Bill and Karyn

She slowly got up, moving as if she had aged fifty years in the last few minutes, and headed to the bedroom. I heard a thump as she threw what I assume was her suitcase on the bed. The conflicting emotions whizzed through my head, do I still love her, do I want a divorce, could I ever trust her again, not the least of which was do I want to stay married to her if she doesn't want children? I slumped further into the love seat, still smelling her perfume, as well as a hint of the scent of herself.

As these thoughts warred with each other, I recalled back to the day of our marriage. My mother had taken me aside prior to the ceremony and told me that my father had never truly understood the nature of a marriage, the vows that both partners swore by to bond them from individuals into a union greater than the sum of its parts. She warned me that if I chose to cleave myself to Kayrn, that I had to be ready to give up some of myself to the contract we were making.

But did that mean that I needed to become a walking doormat like my mom? Could I live like that, constantly finding out that she was going behind my back and putting the horns on me? "But she didn't actually have sex with anyone," I thought, "it's bad, but she didn't actually screw him." Then again, did she have to go that far to be considered a cheater? I loved her still, but I couldn't make up my mind.

I sat there, musing, for a while. I guess I lost track of time, because the next thing I knew she was standing in front of me, with a suitcase in her hand.

"I'm going to go stay at a motel for a while until I can find someplace long term to stay, Bill, I'll call you with the address so you can have them deliver the...divorce papers," she broke into fresh tears. "P-please don't have me served at work. I'll really need to pick up some extra shifts for money." She sniffed and wiped at her eyes, smearing her makeup worse. "If it is OK, can I leave the rest of my stuff here until I can get a place?"

"Of course, babe, I wouldn't put your stuff out on the street, even at this point"

She bent to kiss me, but I turned my face. She hesitated and then quickly stole a peck on my cheek. The next thing I heard was her placing her house keys on the counter table and then a soft click as the front door shut.

I'd like to say that it suddenly started raining and that I ran outside and hugged her tightly, kissing her as we were both soaked by the water. But it was real life, I went to the liquor cabinet and proceeded to get drunk as hell. As I faded to black, I wondered if my life would ever be happy again.

Time passed, as it always does. Empty bottles stacked up in the trash and I would soon be able to build a leaning tower of pizza boxes. Karyn laid low, calling me once to give me the address to a Motel 8 and her room number. We didn't really exchange much more than that. I went to work, as I am sure she did as well. I wasn't totally sure because I couldn't bring myself to go to the place she worked at to eat like I used to. I called my mom and moaned to her, but she was pretty much useless. She told me to forgive and forget, like that was possible. Even if I could forgive, I would never forget. I lost track of how long this went on, but it had to have been a couple of months based on the stack of bills I hadn't bothered paying. I suppose it would have went on even longer if the fickle finger of fate hadn't fucked me over again.

I was sleeping the sleep of the deeply inebriated when the phone call came. I was fully clothed, albeit in clothes I had been wearing for a couple of days. When I finally came to enough to figure out that the phone was buzzing, I started rummaging through my pants to find it.

"Yeah?" I coughed.

"Hello, this is Dr. Rios, from Mercy Hospital. I'm looking for Bill Pierson, he is listed as the emergency contact for a...Karyn Pierson."

My brain took a second, but then it slammed into me that Karyn was apparently in some sort of trouble, bad enough that they were calling her emergency contacts. "I'm Bill, what is going on, is Karyn OK?"

"Well, she is currently in critical condition, sir. Is there any chance you could come to the hospital at this time?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm going to have to call for a ride, but I'm on my way."

I hit cancel on the call and called the local taxi service. I had them on speed dial as of late, given that I had been drinking a lot lately. Within a few minutes, my curtains lit up as the taxi pulled up into the driveway. I stumbled out as fast as I could and told them to take me to Mercy Hospital. When I arrived, I gave the driver a twenty and hurried inside. I identified myself at the ER admitting desk and was told to take a seat. Some time later, it may have been a couple of minutes or half an hour for all I knew as stressed as I was, a young Hispanic guy in scrubs came out. I noticed his ID said Rios, Javier.

"Hello Mr. Pierson, I'm glad you could make it so quickly."

