Tag Archives: Paranoid

The Inevitable Happened

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I don’t know how many of my followers noticed that I have received a couple of nasty comments recently; one from JC and then this morning one from a “Chuck”. I “spammed” JC’s right away and then regretted it because I thought his response was so typical of a narcissist I should have left it. I went into my spam to “unspam” it but using the small screen of my phone I accidentally permanently deleted it. Oops

Basically what it said was that I am a lying bitch, he called you all my “minions”; which I had to laugh about because he was always saying he needed minions.
He said that reading my blog made him * feel ……….. well ….everything but mostly sad. *his words.

He also said this (my blog) was unproductive. I beg to differ; anytime a blog receives daily comments such as:
Thank God I found this site, you literally saved my life.
Or
You are a God send, now I know I am not crazy.
It can not be called “unproductive”.

He also called you all F%*#ing Lemmings and said you should be ashamed of yourselves. So everyone hang your head in shame.

He also told me to never contact him again, he made that perfectly clear in his letter to me when he bought me the computer cord I said I needed. It appears that computer cord was supposed to absolve him of any wrong doing in the past and he feels I didn’t mention it in my blog so he mentioned it to show you all what a nice guy he is. He used to say to me that he didn’t understand why my family hated him; I must have told them horrible things about him. He would say, “Do you ever tell them the nice things I do? No!!”. In fact I went out of my way to mention everything he ever did nice; exaggerated it even in hopes my family would like him and I avoided saying anything at all bad about him. But they weren’t blind and could see the abuse with their own eyes.

Today the comment from Chuck said that he knew us and said that he was there for several of the events I have discussed and I am lying and he called me a “c&*t”. I only know one Chuck and he used to come over when JC was God knows where and we would compare the lies JC had told each of us and get to the truth. We used to laugh about it together. He mentioned in the comment that I had talked him into taking JC’s money twice. Chuck and I did a job for JC and got paid $15 or something ridiculous like that, we worked hours in sun. JC had me do up an invoice for the customer, I forget how much it was for now I think a couple hundred bucks. Almost a year later he still had the invoice in his truck. He had told me to get out but refused to give me any money to leave or let me take anything out of the house. I talked to Chuck and told him I was going to invoice the customer myself again and mail it. I told him that if he let me use his address as the return address I would split the money with him 50/50; which is exactly what we did. One time!
I did leave but went back; and have never heard the end of it since. That was 12 years ago. So I believe “Chuck” is actually JC especially since he called me by the pet name he had for me. Not just every one calls me a “C&%#”. 🙂

My first reaction when I saw JC’s comment was guilt. It was my words that made him sad,but the more I thought about it (about 3.5 mins) I came to the conclusion that if JC was sad it was not my words but his actions that caused the sadness. But he is not sad, he is angry because I am not in a corner some where quietly licking my wounds grieving the loss of him.
He is not sorry for the way he treated me, he is not sad that he had a 10 year relationship with a woman who loved him unconditionally and she came away from it suicidal, destitute, and a shell of the person she used to be. If I knew that I had hurt someone that badly I would do everything within my power to make amends. But that is me, that is anyone with a conscience and a caring heart. But we wouldn’t be having this discussion if JC had either of those two things because he never would have abused me to begin with.

My 2nd response was fear; what would he do? I don’t know ( so if I die suddenly I am not suicidal ok?)

Then I reached my present state of mind.

I started this blog simply as a way to promote my company; I heard the best way to build business is by having a web site. But I couldn’t think of anything but the all consuming pain I was in. I spent days sitting on the couch, crying, staring into space, unable to read a book, watch tv, eat, work, I was barely able to breath.

When I attempted suicide I didn’t write any good bye letters, I didn’t make any last minute phone calls telling someone what I had done. The only thing I did was; at about 10 pm after I crawled outside to let Kato take a pee and could barely see to type I sent JC a text message asking him to come and get Kato about 10 am the next day because I had taken an overdose and Kato would need to pee.

