Mystery Wife

by Annette Broadrick

  Hopefully the investigator he'd hired would soon be able to return the woman he'd left to her rightful life.

  It was early evening, local time, when Raoul stepped off the plane in Perth. Passing through customs was a relatively simple matter and in a short while he was in a taxi on the way to the hospital.

  He'd lost track of time. He didn't know if this was the same day he'd received the call about Sherye or the next one. He couldn't remember the last time he ate. He'd forced himself to nap on the plane, knowing he had to keep his wits about him. Despite his resolve, he could feel the bone tiredness pulling at him when he stepped out of the taxi in front of the local hospital.

  Raoul paused at the front desk and asked for Dr. Parkinson, the name he'd been given by the police investigator who had placed the call to him. He was directed to the medical section—as opposed to the surgical or obstetrics section—of the hospital and told to ask for the doctor there, since he was logged in at the switchboard as still making his rounds.

  When Raoul reached the proper area he paused at the nurses' station and identified himself to one of the nurses on duty.

  The woman grew flustered when she discovered who he was. She quickly rushed into speech, assuring him she would find Dr. Parkinson right away and have him meet Raoul in Sherye's room. She escorted him down the silent hallway and paused in front of one of the doors, pointing out Sherye's room to him.

  Raoul felt a sense of deja vu when he pushed open the door and saw Sherye lying so still in the bed, hooked up to various tubes and machines. A creeping sense of unreality washed over him as he moved closer. Would this Sherye open her eyes and admit to having no memory of him?

  There were differences, of course, in the layout and the lack of luxury in the room. What he hadn't expected was to experience the oddest feeling that the woman lying there appeared to be more of a stranger to him than the woman he'd recently left.

  Her hair looked dry, faded and lifeless; her skin looked gray and dehydrated. Sherye had always been in control of her weight because of her profession, but Raoul knew he had never seen her this thin—almost gaunt.

  He also knew he was witnessing more than an extended bout of unconsciousness, such as he'd seen with the other woman in France. He felt a chill of unease as he studied Sherye's unnaturally still body.

  One of her hands lay on her chest on the sheet covering her, while the other rested by her side. Her long, graceful fingers appeared almost transparent. Her nails looked brittle and unkempt.

  Raoul couldn't be certain that he would have recognized her if he hadn't known who she was.

  Whatever was wrong with her, it was damned serious.

  He paced the room while he waited for the doctor to appear and thought about the information he'd been given during that traumatic phone call.

  Now that he had seen her condition, more and more of the information he'd heard while in shock came back to him. For a little while he could distance himself from the emotional reaction. He'd had time to adjust to the intial shock.

  While he paced, Raoul focused on what he could remember of the information he'd received on the phone.

  Sherye had been brought to the hospital by two unidentified men. They told the doctor on call in the emergency room they thought she might have overdosed on drugs.

  While one agreed to stay and answer questions for her admission, the other explained that he needed to move then-car out of a no-parking zone and that he would return in a few minutes.

  According to the report later given to the police who were investigating Sherye's case, the emergency room that day was filled with a miscellaneous assortment of injuries, including two heart attacks and a young boy injured in an automobile accident. These emergencies were brought in within the same hour as Sherye.

  The nurse who was to get the information for Sherye's admitting form got called away before she'd had a chance to do more than jot down the words Sherye and possible overdose on a piece of paper.

  After an absence of ten minutes or so—she'd later sworn it was no longer than that—the nurse returned to the desk and discovered that the first man had never returned and the second man was gone, as well.

  Neither man had been seen again, nor were the police subsequently able to find them.

  Raoul was told that in the weeks since she'd been there, the hospital staff had managed to stabilize Sherye's condition. However, up to the time of the phone call notifying him of her whereabouts, she had never regained consciousness.

  After the inquiries into the whereabouts of the two men turned up nothing, the local police sent notices to enforcement agencies throughout Australia giving Sherye's first name and a general physical description as a possible missing person.

  When the police saw that the first notice, didn't produce any results, the crime lab came to the hospital, took photographs of Sherye and forwarded copies to every agency on the continent.

  Because of the drug overdose, which had been confirmed at the hospital, the police decided not to take the usual missing person procedure of going public and flooding the newspapers and television with her picture, which the officer who called him had admitted hampered the progress of the investigation.

  What they did do was consider the possibility that she was a tourist, visiting the country. Not knowing her nationality, they ran a check on every visa request for the past six months. In addition, they showed her photograph at every transportation terminal in the city.

  No one recognized her.

  According to the officer, one piece of luck in their favor was the city's relatively isolated position on the continent. A visitor to that part of the country would have limited access to it.

  Although no one claimed to have seen her, the investigation turned up the seemingly irrelevant piece of information that a private, unidentified yacht had been spotted in the harbor at Fremantle, a seaport near Perth, on the same day Sherye had been brought to the hospital.

  By the time the police decided the coincidence might be worth checking out, the yacht had been gone for some time without a trace.

  The investigation had gotten stalled at that point.

