Reabled

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real people, whether living or dead, is purely coincidental.

*

The Scottish city of Aberdeen prospered during the boom years of North Sea oil and gas. With a deep water harbour close to the offshore action, Aberdeen became the main UK supply base and operations centre. As a temporary home to oil and gas industry experts from the USA and other countries, 'The Granite City' also became known as 'The Houston of the North'.

Extraction of North Sea oil and gas was still a big deal in Aberdeen early this century, when Brooks Rogers arrived from Houston, Texas. His father was chairman and chief executive of Rogers Oil and Gas Company. Brooks had no siblings, so some day in the future he would end up in charge of ROGCO. Brooks was in his mid-thirties and old man Rogers had decided it was high time he grew up and started learning how to run the business. He chose one of his most experienced and trusted employees as a mentor for Brooks. That mentor was the ROGCO regional director in Aberdeen.

Apart from learning about offshore oil and gas extraction 'in the field', old man Rogers reckoned temporary exile in what he considered a one horse town compared to Houston would straighten Brooks out. The change of scenery would do him good and, unlike his easy life in Houston, there would be no boozing with bozo beer buddies or banging blonde bimbos in bikinis. On the other hand there were plenty of great golf courses in Scotland and Brooks could work on improving his golf game.

Repetitive strain injuries are fairly common in sports where the participants wield some sort of implement, like an oar, a golf club or a tennis racquet. Unfortunately, if you persist in holding the implement of your choice slightly the wrong way, you could end up with an RSI and a visit to the minor injuries unit at your local hospital.

At Aberdeen General Hospital the male members of staff in the minor injuries unit were divided about which of their female colleagues was the most attractive. Some thought it was the cute little blonde nurse with the big tits, but others favoured the young redhead with the long legs and pert backside.

Getting his sprained wrist put in a sling meant Brooks couldn't play golf for a few weeks, but it gave him the opportunity to bag a date with one of the nurses. Brookes liked blondes, but back in Houston there was no shortage of blondes, so a blonde nurse was nothing special. On the other hand, a beautiful Scottish redhead was a novelty for Brooks and therefore worth pursuing, even if only out of curiosity.

As they got to know one another in the weeks and months that followed, Brooks discovered his red-haired girlfriend had all the qualities he would want in a wife. She was great in bed, dressed well and had excellent social skills and a good sense of humour. With her on his arm they were the centre of attention wherever they went.

For her part, she was sure he was a great catch, even if he was a bit loud and boisterous on occasion. Oh well, she thought to herself, I suppose you can take the boy out of Texas, but you can't take Texas out of the boy. More importantly, he was very well off financially, which boded well for her future, and he never failed to ring her chimes when they made love. Although he was ten years older than her she decided the age gap didn't matter if they loved one another.

Brooks' return to Houston was triumphant. Not only had he shaped up well in business and brought back some good ideas, but he also brought back a beautiful and charming fiancée. Old man Rogers was tickled pink that Brooks had done some serious growing up. The subsequent wedding in Houston was a grand affair, attended by various movers and shakers in the energy sector, as well as members of both families, including half a dozen of the bride's close relatives who were flown in from Scotland at the expense of old man Rogers. The bride's mother was a widow, so it was her older brother who walked her down the aisle.

*

August is the hottest month of the year in Houston.

It was Friday afternoon and despite the heat she expected her husband would be playing a round of golf with his buddies, working up a sweat together and then slaking their thirst at the nineteenth hole. Their two young sons, Donald and Douglas, were at summer camp, so she had some free time on her hands. Maybe she could do the minor housekeeping chores that the maid service didn't cover and then relax later with a cold drink in the shade of a parasol by the pool.

She was annoyed with herself for driving all the way to the hospital before remembering she had swapped shifts with Loretta and had the day off. If the hospital had been busy she would have stayed to help, but things were quiet. Perhaps that would change and it would get busier in the months and years ahead if President Obama's healthcare scheme had any impact. People in Texas were still getting used to the idea of having a black president and she avoided getting drawn into any conversations about politics.