"No problem, Doc, but could you give me the condensed version here, I'm kind of shitting bricks to be perfectly honest."

"Yes sir, if you like we can talk in Karyn's room. I assume she is your wife?"

"Yes, she is, although we are kind of separated at the moment." I reluctantly said.

"I understand, in fact that may be partly why she is in our care at this time." He motioned me past a set of double doors into the hallway of the ER. We walked quickly until we reached a large room that had a sign saying Short Term ICU. He walked until he reached a curtained off section of the area, opening it and waving me in. I followed him and noticed Karyn was on the bed, with tubes and monitors everywhere. I stumbled and almost fell.

Dr. Rios grabbed my arm and steadied me before he spoke. "Mrs. Pierson was found by a motel employee, a maid, unresponsive. She crashed in the ambulance, but they were able to stabilize her until we could pump her stomach. It appears she attempted to overdose on some pain medication."

I couldn't believe it, Karyn just didn't seem like a person that would try to kill themselves. Maybe she was trying to self medicate like I had been and just fucked up. I mentioned this to the doctor.

"It's hard to say, Mr. Pierson, when dealing with overdoses the only one who can answer our questions is usually the person who can't communicate with us." He looked at some paperwork on her chart at the end of the bed. "Do you know if your wife has a living will?"

"I don't think so, if she did she never mentioned it to me. Why would she need that anyway, I mean she just took too many pills, right?" I couldn't believe this, could she really be in danger?

He looked at me like I was an idiot. I could see him start to say something and then reconsider, rinse and repeat. Finally he spoke, "Your wife is in a coma, Mr. Pierson, and we won't know if she has suffered irrevocable brain damage until she awakens. Using all of the technology and experience available to us we can keep her stable, but beyond that we are incapable of knowing the final diagnosis. This is why I asked if she had a living will, because many people have DNR clauses, meaning they do not wish to be kept alive using machines. Since she doesn't, and if she doesn't awaken, this means you will have to decide how long to keep your wife in her current state."

Blame it on the lack of sleep, or the heaving drinking and poor diet, but I passed out. When I woke up, I was laying on a hospital bed near my wife. I had an IV drip hooked to a saline bag and an amused nurse standing near me. I motioned to the bag weakly. "What's that for?"

"Well, you were apparently severely dehydrated. We are just re-hydrating you," she said.

Yeah, I guess it was the alcohol.

They released me after a second bag of fluid. I went out to the waiting room and started making calls, letting people know what was going on. Once the sun started glaring into my eyes through the ER windows, I contacted my boss and let him know I needed some time off. He made all the appropriate sentiments of sympathy and told me to take all the time I needed. I'm sure that meant a week or two, but I'd milk it as long as I had to, praying that Karyn would recover.

It's cliche, but as I sat in the waiting room, and later in the longer term care room that they moved Karyn to, I realized that I did still love her. It wasn't my fault that she went so far, I might have opened the garden to the snake, as it were, by not showing her how much I loved her everyday but she made some terrible decisions of her own. I had been comparing her mistakes to the ones my dad made, maybe unfairly, but it was the only measurement I had.

As the days turned into weeks, I talked to a lot of people. Some said kick her to the curb, others said I was unreasonable for not being willing to accept an open lifestyle. The latter quickly found themselves removed from my contacts or blocked on social media, I might be trying to talk myself into forgiving her, but I wasn't that fucking far gone. In the end I decided that the least I could do, if she ever awoke, was to give her another chance. Maybe I had been pushing too hard on kids and it was possible that I hadn't whispered enough sweet nothings into her ear; it didn't mean she was in the right, but I would give her a shot. I'd still be checking up on her, until I could regain some degree of trust though.

It started looking bleak, after a couple of months the doctors started talking about compassionate endings and the stages of grief. Pissed me off, I shit you not. But the insurance company wasn't going to cover her much longer and I was getting more depressed each time I went to visit. I had returned to work, but our savings were going fast. I didn't want to be the one to make the decision to pull the plug, but she had no one else. She was sans parents, having been raised as a foster kid after her mom died in a car accident. My mom was a religious nut so she was no help. The whole 'It's in God's hands' thing was no help.