  Through sheer, unexpected luck, one of the female dispatchers in the Alice Springs police department kept looking at the picture they'd received—Sherye looked familiar to her. She went home and dug through several old magazines she'd saved. Ironically, she didn't recognize the famous model from any of her glamour shots. Instead she'd vaguely recalled seeing a candid snapshot of Sherye taken on a beach when she wasn't working. She'd worn very little makeup—and the photo was a close-up to verify the model's beauty in its most natural state.

  For whatever reason, that photograph had stuck in the dispatcher's mind. As soon as she spotted it again, she knew she'd found the Sherye everyone was looking for.

  The investigation had moved forward once again until it reached Raoul in France.

  Looking at her now, Raoul was even more amazed that they had recognized her. Raoul reached out and touched her hand. "Sherye?"

  There was no movement or sign of life other than the slight rise and fall of her chest when she breathed.

  The door opened behind him and he turned to see a tall, middle-aged man walk in.

  "Mr. DuBois?"

  "Yes."

  The older man held out his hand. "I'm Wil Parkinson. Sorry to keep you waiting for so long. I wanted to clear my schedule so that I'd have all the time we needed."

  The two men shook hands. The doctor was the first to speak. "Although I'm sorry we have to meet under such sad circumstances, it's been a tremendous relief to all of us— police and hospital staff included—to finally locate Sherye's family. I want you to know that we're grateful that you responded so quickly. I can appreciate the fact that this is difficult for you."

  Raoul nodded. "It's been a shock," he said, returning his gaze to Sherye.

  "You must be concerned about her condition."

  "Yes, I am."

  Dr. Parkinson looked at the char
t he held, flipping through his notes. "We have verified that her initial condition was brought on by a drug overdose. When we examined her, we found signs that she has been using drugs intravenously for some time."

  Raoul spun away from the bed, feeling the jolt of shock-produced adrenaline hit his system. "You're positive of that? I mean, is there a chance you could be mistaken?"

  Dr. Parkinson reached over and picked up Sherye's arm that rested by her side. Then he gently rolled the one on her chest until her inner arm was exposed. There were signs of old bruises on the inside of her arms from her wrist to her elbow, as well as needle tracks.

  "I assume from your reaction that you weren't aware of her drug habit."

  Raoul stared at her arms in horror, unable to reconcile what he was hearing and seeing with the woman he thought he knew. "She once mentioned that she'd become addicted to drugs when she was fourteen, but she saw what they were doing to her and after a couple of years managed to stop. I've never seen any signs of drugs since we've been married."

  The doctor rested his hand over Sherye's. "I believe the evidence speaks for itself. She was in poor physical condition when she was brought in—underweight, dehydrated and anemic. While the police pursued the search for her identity we first worked to stabilize her vital signs and then began a form of therapy to stimulate her by various methods in the hope of bringing her out of her coma." He smoothed his hand over her hair in a comforting gesture. "As you can see, we haven't been successful, thus far."

  "When was she brought here?"

  The doctor checked his notes and quoted a date three weeks ago. "I know I'm being personal and I'm sorry to appear as though I'm prying into your personal life, but I've wondered how close you are to your wife. I believe the officer who called you explained that one of the obstacles they ran into in tracing your wife was the fact that there was no missing persons report filed on her."

  Raoul contained his irritation despite the implied criticism of his behavior. "I can understand why this situation seems peculiar to you. I'll admit that I'm at a loss to explain some of the recent events, myself."

  The subject had moved subtly from Sherye to Raoul. With that shift he realized that he could no longer hold on to his hard-earned objectively. His emotions surged suddenly despite his strong will to suppress them.

  He disliked discussing his personal life with outsiders. Hadn't he already gone through this, for God's sake? First at the hospital in France and now here in Perth. He was being pressed and prodded to explain... to expose... to analyze an area in his life that had gone sour.

  He knew he was oversensitive regarding the failure of his marriage. However, in recent weeks—up until the phone call he'd received several time zones ago—he'd believed that he'd been given a second chance, a chance to rebuild a shattered, hopeless relationship into something healthy and strong, a chance to resurrect a relationship and fill it with love and friendship, a new tenderness and understanding, a shared love of their children.

  With one phone call, bis life and his perception of his life, his values, his basic belief in himself—all of the pieces that formed the foundation of who he was—had been tossed into a chaotic swirl of events where the impossible had suddenly become not only possible, but had happened.

  Raoul knew that he owed this doctor no explanations about bis marriage. He also knew that sometime in the near future he would be facing a barrage of probing, in-depth questions from the local police if Sherye didn't regain consciousness soon in order to answer them herself.

  He had no way of knowing how many laws—local and international—she had broken on her way to her capricious rendezvous with fate here in an Australian hospital, alone and unconscious. Just for starters, she hadn't cleared customs before entering the country. The evidence of habitual drug use was another red flag that would be investigated.

  He had a hunch there was a much longer list involved.