The aircon was humming busily when she opened the front door of their apartment, but the alarm system remained obstinately silent. Perhaps Brooks hadn't gone golfing after all. She checked the large, open plan lounge, but there was no sign of him. Shifting her attention towards the kitchen, she turned to leave the lounge and almost missed the pair of ladies' sandals beside the coffee table. Snagged in her peripheral vision, the unfamiliar objects immediately raised her suspicions.

She hurried to the master bedroom, silently pleading, "Please don't let this be what I think it is!", but her plea went unheeded. Opening the bedroom door, she found Brooks frantically fucking Dolores 'Deedee' Dartington, a pneumatic bleached blonde neighbour. No one could say for certain whether the 'Deedee' nickname derived from the alliteration of her name or the size of her boobs.

Their clothes scattered on the floor, the fornicators were kneeling naked on the king-sized bed, facing the door, as Brooks vigorously took Deedee from behind. Leaning on her back with his right arm, Brooks' left hand grasped Deedee's massive left tit as he humped her.

For a brief moment all three of them froze in place, staring in startled surprise at one another. In the stunned silence that followed, Brooks nervously backed off Deedee, who hurriedly grabbed her clothes and started getting dressed.

As the immediate shock wore off, she finally found her voice, angrily shouting at the blonde woman struggling to get dressed. "Get your skanky ass out of here, Deedee, and stay away from my man or you'll be sorry."

She slammed the bedroom door shut behind the rapidly retreating Deedee and turned to her husband.

"I can't believe you would do something like that, Brooks. What the hell were you thinking? If it wasn't for the boys I'd be gone. They're too young and I'm not going to break up our family just because you couldn't keep your hands off Deedee's double dees. But I'm warning you; you better be on your best behaviour from now on. Make no mistake; if you do anything like this ever again, I'll be gone so fast you won't see me for dust!"

*

The Lake Club (TLC) is arguably the most prestigious of Houston's gated communities. Purchasing an expensive townhouse at TLC cost Brooks a small fortune, but it was part of the penance he paid in the wake of the Deedee disaster.

Over the next years, Brooks was careful to avoid any serious disagreements with his wife, apart from his insistence on enrolling their sons at the same boarding school to which he himself had been sent as a teenager. His wife eventually agreed, although she was concerned the private prep school might give their boys a superiority complex. To mitigate that risk she made efforts to teach Don and Doug about caring and sharing whenever they were home from school.

In addition to its award-winning townhouses and apartments, TLC includes an eighteen-hole golf course designed by a world famous professional golfer, with a massive multi-level clubhouse on a lakeside setting, a swimming pool and tennis courts. The clubhouse boasts a range of facilities, including a pro shop, changing rooms, a health spa and plunge pool, a 'Nineteenth Hole' bar, a cocktail lounge, a BBQ restaurant and a cordon bleu restaurant with a resident chef de cuisine.

Security is tight at TLC and visitors have to check in and wait at the entry gate until vouchsafed by a resident or an authorised senior member of staff. There are meticulous records of comings and goings, with dates and times. The data is confidential, but extracts relating to individual residences can be made available to the owners of those properties on request.

When the Covid19 pandemic swept the country in 2020, she worked long hours at the hospital, sweating it out in her PPE as the staff tended the sick and the dying. To avoid risking infecting others she spent months living in a temporary accommodation unit for nursing staff, located close to the hospital. In the meantime her husband took to working from their townhouse home at TLC as much as possible. As the CEO of a major service sector business it was entirely reasonable that Brooks would arrange for a colleague to ferry important documents back and forth between his office and home.

Brooks got very comfortable with his new working arrangements, to the extent that he preferred working from home after the pandemic had been suppressed. With a golf course, bar and restaurants within easy walking distance, he became a powerful advocate for home-based working, just not for staff below senior executive level. As far as Brooks was concerned, everything in his world was just peachy.

Unfortunately, the husband of the employee who was ferrying documents back and forth for Brooks was concerned his wife seemed to have been chosen exclusively for this task, thereby spending a lot of her working time as a courier, rather than in her usual role as a senior manager. Despite his wife's repeated assurances that the CEO had never behaved inappropriately towards her, Barbie Appleton's husband decided to raise his concerns with the CEO's wife.