JC never called, never called a friend or my mother to check on me, didn’t take the 5 minutes to call 911 and give them my address. When I came to the next day and realized I hadn’t succeeded I would have tried again but didn’t have any money to buy more pills. A mutual friend dropped by and said he had just had a call from JC asking him to go for coffee but he decided to come see me instead. JC was 10 minutes away from my place, knew our friend was going over to my place and never asked about me.
As if that wasn’t bad enough he still toyed with my emotions and led me on for another month until he moved in with his present conquest. And when I was upset he had told me he loved me on Wed and moved into her place on Thurs he chose to deal with it by telling me to kill myself because no man would ever want a psycho bitch like me.

There I was; alone; all alone, ashamed, beaten down, no one who understood, no way to support myself, at 52 years old a broken woman. The man I loved with all my being, who only a month prior had said, “You know us Babe, we always end up together, I don’t know why you get so upset.” knowing I was suicidal taunted me to kill myself. It was a defining moment; I had to choose to either live without him or die. I had more pills by that time and I sat there for hours looking at them, thinking, “If I can be reduced to this, a strong capable self sufficient attractive woman; what would it do to a young less confident woman?”

It was then that I decided to share my story in hopes that if there was some woman out there thinking she was crazy she would find some comfort in my sharing. I put as much information together as I could find, it gave me a purpose and it helped me heal and most of all it made me accountable. I was telling the world I was choosing to live, I couldn’t give up once I put it out there.

I had no idea what I was going to say, I was raw emotion some days, I was up but mostly down and then I got some followers, Tik Tok and Mysterycoach were two of my first and saw me through some of my worst times. Thank God they were there!!

The last, say 6 months or so this blog has taken on a life of its own. It is no longer “my” blog, it is where survivors of abuse meet up and share the road to recovery helping each other when one stumbles, encouraging, crying, praying, and most of all feeling free to speak about their experiences knowing they won’t be judged, ridiculed or told they shouldn’t feel the way they do. People come here and hear, “I understand, I have been there,” “OMG your relationship was just like mine”. I have received so much support, and yes good strokes from the people who have stopped by; I don’t know how I would have made it through til now without it.

To date I have somewhere around 200 followers and have had 42,200 hits give or take a hundred. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think it would grow like that. I am getting over 500 hits a day. That is alot of pain out there, and I am so gratified to be able to provide some light, some hope. I can honestly say something good came out of my pain, that out of a relationship filled with dishonesty, manipulation, and evil intentions something honest and positive grew.

I thought about closing down the site but I can’t, I would rather die than allow JC to intimidate me into anything every again especially something that is helping people heal from people like him.

I was going to change my settings so that every comment has to be approved before it is posted but that would defeat what we have going on here. People come here to share or give words of encouragement and it is posted immediately. I don’t want people who need support to have to wait, what good is that?

I have wanted to do a post thanking everyone for their patience because doing this all on my phone and not having the net where I live has meant  I am slow replying. I hate not being able to give it my best but right now this is my best.
Thank you all from the bottom of my heart, you brighten my corner of the world more than you know.
Carrie

Doing The Right Thing Should Be Easy

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James insisted he had grabbed the chain out of Kris’s hand. I told him I didn’t know what to believe. He asked me to at least check out what he was telling me and I promised I would.

I picked Kris up from the hospital the next morning and I told him I had talked to James and heard the messages he had sent.

I was angry, I had specifically told him to not start anything and had asked him why he needed my phone when he borrowed it that night and he had lied to me.

I was angrier at myself, I felt guilty for dragging my son into my mess. I knew he would feel the need to protect his momma. I had a feeling in my gut when we pulled up that something wasn’t right. I had only given in and let him come home with me to avoid arguing with him; I had wanted to be alone. Now it was a huge mess and I could have prevented it all.(mind you, in retrospect James definitely had something planned when he started putting all the lights on his truck and had been very intimidating that night. Who knows what would have happened if I would have gone home alone.)

