picture in a direction I didn't want it to lean.

They all left and I noticed for the first time that I was completely soaked and freezing to death. I was also in my own version of shock.

This was about as traumatic a situation as I have ever been in. And as far as I was concerned my only plan was to take a hot shower and get down to the hospital to comfort my wife.

I didn't know what I felt. I consider myself to be a strong minded guy and there was no way I was going to let a slimy mother-fucker like Lance impinge one iota on my feelings for Janet, or my marriage. I was certainly not feeling cuckolded, as I had with Murphy.

I saw Janet as nothing more than a helpless victim of a really vile human being. You would have to be a complete psychopath to think that she had enjoyed being raped. Her wild response to him was just the basic human animal under extreme sexual stimulation.

In fact, I was actually back to irrationally blaming myself for the whole thing. I think I felt like a lot of men feel when something happens to their mate, "I should have been there for her."

That thought DID reinforce what I had already decided. We would never be apart again; at least as long as I was upright and breathing.

I took a hot shower to stop the uncontrolled shaking and dressed in something comfortable for what I knew would be a long sleepless night at her bedside. The storm had abated and by the time I parked in the lot next to Huntington's ER I was feeling almost normal.

I checked in at the nurse's station and the kindly and very efficient person who was manning it got all the necessary insurance information. She said that both Janet and Lance were in rooms and that they were being attended to. She told me to take a seat and that the doctor would be with me shortly.

I sat there nervously waiting. I had no idea what the effects of any of those drugs would be on Janet and I was also wondering if my story about Lance would hold up.

When they got around to taking a serious look at him it would be hard to believe that my shoe could cause the damage that I knew they would find.

The doctor came into the waiting room a short time later. To my ancient eyes he looked like Doogie Howser; maybe 14 years old. He also had the tired, but measured air that most ER Docs have.

He dropped into the chair next to me and said, "We have examined your wife and gotten her blood down to the lab. If it is as I suspect there will be no long-term repercussions.

"Short term she will feel like she has a vicious hangover and she is going to want to sleep most of the day tomorrow.

"The good news is that the fetus was not harmed in any way."

I felt a liberating wave of relief wash over me as I processed his statement

And then the little voice in my head did a double take and said, "EXCUUUSE ME! Did he just say FETUS?"

I said out loud, "I must have misheard you. Did you say that my wife is pregnant???!!"

He said, "Yes, approximately two months. Didn't you know?"

I said, "But that's impossible, we can't have children!"

He said, "I would have to look at your medical history to determine that. But the fact is that your wife is carrying a first trimester baby."

I was on automatic pilot as I thanked the Doc. He said, "I can take you back to her room if you would like. We allow spouses to spend the night if they so desire." I most definitely, so desired.

A lot had changed in the past two hours. She looked like Snow White now. Her beautiful face was composed and peaceful. Her hands were resting at her side next to her. Her gorgeous body, with those huge tits was starkly outlined underneath the tightly wrapped hospital blanket.

According to the doctor they had done nothing but sedate her and make her comfortable for observation. There was an IV drip running but I think it was intended to just keep her hydrated. It might also have been administering more sedative.

I walked to the side of her bed and looked down at her. I just stared. Her face is so classically beautiful and lying there she looked SO sweet and innocent. She was my angel and I had done this to her.

I pulled a chair next to the bed, sat down and took her hand and started to cry again. God! I hoped everybody stayed out of the fucking room until I stopped sniveling. Real men don't do things like that. But real men DON'T put their wives out there for the predators to feast on and I had done THAT.

What I had accomplished was a perfect example of my personal brand of hubris. I had overthought things as usual, which is my fatal flaw.

From her initial reaction all of my instincts told me that she was a victim, not a perpetrator. And I knew that I loved her with all of my worthless heart.

But she had hurt me. So, my male ego insisted on a bullshit mind-game in order to take an obligatory piece off of her.

I even knew at the time that what I was doing was nothing more than childish petulance. The fact that I had followed through on the separation was just my failure to accept reality and act on the only thing that was important, which was that I loved her and she loved me.

Given that simple fact, a REAL man would have immediately gotten his feelings under control, as hard as that might have been at the time, and done the right thing, which was to move on.

I promised myself, "This is the end of the line. It all stops here."

She was pregnant now. I had no reason to think that it WASN'T my baby. We had some very vigorous sex in the window when the conception took place.

Of course we had spent years trying to get her pregnant and the medical establishment had made it clear to us that we would never conceive a child.

We both had fully functioning equipment. But there was something about blood type, mismatched enzymes and PH, which in our specific case prevented things from coming together.

It was all medical mumbo-jumbo to me. I just couldn't wrap my mind around it. Janet is a lot more knowledgeable than I am when it comes to the complexities of female technology; and what the doctors had told her seemed to answer her questions.

Of course, the thought had immediately hit me that she probably would be able to conceive with somebody else's contribution and she HAD also gotten one of those in the time-frame we were talking about.

But then again, that was still in the realm of speculation. The only way we could ever find out for sure was to have the baby's paternity tested and that was the LAST thing we were going to do.

I am aware that the term "cuckold" is derived from the odd habit of the cuckoo of laying its eggs in other bird's nests, and then leaving them for the other bird to take care of.

And frankly I gave not a damn whether the person who impregnated Janet was me or Murphy, since as far as I was concerned nurture was going to far outweigh nature.

This child would be my progeny in every respect, except the possibility that its genetic material might not be mine.

Parenthood is a much more profound life-experience than the trivial question of who the sperm-donor was. And I would never know for sure who had contributed the DNA that made my kid, because I had made the conscious decision never to find out.