It wasn't difficult for Zak Appleton to meet up with Senior Staff Nurse Rogers at the hospital where she worked. She listened carefully to what he had to say and then promised to find out whether there was a problem. A few days later, while her husband was busy playing golf, Mrs Rogers personally supervised her PI's installation of secret surveillance equipment throughout their townhouse. She also asked security at TLC to provide her with data about visitors to their home during the preceding six months.

*

Surrounded by boarded up shops, the cafe on the main street was a favourite with many of the older people who lived in the little town in rural Aberdeenshire.

Many of the shops had been boarded up years ago, long before the Covid19 pandemic came along, as the town's younger inhabitants left to seek a brighter future elsewhere. The cafe's popularity with the older generation enabled it to survive despite the town's economic woes. Classed as an essential service, it had managed to keep going during the pandemic by serving take away coffee, tea, cakes and pastries to those who could still get out and about.

After the pandemic had been suppressed, the annual programme of vaccinations ensured there were few restrictions on socialising. It was as if a cork had popped out of a bottle of bubbly humanity and a steady stream of customers flowed into the cosy confines of the cafe, filling it to the brim with people meeting, greeting and chatting enthusiastically with one another.

That Saturday afternoon there were hardly any unoccupied seats in the cafe, but the heavy-set, dark-haired man and the young red-haired girl with the artificial hand had been left undisturbed, sitting by themselves at a table with a spare seat in a corner by a window.

"Would you mind if I sit here?"

Tom looked up at the well-dressed blonde lady who had asked the question. Was that an American accent? She was standing by the empty seat, cup and saucer in hand, politely waiting for a response. Tom guessed she was a few years older than him, possibly in her forties. He glanced briefly at his ten-year-old daughter, who shrugged her indifference to the woman's request and returned her attention to messily eating a cream cake.

"Please join us," Tom told the woman, as he stood up politely. "This is my daughter, Katie, and I'm Tom. Let me hang up your coat for you."

"Thank you," she said, putting her cup and saucer on the table and handing Tom her lightweight beige raincoat. "My name's Maggie."

Tom couldn't help noticing her gold wedding band and chunky diamond engagement ring.

As her father took Maggie's coat over to the coat stand, Katie looked up from her battle with the cream cake, examining Maggie with curiosity. "Are you American?" she asked.

"Nope," Maggie replied with a smile. "Believe it or not, I'm originally from right here, but I've been living in Texas for the last twenty years. I guess I ended up sounding a little bit like the people around me."

"Sorry about the cross examination, Maggie," said Tom, returning to their table and placing a reassuring hand on Katie's shoulder. "Miss Nosy Parker here is the inquisitive type."

"That's fine by me," Maggie replied. "It's usually a good idea to get to know your neighbours." Turning her attention back to Katie, she added, "I was a Nosey Parker when I was your age and I have to say I like your red hair and freckles. You look a bit like I did when I was a girl."

"But you're blonde!" exclaimed Katie.

"Not really. Believe it or not, underneath the blonde camouflage I'm actually a redhead just like you. My stylist did a great job for the last few years, but I think I've had enough of being a blonde. They don't really have more fun, so I think I'll go back to being a redhead. Besides, we're special people, you know."

"Are we?" asked Katie, frowning in puzzlement.

"Studies have shown redheads have above-average intelligence."

"Really?" asked Katie.

"Yup," said Maggie. "I'm not saying we're any better than anyone else on the planet, but we're clever and of course we're good looking too," she added with a wink.

Tom grinned at Maggie, enjoying the way this charming woman had engaged Katie in conversation.

Katie frowned again, gathering her thoughts. "If we're clever and good looking, how come the boys in my class at school call me names like Carrot Head or Ginger Nut?"

"That's easy," said Maggie with a smile. "It was no different when I was your age. You'll find racists and bullies wherever you go, but I suspect most of those boys aren't really being mean and nasty. They're probably just teasing you because they quite like you. Some of my friends call me Ginger, but I suppose that's inevitable if you marry someone whose surname is Rogers."

Tom couldn't help grinning, but Maggie's reference to Fred Astaire's dance partner went over Katie's head.

"Well I really don't like it when they call me The Claw," said Katie, her lower lip pouting slightly.