Kris admitted the chain was the chain he used to lock his bike up and he had hooked it onto his belt loop of his pants. The knife was the one that his dad had given him that he always packed. It had been in the pocket of his cargo pants and must have fallen out in the fight.

I told him he had to go to the police and tell the truth, he flatly refused. I told him that if he lied in court he would be charged with purgery and besides I had always taught him to be honest.

From the time he was wee that had been the one thing I always harped on with him; always tell the truth, as long as you are honest things will work out and you never get in as much trouble as if you are caught lying.

He would not change his mind and I told him that I would not lie for him in court. He said I didn’t have to lie; just tell them what I saw. I said I can’t do that; I know the truth now and to pretend I don’t would be lying. I just could not lie; not even for my son; it went against everything I stood for, I was heartsick. 

I went to meet James secretly a couple of times and told him Kris refused to change his testimony but told him to give Kris time to think about it. If he didn’t change his mind in a couple of days I would go to the cops and tell them what I knew. Of course I was too stupid to realize James was being so loving and understanding because he was orchestrating his defense.

Out of the blue Kris asked if he could talk to James, he wanted to apologize. I called James and he agreed to meet us. Kris got out of my car and shook James hand and apologized for the messages and the fight and James did the same, I thought we were getting somewhere but when Kris got back in the car he still refused to go to the police with the truth. 

I called the police and told the officer who had been there that night that I had new information and that my son had confessed to me it was his knife and chain. He said to save it for court. I said why wait? Why waste taxpayer dollars going to court when it could all be sorted out now. He refused to take my statement. I decided to write Crown Counsel myself explaining the whole situation.

By this time I had moved into an apartment in Abbotsford and had started full time college.  My son was not supposed to be living with me. When he had come back from Calgary it was supposed to be for a few weeks until he got a job and saved for a place. I was on a very limited student government grant to upgrade my skills; it wasn’t enough for me to live on let alone support Kris. When he quit school in Grade 10 I had told him he’d better get a job because if he wasn’t in school I was not supporting him.
He was hanging with a bad crowd, bringing them back to the apartment while I was in school and the neighbors were complaining. The landlady warned me that he had to move out or I would be evicted; so I told him he had to get out.

James and I were seeing each other again (something I am not proud of and I am sure contributed to Kris’s attitude, I packed guilt about it for years, I apologized to Kris and he forgave me long before I could forgive myself. I have forgiven myself finally. I did the best I could and I screwed up, but my guilt was keeping me from being the best mom I could be, now! I had to let it go)

I wrote my letter to crown counsel and James had written his. The first statement I wrote put all the blame on James the 2nd one laid it on Kris and was heavily influenced by James, in the 3rd and final I laid the blame on myself, saying I should not have told Kris anything to begin with or had Kris come home with me that night. I should have been more aware of what he was doing that night with my phone and basically just stated the facts surrounding that night. James was not happy with my revised version and tried to pressure me into changing it but I refused. Once again, I was sticking to the belief that the truth was the best way to deal with it.

I had my statement typed, signed, and in a sealed envelope on the counter, James was taking his in and offered to take mine at the same time.

A few days later James took me for breakfast and we had a really good talk. I went to school very positive about us. We got out of class early that day and I was anxious to get home to James. When I got to the apartment his truck was parked out front loaded with his stuff from the apartment and with things he had given me; like a TV. He was pulling away when I ran up to the truck and asked what he was doing. He said it was over, he was moving into a warehouse, it was never going to work out between us and that was it. I was devastated, dazed, confused standing there in the parking lot crying as he drove away. I could barely function, went up to the apartment and Kris was on the couch sleeping, he hadn’t even woken up with James moving.

James was so cold and matter of fact about it ending and at this point I still believed he was honest. I admit I grovelled for another chance, I promised to change, I said I would take the relationship on his terms, anything just don’t end it. We spent a couple of nights together at the warehouse and when I went back to the apartment after school I couldn’t open the door; the locks had been changed.