Finally, after a year of pain and grief, I caved. I signed the forms. We had some words from a non-denomination priest and they left me alone with her to say my final bits. They just seemed so...detached, like they didn't care and were in a hurry for me to finish. I sat down next to her and held her hand, probably for the final time.

"Karyn, I figure you probably can't hear me, but I forgive you. We both made mistakes, but I wish I had another chance to see if we could make it. I love you and I hope this is as painless as they say it is." I couldn't think of anything else to say that I hadn't already cried or begged for in the past year; I just felt empty. Getting up, I waved the nurse and doctors back in. They started disconnecting the various tubes and wires, I was wondering when the monitor would go flat. Tears started brimming up in my eyes and sliding down my cheeks as I waited...and waited. It felt terrible, but I started to wonder what was taking so long. I guess I didn't notice that the hospital people were starting to mutter to one another. Finally the only thing left was the heart monitor. I looked at the doctor, he looked at me, then at the monitor. He shrugged.

"Well, this is unexpected Mr. Pierson, but apparently your wife doesn't appear ready to leave you just yet."

What the fuck? If that wasn't Karyn personified, she even fucked with my head while she was in a coma. After some hushed discussions and apologies, as well as congratulations, the consensus was that we were back to square one. I went back to the old routine, spending time when I could at her side. I started reading to her, first The Lord of the Rings and then all the Harry Potter books. I played music, classical Bach and heavy metal, pop and rock and roll. I wish I could say something dramatic like "I kissed her and she awoke, like a Disney Princess," but that didn't happen. It was much more commonplace than that, after a couple more months she started opening her eyes for longer and longer times. She still wasn't talking or noticing her surroundings initially, but one day she looked at me and smiled. It made my month, later when she spoke my name for the first time, it made my year.

The doctors told me not to bring up reconciliation or anything that might cause undue stress, good or bad. I wanted to, but they threatened to ban me from the room. So we went through small talk as she became more cognisant, she didn't mention anything either. I wanted to ask her if she had tried to take her life, but again, see previous warnings from the docs. As we danced around each other carefully, she moved onto getting better. They started her on physical therapy to rebuild some of her muscle tissue from being immobile for so long. I guess it was when she started feeling more capable, she ignored the warnings and brought up a taboo subject after one of her PT sessions.

"What are you still doing here, Bill?"

"What do you mean, babe?"

"You don't have to stay out of sympathy for me, it was an accident. I just was so sad that I wanted to be out of it for a while. I shouldn't have taken that many pills but I wasn't trying to kill myself. I wouldn't do that to you as well as the other stuff I did."

I laughed for the first time in a...well, a long time. "I'm not here out of guilt, babe. I've had a lot of time to consider how I truly feel about you, I even forgave you while you were out of it."

She started crying, "Please don't play with me, Bill, I couldn't take it if you were joking. I'm almost wondering if I never woke up from the coma." She stared straight at me. "Do you know that almost the entire time I was out, it was like a dream. I kept replaying how we met and fell in love, and that was wonderful, but I also kept going through the nightmare of that day. I tried so hard to change the way it happened, but it always repeated no matter what I did."

Jesus, that sounded horrible. At least I was healing while she was sick, she had to keep seeing us break apart. I reached for her hand, "Karyn, I love you. I think I would have come to this point even if you hadn't almost died, but now it just makes it seem even more amazing that I get to give you another chance. So, I want you to know that I do forgive you, but it's still going to take some time for us to work out our issues, hopefully with some counselling once you get out of here.

"D-d-do, you really mean it, Bill? Please, God, say it again!" she cried.

I didn't answer with words, but leaned forward and began kissing her softly. She leaned into the kiss, slipping her tongue between my lips and I could feel her nipples becoming hard and pebbly against my chest. She moaned softly, pushing her thigh into my crotch to grind against my stiffening erection.

I pulled back momentarily, "Babe, umm, we can't do this here in your hospital room. What if they come in?"