"That's a bit naughty," Maggie agreed, "but it's a powerful image if you think about the Toy Story movies." Looking at Katie's prosthetic hand, she added, "It's no surprise someone came up with that nickname. You've got what's called a 'voluntary close' hand and it's good at grabbing and holding stuff."

"How come you know about prosthetics, Maggie?" asked Tom, his curiosity piqued.

"I'm a nurse by profession," she said. "I worked in a hospital and I've had quite a lot of experience with prosthetics."

"Was that back in Texas?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "In fact, my husband's company supports a charity I helped set up, called The Southeast Texas Strangers. It's funded by donations from sponsors to help pay for new generation prosthetic devices."

"Do they help people like me?" asked Katie.

"That's exactly what they do," replied Maggie. "It's sometimes called reablement or restorative care. They don't just pay for the prosthetics, they pay for specialists to show people how to use the devices and do things for themselves."

"I wish I could get one of those new hands," said Katie, wistfully.

"Well, you're probably old enough for a new generation hand," replied Maggie, glancing briefly at Tom, "but they're quite expensive. You'll have to wait and see what the future holds."

Tom was grateful to Maggie for skilfully avoiding raising Katie's expectations too much and he took the opportunity to change the subject. "So when are you going back to Texas, Maggie?" he asked.

"I haven't thought about it," she replied. "I'm staying with my mother and having a time out from Texas, so it might be a while yet before I go back."

"In that case we may see you around," said Tom. "It was nice talking to you, but we have to get going. On Saturday afternoons we like to go for a walk if the weather's good enough, so it's time for us to head for the hills."

They said their goodbyes and as Tom and Katie were leaving Maggie waved them off with the quintessentially American farewell, "Have a nice day!"

*

Maggie hadn't learned much about Tom and Katie from their brief conversation, but she had the benefit of a special intelligence service. Until recently, her mother had been head teacher at the local primary school. Anne Mackenzie knew many children and parents in the town, going back a couple of generations. She was now enjoying a well-deserved retirement, but Mrs Mackenzie still kept in touch with her former colleagues.

In conversation with her mother, Maggie found out that Tom Robertson came from a working class background. He had worked his way through college, got a good job on the offshore drilling rigs and married his childhood sweetheart. Katie was their only child and she had been born without a hand, due to a rare pre-natal complication in the womb, known as amniotic band syndrome. No one was to blame, but the child's mother increasingly grew frustrated with her disabled child and frequently absent husband. She cheated on Tom and ran off with another man, leaving Tom to look after Katie.

With sole responsibility for his daughter, Tom had to change jobs. His reputation for hard work and a no nonsense style of working had landed him an onshore supply chain management role for wind farms. Katie was rated a star pupil by her class teacher, who told Mrs Mackenzie that Katie was intelligent and well-behaved, even when her disability made things difficult. Tom's parents had been early victims of the corona virus pandemic and their sudden deaths made things even tougher for Tom and Katie. They had no other immediate family, so Tom relied on friends and neighbours for help with childminding.

Early in her career, Maggie's mother had been one of Tom's teachers and she remembered him with obvious fondness. "It seems Katie takes a lot of positive qualities from her father," she told Maggie. "I remember Tom as a boy and he was polite and well behaved. He was also very good at sports and I heard he went on to play rugby in college."

"Well, he looks very fit," was Maggie's reply, which made her mother smile.

*

In the weeks that followed, Maggie had lunch in the cafe on a regular basis, meeting up with Tom and Katie and sharing pleasant conversations about what they had been up to and what there was to see and do in the local area. It was obvious to Tom that Katie had taken a shine to Maggie. He also found Maggie's company enjoyable and he looked forward to seeing her, although he had to admit he was also attracted by her good looks.

It wasn't long before Maggie was invited to join Tom and Katie for their regular short walks on Saturday afternoons. Tom was very knowledgeable about the best walking routes within a short driving distance and they dropped Maggie off at her mother's house afterwards. Mrs Mackenzie insisted that Tom and Katie come in for a cup of tea after one of their outings, having kept an eye out for their return. Tom remembered his former teacher and even Katie knew her by reputation. They talked about past times and old acquaintances that had never been forgotten.