It was a Friday and my landlady didn’t answer her phone, I had no idea where Kris was or what had happened. The door jamb was broken so obviously someone had kicked the door in. I found him at a friends. He told me that when he moved out he took the handheld phone and was able to buzz himself in. He kicked the door open and went to sleep in the lazyboy chair. He didn’t know how long he had been asleep/passed out when he was woken up by someone kicking the chair. He grabbed a pair of scissors and was brandeshing them when he realized it was the landlady and a cop standing there. He told them I had packed up and left him there. They believed him, didn’t call me, gave him ten minutes to pack up his clothes, kicked him out and changed the locks.

Yes I know she couldn’t legally do that but she did and I lost everything because she gave me a one chance to get my things and James didn’t show up with the truck.

I called Crown counsel and they said they never received my statement so I called the police officer and he said he had it in the file at the police station. I told him Crown would look at it and he said it could wait until court.

I was totally frustrated by the police, I felt like they were playing games. The night of the fight one officer took Kris and my statement and another officer took James’s. They had asked James for his address and he had given his buddy’s address in the resort. He was  told that if he wasn’t at that address he would be arrested for being in breach of his conditions for release. I was told that he was not to be in the park and if he was seen in the park to call them and he would be arrested. I had called the police many times to ask if he was allowed in the park and no one could give me an answer. The attending cop went from 4 days off to being on vacation. So Kris and I thought James was purposely harassing us when in fact he had to be at the resort. Mind you he did follow us and he did intimidate us with the bright headlights etc. But the whole situation was escalated by the cops not commumicating. Finally the night JC was escorted to get his things was the first time he was told to not come back, even to visit friends.

The whole situation was out of control and the police seemed to be enjoying the show.

The way the whole thing was handled was unprofessional, disorganized, and instead of difusing the situation the police contributed to emotions esculating to dangerous levels. Not once was I contacted by victim services or someone from a Domestic Violence support group, my concerns were literally laughed at by the police. And JC was revelliing in the fact that he had managed to turn things in his favor again. I knew he had a restraining order put on him years prior by the girl that had his baby and I told the police to check his file in Alberta. They said nothing showed up, but I found out later that a person can pay $400 and have their record sealed.

The Perfect Little Family

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I was beyond ecstatic for a few weeks and wore maternity clothes almost immediately, I wanted everyone to know I was pregnant; I wanted the cutest maternity outfits.

Then the paranoia set in and I was afraid I might miscarry. Every possible thing I could worry about I obsessed about, the doctor even gave me an ultrasound in hopes of calming my fears but it only worked for a few weeks and then I was obsessing again. If the baby didn’t kick often enough I feared it was dead inside me, I obsessed about it being deformed because I had smoked and drank before I knew I was pregnant, and then there was my obsession with my weight. Having been anorexic prior to getting pregnant and then eating like a horse once I found out I was pregnant I gained a phenomenal amount of weight very quickly. I was 135 lbs when I got pregnant and 207 lbs when I went into labour. The motorcycle club had a pool going to see who could guess my weight when I finally went into labour. Victor would come home to find me on the bed crying, he’d say, “You looked in your closet again didn’t you?” and he would hop on his bike and come home with a new maternity outfit.

One day while I was working I was away from my wicket and when I returned there was a vase on the counter with one single rose in bloom and single rose bud and the card said, “One for you and one for the baby. With all my love Victor.” He never once made me feel fat or unattractive, even when I got stuck in our water bed and couldn’t roll myself out of bed he never even hinted at making fun of me. (Smart man)