  Raoul realized that he had been standing beside her during his battle to override and suppress his emotions once again. He tested his control by looking into Sherye's expressionless face.

  She knew all the answers to their questions. She was the one who could explain reasons, motivations, schedules, plots. She was the one who could explain why another woman was found with her car, her papers and wearing her clothes.

  It was typical of Sherye to avoid confrontations that might lead to any unpleasantness. She'd always been skilled that way. She'd never been willing to assume responsibility for her behavior, either past or present.

  Was her overdose an accident or had too many of her recent decisions produced a situation that got out of control? Had the consequences of her actions begun to catch up with her?

  Knowing Sherye as well as he did, even if she were to regain consciousness he knew there was no guarantee that she would answer questions posed by the police.

  On the other hand, she might find it amusing to play along, but then she'd never seen a need to tell the truth if a lie would better serve her.

  No. He wasn't going to be able to ignore what he was feeling.

  Raoul needed to talk to someone about all of this. Perhaps in the telling he would be able to make some sense out of what seemed to him at this moment to be an incomprehensible series of events, possibly orchestrated for nothing more than Sherye's own amusement. She'd carelessly played with all of their lives before blithely going her own way.

  He turned away, unable to look at her without feeling his anger and frustration build. He was more than weary. He was exhausted. He didn't have the energy to deal with his roiling emotions on his own.

  Dr. Parkinson had been quietly watching Raoul wrestle with the conflict between reason and emotion within him, reading him fairly accurately as a result of his own wide and varied experience of dealing with people in crisis. He saw the moment that Raoul decided to trust him enough to share a part of himself.

  Raoul looked around the room blankly, suddenly conscious of bis need to sit down before he collapsed. As soon as he stiffly lowered himself into one of the well-padded chairs that furnished the room, Dr. Parkinson sat in its mate, leaned back and waited for Raoul to begin—at his own pace and in his own way—to discuss what must be a very painful and difficult subject for him.

  "For the past year or more my wife and I have been having marital difficulties—since around the time our sixteen-month-old son was born. Approximately six weeks ago Sherye left our home, insisting she would be back the next day. The following night the police called and informed me that my wife had been in an automobile accident and had been taken to a hospital just outside Paris, where she was listed in critical condition." __

  Dr. Parkinson had started making unobtrusive notes soon after Raoul began. He looked up from them now with a puzzled expression. "I'm afraid I don't understand." His gaze strayed to where Sherye lay. "You mean she was already under a doctor's care weeks before she—" He paused, searching for words that might clarify what he thought he was hearing.

  "No. What I am saying is that the woman found at the scene of the accident that night after Sherye left our home looks exactly like Sherye. She had the same hair and eye color, and the same physical statistics and features.

  "There was never any doubt in my mind when I first saw her that she was anyone but Sherye. In addition, she was wearing Sherye's clothes, carrying her purse, driving her car. It was through the identification she had with her that the police were able to locate and contact me."

  He could feel his body beginning to relax. He rubbed the back of his neck in an attempt to ease the tightness there. "No one thought it necessary to check her dental records, which I was told the police did as a final step in their positive identification of Sherye before they called me."

  Dr. Parkinson had stopped writing and was staring-slack jawed—at Raoul. "This woman told you she was your wife?"

  Raoul shook his head. "She couldn't tell anyone anything. Like Sherye, she was taken unconscious to the hospital. She'd received a severe blow to th
e head and remained unconscious for several days." He nodded to Sherye. "Ironically, the situations are quite similar except for the problem with her identity. That is, there was no problem of that nature until she regained consciousness and didn't recognize anyone.

  "Unfortunately she couldn't identify herself, either. The doctors assumed her condition was the result of the blow to her head she received at the time of the accident. Her lack of memory was an unfortunate side effect to the accident, but the situation appeared staightforward enough."

  Raoul's body was finally protesting the long hours and unbearable tension he'd been under. His head felt as if a tight band encircled it, and it continued to tighten as the minutes ticked by.

  He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees and resting his head in his hands, which gave him some relief.

  These were the painful memories, the ones that seemed to stab him in his gut. In a hoarse voice he said, "I thought I was bringing my wife home from the hospital last month. Until the phone call about Sherye, I'd been given no reason to doubt that the woman currently living with me was my wife."

  He knew he was lying, even as he heard the words. Some instinct deep within him had known that no one could make such a tremendous shift in her personality, beliefs and value system, but because he'd wanted so badly to accept and embrace all the positive changes in her, and because he knew there was no way she could be anyone but Sherye, he'd deliberately disregarded the wall that he and Sherye had placed between them so many months ago. He'd believed what he wanted to believe.

  So what kind of person did that make him?

  Dr. Parkinson had started making notes again, leaving Raoul the necessary space to deal with the pain as it surfaced. As the silence lengthened, the doctor finally accepted that he would have to help the man deal with the pain.

  He glanced up from his notes and said in a casual voice, "I would say that your story certainly explains the lack of a missing person report, but it certainly raises a great many other questions that demand answers."