She drew me back to her, her muscles were apparently getting quite strong from the therapy because I felt as if I couldn't resist her. She actually growled. "I'm going to let go of you for 5 seconds. There is a lock on that door and you can pull the shades, but if you aren't back here by then, I am going to fuck you and I don't care if the entire hospital sees it."

I make it a point not to argue with sexy, horny women who are married to me, usually. In record time, I locked the door and made a hasty attempt at closing the blinds. I don't know what magic Karyn used, but she had disrobed in that short period, standing naked as she was born. Her body looked frail, and I almost hesitated, but the look she gave me brooked no dawdling.

I strode towards he and gently laid her backward onto the smallish hospital bed, sweeping aside her tray with my arm. A heavily lidded look of passion I had never seen before on her face beckoned me. I shed my clothes, baring my fully erect cock to her view. Reaching forward again, I used my hands to lightly touch her mound. She was fully aroused, without any direct stimulation, and clear fluid was leaking down her ass onto the sheets.

I began to lean into her, planning on foreplay, but she forced my head between her thighs. I shrugged, if that was how she wanted it. Like I was a man dying of thirst in front of a desert oasis, I began lapping at her sopping cunt. She squealed with pleasure and tried to rise off the mattress, grasping my head with her upper legs. I wrapped my arms around them, lifting her slightly off the bed and forcing my tongue deeper into her valley. I looked up into her eyes, still working her lips with my tongue. Grabbing her hips, I forced her back down to the bed and began thrusting my tongue into her slit. It pulsated and grabbed at my tongue, but I refused to let it keep me inside. I blew softly on her clit then began sucking on it, as her first orgasm caused her to buck wildly. I drank in her juice, following the trail of it to her puckered rosebud. I continued to lick at her anus while I started thrusting one, then two digits into her pussy, looking for the rougher patch of skin that was her G-spot. The second orgasm began a small chain of them, her walls grasping my fingers in waves as her ass tried to clench my tongue.

Standing up, I pulled her to the edge of the mattress and slammed my cock home into her steaming hot vagina, still feeling her mini orgasmic movements wrapping around my dick like an iron fist covered in a silk glove. I tried to be gentle, but I was worked up from the long period without sex and by the sheer eroticism she was displaying. I brutally pumped in and out of her cunny, seeking my own pleasure while also in a sense reclaiming it as mine.

"Oh my fucking God, YES!" she screamed after what seemed like an eternity of pleasure, her vocal cords vibrating soprano. She began orgasming again, fluttering around my shaft. The sensations and her reaction was too much, I couldn't hold on as I felt my ejaculation racing from my balls to begin spurting into her pussy. It felt like it went on for hours, until finally I slumped forward and to the side, laying on my back next to her.

I guess I kind of phased out for a second or two, because the next thing I felt was something warm and wet working it's way around my softening erection. I opened my eyes and saw a wicked looking vixen that resembled my wife slurping my cock like it was an ice cream cone, cleaning it off and sucking the combined juices into her mouth.

Sadly, we didn't get to experiment further, because we heard a key turning in the lock of the door and raised voices telling us they were coming in. We had just enough time to cover ourselves with a sheet before the security guard and stunned nurses barged into the room. After a couple of seconds of mutual staring and silence, I asked if they could give us a moment. Karyn and I dressed quickly and I was asked to leave the hospital for the day.

Completely worth it.

I asked her to move back in after she finished her stay at the hospital. We are going to couples counselling and doing our best to show one another how much love we feel. We are waiting until we feel solid enough again financially to have kids, but she has agreed to at least two. I would put in more hours at work to pay off the hospital, but I don't want Karyn to ever feel that I don't spend enough time and attention on her again. I still have trust issues sometimes, but she is very understanding and forgives me. They are becoming less and less frequent as time passes. I can't tell the future, but I think in this case, the odds are in our favor.

Oh, minor note about Tim and Stay-Puft, they became minor internet sensations after a certain video was leaked online. The songify version is fucking hilarious. I don't know if they made any money off the video, but I kind of hope so. While Karyn was still in a coma and I was depressed, I made some calls to some friends who also do risk assessment; They work in the insurance field, though. It's funny how some numbers placed in a different column can almost triple your home and car insurance, or prevent you from ever getting term life coverage.