It was November and I had been told I could have the baby any day and the baby’s room still wasn’t done, Victor was planning on going hunting in a couple of days and we were arguing. I said you aren’t going any where until that baby’s room is done (you never told Victor what to do unless you wanted the exact opposite thing to happen but my hormones were talking) and he said he’d do it when he got back. I was at the stove frying hamburger, holding the frying pan with my right hand and stirring with my left as he walked past the kitchen door heading to the bedroom. Before I knew it; almost like an out of body experience I flung the frying pan in his direction. The frying pan hit the wall in the hallway taking a chunk out of the wall and narrowly missing him. Hamburger flew every where, I burst out crying and Victor poked his head slowly from around the corner of the doorjamb not sure if something else would come flying in his direction. Victor went into the bathroom and started a bubble bath for me, guided me into the bathroom and told me to relax, he scraped up the hamburger from the walls and floor washed the floors and wall and ate it the hamburger swearing it was delicious (good thing I was obsessive about keeping my house clean). The next day he did the baby’s room before he went hunting.

A few weeks before I gave birth Victor had been at the legion drinking and wanted to take his opened half bottle of wine home with him but the bouncer wouldn’t let him and he had punched the guy, breaking his jaw. I had been furious and we called the guy offering to pay whatever he needed as long as he didn’t press charges; luckily the guy was decent enough, we paid his dental bill and nothing more came of it. Victor promised me he would quit drinking.

The other issue we had was that he never was faithful; he just could not pass up the opportunity to screw another woman. It bothered me terribly, every time he went out with his buddies I never knew if he was with another woman or not. He didn’t have affairs, I’m sure he never saw the women again, it was when he was drinking and he told me once that he just couldn’t pass up a new pussy. He didn’t know what he thought he’d be missing.

As strange as it may sound to you although it upset me terribly and we had many fights over it, I never felt he didn’t love me or that it was my fault in any way or that I wasn’t attractive. He wasn’t like JC, he never blamed me for his infidelity, and he always took responsibility.

I never slept until he got home, but when I heard the door I would pretend to be asleep, he would come to the bedroom door way and watch me sleeping. One night he said,” I really do love you you know, I am so sorry.” While I was pregnant I am sure he didn’t screw around, although I did get jealous one time when I came home just in time to pick him up for prenatal classes and I walked in to a houseful of people and a woman on his workout bench with her legs spread and his face 6 inches from her crotch. Victor did tattoos on the side and the woman wanted a black widow spider coming out of the hair down there. Here I am feeling like a beached whale and he’s down there tattooing; well I guess you can imagine how well that went over.

I finally went into labour on December 20th 1983; because I had been in labour so long with my first pregnancy I didn’t want to go to the hospital until I was really ready. When Victor came home from work that day I told him I’d been in labour all day and he wanted to go to the hospital immediately but I told him to order a pizza because the minute this baby was born I was going on a diet. He wanted sex one last time because he knew I wouldn’t be having sex for a month or so after having the baby. I am sure having sex sped up the labour pains because we didn’t even finish and I said we have to go to the hospital now. I left the house with a piece of pizza in my hand and we arrived at the hospital at 8:15 pm. The nurse checked me and said I wasn’t dilated at all and it was going to be all night. Victor rolled his eyes and she said he should go home and get some rest and they would call when I got closer. I told him not to go; there was no way it was going to take that long. As with my first baby the contractions didn’t come regularly and they had to break my water, I kept telling the nurse the baby was coming and she kept telling I wasn’t near ready; my doctor was at a wine and cheese party and she didn’t want to bother him. They had quite a busy night with babies being born and there was a lull, the nurse said she’d wheel me into the delivery room to give me a change of scenery. I wasn’t in the delivery room more than 5 minutes and I said, “The baby is coming, I have to push!” Victor whipped my slippers off and put my feet in the stirrups the nurse was saying, “Don’t push, don’t push!!” I said, “This baby is coming now, someone had better get over here.” Just then the doctor ran through the door with his arms outstretched and they put the gown on him as he came through the door, he got to me just in time to catch the baby as I gave one more push.

Victor gave me the blow by blow description of the birth, “There’s the head, there’s the back, there’s the bum, there’s the balls, IT’S A BOY!!!”