Whoever this little person would turn out to be would be the sum of Janet's and my parenting. I would love that child with every fiber of my being until the day I died, just as I did its mother.

So, I made the decision that its actual paternity would never be an issue. That baby would be ours and ours only.

Consequently, I treated the doctor's news with the respect and joy it deserved.

Of course I still had the matter of Janet's rape to deal with.

In my mind it would be a timing issue. The news about the child would be a bombshell and I was certain she would go to the same place that I had when she learned that somebody had knocked her up.

I would be insanely cruel to drop the whole thing on her in one helping. If the doctor was correct, Janet would not remember anything about the actual rape. Her last memories would be some time in the prior evening. There might be some flashes of later happenings but those would be in her brain's short term memory and they would be quickly overwritten as soon as she began to record memories again.

I made the decision to bring her back through that route. If she had been poisoned she would not blame herself for dropping dead. I wanted her to understand that this was exactly the same situation with a date-rape drug.

My aim would be to have her understand that she was not responsible for anything that had transpired and if worse-came-to-worse I could play a heavily redacted version of the recording that I had made to reinforce that.

THEN I would drop the other thing on her. Of course my begging her to be allowed to come back home would also be an emotional happening. But we had been working on that already and it was anticipated.

So I was hoping it would be nothing more than a mere ripple compared to the reason why she was lying here in drug induced unconsciousness. THAT was the MAIN issue.

The prosecution of this dude was going to be excruciating and it would be her call as to what she wanted to do with him. But I am wealthy enough to hire the kind of legal counsel that can flay the hide off the guy and then give it to me as a bathmat. That was going to happen for certain.

The cops walked in as I was dozing in the chair, which I had placed next to her bed. I was still holding her hand as it rested on top of the covers.

These guys were detectives, not uniforms. The guy who was obviously the senior investigator said, "We just have a couple more questions for you."

I said, "I'd be happy to answer any questions you have, detective."

The cop said, "We haven't been able to talk with the man who you claimed was raping your wife. They have him totally under for the pain. You really did a number on him."

I thought, "Not as much as I wanted to and there is still plenty more where that came from." But instead I just nodded with my best frightened middle age male, non-entity look on my face.

The cop said, "Walk us through this again. He is obviously going to claim that your wife invited him in and that was what you interrupted."

I said, "I have it recorded. It was rape. You can have the recording."

The cop looked super-suspicious and said, "You record your wife?"

I had to deflect his suspicion from Janet and there was no better way to do that than to play the fool. So I made up a little fairy tale.

I said, "We are undergoing a trial separation. I did some foolish things in the past but I am working to have her forgive me. I might be a little on the insanely jealous side, but I don't really trust the bitch while we are apart. How could you REALLY trust a woman as beautiful as she is?" and gestured toward my sleeping angel.

I added, "So I put a voice activated recorder in her bedroom just to make sure that she wasn't doing to me what I had done to her. I have it wired to the internet and I check it once in a while.

"There has been nothing on it since we split up; until tonight. I caught the whole thing. That's why I was Johnny on the spot in the first place"

I pushed "play" on my smartphone.

The cops heard the desperation in Janet's voice as she mumbled "call 911". Then they heard Lance's smug voice say, "No need to do that my dear. What you just ate was my own personal concoction of Rohypnol and Ecstasy in a tasty Ricotta filling.

"I see you enjoyed it and it IS harmless and undetectable once it's passed out of your system. You won't remember anything in the morning. But I can guarantee that you will totally love what's going to happen to you TONIGHT."

I shut off the recorder. I could see the cops were utterly convinced. The lead guys said with contempt, "I don't know what kind of creep bugs his own wife. But this is pretty damning evidence.

"We'll put the guy under hospital arrest while we decide what to charge him with. In the meantime we might want to talk with both of you again when we get the blood panel and rape kit back. The Doc says she should be back to normal in one, or two days."

I said with steel in my voice, "We will talk with you when Janet is ready to do that and no sooner. In the meantime talk to my lawyer. It isn't that I don't want to cooperate with you guys but my wife's health and well-being are my first priority."

Then I added with fake concern,"Will there be any problems about what I did to him?"

The cop thought about it for a second and looked at his partner who nodded. He said, "No, you were just defending her from a predator in your own house. And you only kicked him once. That's right isn't it?" and he gave me a penetrating stare.

It was obvious that he didn't think one middle aged man could cause that much damage with his shoe.

I said, with the mildest and most innocent face I could muster, "I only kicked him once. But I kicked him as hard as I COULD. He WAS a lot bigger than me you know? I guess it was just a lucky shot."

Then I looked at him with phony concern plastered on my face and said with my most convincing fake sincerity, "I really didn't intend to hurt him that badly".

The cop nodded and said, "No, there won't be any further questions about his injuries. He got what he deserved."

Then he and his partner turned and left. I felt totally vindicated.

I went back to dozing in my chair. I had never let go of Janet's hand all the time the police and I were talking.

I was actually asleep for several hours. I have a perception over that time that hospital staff came and went. Sometime during that period I had dropped Janet's hand.

I awoke to light shining in through the window of the room. It looked like a beautiful sunny morning. I glanced in Janet's direction. I could see that she was awake and anguish and confusion were written all over her face.

I got up, poured a glass of water and walked over to the bed and handed to her. She took it and gulped the entire glass down.

Her tone of voice was panicked as she said, "Where am I? What happened?"

I said, "Shhhhhh my love. We have a lot of catching up to do."