Kris was born at 10:20pm. and weighed 8 lbs 1 ½ ozs, he bruised his nose on the way out and Victor and I laughed because he had his dad’s nose. (Victor’s nose had been broken a few times and was kinda flattened out) Kristofer was beautiful, perfect, bald as a cue ball, 10 chubby little toes, 10 chubby little fingers, pink and healthy. I didn’t know it but my family was in the waiting room and they were allowed to come in immediately after Kris was born, while the doctor was still stitching me up. Finally I had what I had been praying for for so long, a healthy baby boy (although a girl would have been just fine with me I did want a boy and Victor although he always said “as long as it’s healthy” wanted a boy, we could have found out the sex of the baby when they did the ultrasound but we didn’t want to know ahead of time.) the nurse had given me something for pain about an hour before because the pain had been so intense and she didn’t think I was going to deliver that night at all, and it kicked in about the same time Kris was born. Everyone left to give me time to rest and there I was wide awake at 10:45pm, all by myself feeling like I was on top of the world, stoned out of my gourd and no one to talk to. I remember saying as everyone was leaving, “Someone bring me a glass of wine, no never mind make it the whole bottle!”

True to his word Victor hardly drank for the next 5 weeks, right through Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I was nervous he would go out and get drunk after he left the hospital but he went straight home and called everyone we knew but he didn’t drink. My mom and dad gave me a gold chain for my wrist with a gold charm of a pair of booties to commemorate Kris’s birth. (I treasured those booties for 27 years, the chain had broken and I had put the booties on a gold chain around my neck and wore them that way for many years until that chain broke and then I put them away for safe keeping along with some of Kris’s baby teeth, his hospital wrist band and other mementos. In 2010 I saw a little silver bullet shaped container for sale at the counter in a gas station and thought it was perfect for keeping the booties in and bought it. I took it home and showed JC how I had put the booties and Kris’s baby teeth in it and put it on my key chain as a good luck charm. Kris had moved away and it was a way of me keeping him close. Around the time JC and I were splitting the silver bullet disappeared off my keychain, I tore the house and truck apart but never found the silver container. I asked JC about it and he didn’t seem to even remember me showing him the container or what I had put in it. After we were split he had me haul his tools from his last job because he had been fired, when we got back to his/our place I went into the music room to warm up and there on the coffee table was the silver container, the latch that held it onto my keychain wasn’t broken and it was empty. I took it out to the fire where JC was standing and asked him where he got it from. He shrugged and said he didn’t know. I said, “This is the container I had Kris’s booties in.” He asked where I found it and I said in the music room, then he said he found it in some of his son’s stuff that Allen left behind when he left so suddenly. He said Allen must have stolen it, you know how he was stealing everything. But I had it after Allen left, he left in May and I know I had it in October when I went to visit my son in Kelowna because I showed it to him. I didn’t argue with JC and just told him that if he came across them I would really like them back. If there was anything in this world that I cherished it was those booties and he knew it and it was his passive aggressive way to hurt me). Sorry I digressed; back to Victor.

He took to fatherhood like a duck to water, he was bathing Kris, changing diapers, and wanted to take Kris every where he went. He’d take the snuggly with him and take Kris to the bike shop, to visit friends, and he’d get up with him in the middle of the night. I wasn’t breast feeding because I wanted to diet and was going back to work after 2 months so it was easy for Victor to go alone. I was the nervous new parent but he was a natural at caring for a baby. The baby would be asleep and I would get up from watching TV with Victor and pretend I was going to the bathroom and I’d hear Victor, “leave that poor kid alone!! He’s fine, don’t you dare wake him up.” Because he knew I was going to sneak in and make sure he was still breathing.

We had gotten a Springer Spaniel puppy that my dad’s pure bred male Springer had sired and even he loved the baby, we had the perfect little family. I really didn’t want to go back to work full time again and leave Kris with a baby sitter all day and Victor and I talked and agreed I would go back part time. In those days you only got 6 weeks maternity leave and in the 5th week I talked to the bank and they agreed to lay me off which would mean I would qualify for unemployment benefits a lot longer and I would only work a day or two a week for the first while.

On Thursday February 2nd, Victor went out and traded my Honda Civic, our old Fargo pickup truck and a holiday trailer my foster brother had given us all on a 1981 Reliant K car and surprised me with it. He said he got it because he didn’t want me driving with the baby in a vehicle that was unsafe, drafty or might leave me stranded. I was thrilled with it, sure it was just a K car but it was burgundy and had velour interior and was the nicest car I had ever had.

On Saturday February 4th, 1984 I went out with girlfriends for a nice dinner and Victor stayed home with Kris and on the Sunday he had plans to go for a motorcycle ride with my dad and a friend, Ken. It was unusually warm for early February and a beautiful day for a bike ride. Victor rode his bike 12 months out of the year, it was an agreement we had, that if he bought a brand new bike it couldn’t be for pleasure only and he said he’d drive it to work and he did almost every day, he had a snowmobile suit for riding in winter and rain gear for the rainy season, full leather pants and jacket, gloves, mitts, full face and regular helmet, he rode in snow, ice any conditions so he was a seasoned rider. On this Sunday he had on his full leathers, riding boots, helmet and leather riding gloves. It was such a beautiful day and I felt a little jealous to be left at home, I loved the motorcycle but it was his day with the guys. After Kris’s nap I put him in his stroller and walked the 2 miles to my mom’s and we drank some wine and sat out side on the patio. She drove me home about dinner time and I mentioned I was concerned the guys were still not home and she assured me they were fine, just enjoying their guy time; but as it got dark I had uneasiness but I couldn’t pinpoint what I was so uneasy about, I knew he wouldn’t be screwing around, not with my dad along. I dozed off lying on the couch with Kris in my arms and around 9:30 woke up with a start. I checked and Victor wasn’t home. I didn’t know whether to be pissed off or worried, it certainly wasn’t the first time he’d been late, but the fact that he was with my dad told me to relax I was worrying for nothing. I went to bed and finally fell back to sleep, only to be woken up by the phone ringing at about 11 pm. I had a hard time waking up and the phone seemed to be ringing forever. Finally I answered, “Hello?”

“Is this Mrs. Ouellette?”

“Yes”

“This is Abbotsford Hospital calling, when you come in to visit your husband can you stop at the front desk please, we have some of his belongings here.”

“Abbotsford Hospital? What are you talking about?”

“Your husband was admitted earlier tonight and we have his belongings at the front desk.”

“What do you mean he was admitted, what’s wrong? what happened?”

“I don’t know madam; you’d have to talk to the emergency dept about that.”

“Emergency? Can you put me through please?” my mind was racing, what would he have been doing in Abbotsford? They went to Sumas Washington.

“Just one moment.”

I could feel the panic welling up inside me and I was telling myself to stay calm, it must be some mistake, my dad would have called if something bad had happened. Maybe they parted ways and he went to a bar alone maybe he was in a bar fight and got stabbed or something. I waited for what seemed like an eternity and then realized she must have dropped the call. I wear contact lenses so couldn’t see and in my panic I couldn’t find my glasses, I was shaking so badly I could barely dial the phone but managed to finally get information and they put me through to the emergency ward at Abbotsford Hospital.

“It’s Carrie Ouellette calling, I was just told my husband Victor, was admitted to the hospital tonight.”

“Hold on, I’ll get you his nurse.”

“Hello? Mrs. Ouellette?”

“Yes, what’s going on? What happened to my husband?”

“He’s had a motorcycle accident Mrs. Ouellette and he’s on his way to surgery”

“I am on my way, this is Abbotsford hospital?”

“Yes Abbotsford emergency but, there really is no point in coming down here Mrs. Ouellette, he’s on his way to surgery now and isn’t expected to survive there’s no point in you coming.”

I hung up. Not expected to survive? It must be a mistake. My dad would have called. No, it has to be a mistake, Victor can’t be dying, he has to come home, we just had a baby.

Posted by Carrie the Lady Witha Truck