WHEN THE ICE MELTS

First 3,000 WORDS of:

WHEN THE ICE MELTS

By: Phyllis Burton

THE PROLOGUE

The small Cessna aircraft bucked and rolled in the strong to gale force wind, and solicitor Tom Wenham turned to look at his travelling companion. ‘Lucky sod, sleeping through all this: I hate turbulence,’ he whispered to himself. One minute Tom could see the mountains ahead of him, and the next minute the horizon appeared to be vertical. He could see the pilot, his friend Andy was having difficulty controlling the aircraft, and his heart thumped in his chest as adrenaline coursed throughout his body. Tom always enjoyed flying, but this turbulent flight made him feel scared for the first time ever.

A few seconds later the regular beat of the engine changed. ‘Hell, I don’t like the sound of this, Tom,’ Andy shouted out over the noise as he tried to control the small aircraft. A few moments later the engine emitted a sound like a strangled hiccup, and seconds later by a much louder one. ‘Hey Tom, I think we’re in trouble. This old kite can’t cope with this, so hold on to your seat.’ The scared urgency of Andy’s voice alerted Tom to the extreme danger they were all in.

‘Okay,’ he replied, checking his seat belt. He glanced at the man next to him to make sure his belt was secure too. Tom didn’t know him, but he felt envious that he could sleep and, snore whilst all this mayhem was carrying on around him. How on earth could he sleep through all this?

Another violent gust hit the side of the small aircraft sending it way off course.

‘Andy do you want some help up there?’ Tom shouted as his friend tried to gain some sort of equilibrium.

‘No mate, you just stay where you are. I’ll be okay.’ Just as these words passed Andy’s lips, the engine coughed, spluttered, and then stopped. ‘Oh shit, now what do we do?’

Tom’s legs began to shake and he closed his eyes. A mental picture of his wife Sarah’s face swam before him. ‘Oh Sarah, my love,’ he thought, ‘if I don’t make it, remember that I loved you.’

Andy gave a whoop of excitement. ‘Hey Tom, I’ve just remembered there’s a small plateau to the west of that mountain. I’ll try to set her down there. Hold on to your hat, your seat, anything. Or just pray!’

‘Yes mate, I can see it,’ Tom said in a panic. ‘It looks small to me, almost like a pocket handkerchief.’

‘It is, so keep everything crossed.’

A few moments later and fighting to control the aircraft, Andy managed to line it up with the achingly small piece of flat land ahead of them. ‘Here we go.’

Calamity struck. A sudden huge gust of wind hit the side of the Cessna blowing it off the chosen course, and before they could panic further one of the aircraft’s wings clipped the side of a rocky outcrop on the side of the mountain. They didn’t really stand a chance. The aircraft nosedived just short of the plateau and rolled downwards before coming to a halt in a rocky chasm.

All around was silence.

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WHEN THE ICE MELTS

PART ONE

“To each his day is given,

Beyond recall, man’s little time runs by:

But to prolong life’s glory

By great deeds is virtue’s power.

(VIRGIL – Publius Vergilius Maro – 70 BC to 19 BC)

Chapter One

ONE YEAR LATER…

“Thou shalt not kill.”

It was one of the deadly sins, wasn’t it? So how could she even think about killing anyone, especially her beloved husband, Tom? Sarah Wenham gave a violent shiver as she realised the terrible inevitability of what she was about to do.

Could she in all honesty, go through with it?

The taxi sped along the wet road. It was a miserable night and matched Sarah’s mood. The incessant rain made the street lights appear to be wearing misty curtains as they endeavoured to pierce the gloom. There was nothing wrong with Sarah’s car, as it was sitting in a dry garage at the family home, but she was in no fit state to even consider driving herself to the General Hospital in her home town of Maversham.

Sarah was thinking the unthinkable and inevitable conclusion to all the heartbreak, sleeplessness, and worry. Her decision would allow her husband to die with dignity at last.

Tom had been in a coma ever since being pulled barely alive, from a small Cessna aircraft after it smashed into the side of a mountain in Switzerland, killing the pilot, the other passenger, and leaving Tom with terrible, life threatening injuries. The time since the accident seemed to Sarah like an eternity. One whole year of wishing, longing and waiting for him to wake up passed by, leaving her with feelings of helplessness intertwined with hope, but alas not even her intense love could make a difference. Tom was lost to her.

Since that dreadful day when news of Tom’s accident reached her, Sarah couldn’t remember how many hours she spent at her husband’s bedside, staring at all the paraphernalia of an Intensive Care Unit. The machines that bleeped and flashed constantly, with one showing a continuous moving wiggly line, indicated that Tom was still alive. Sarah tried to put away the thought that it was only machines that maintained his tenuous hold on mortality. During those long, lonely hours she sometimes closed her eyes, but in her mind’s eye, Sarah could still see the never ending line snaking across her vision. To help pass the time she spoke to him, sometimes repeating whole conversations shared between friends and colleagues, and all the time hoping and praying for even the smallest hint of recognition, but Tom’s condition remained the same.

Despite her deep introspection, Sarah noticed that all the houses in the street through which the taxi was passing, looked peaceful with their curtains drawn and their lights burning within. Who knows what dramas are unfolding in each one of them, Sarah wondered with a deep sigh? Each family encompassed an enclosed group of emotions, sometimes happy, sometimes ecstatic, and sometimes feelings of helpless resignation combined with a grief so painful that nothing, or nobody, could ever take away.

Sarah reached for yet another tissue from the box that nestled beside her, and something inside her mind registered that the colours of the box – navy blue and red – clashed with the tan colour of the taxi’s seats. How strange that something as mundane as this, should surface in her brain? Perhaps it was trying to escape the misery, the heartbreak and the gut wrenching reality of what she was about to do.

Her blue eyes were red-rimmed with constant tears and her usually well cared for hair, although it was clean, hung down in limp strands with little or no emphasis on style. Who cared anyway? Tom’s eyes still remained closed to her and everything around him. He only existed as a shattered broken shell, and a mere shadow of his former wonderful self. There was no spark of life, no smiles, and no soft words spoken sexily in Sarah’s ear. So why should she bother what she looked like anymore?

Something else stirred within Sarah’s brain. Why was she feeling all these negative and destructive thoughts? Had she forgotten to take her tablets again? Panic began to surge through her. They were the only things keeping her sane and able to cope with her changed circumstances.

Sarah’s close friend, David Browne, who practised at the surgery Tom and Sarah had used for years, had diagnosed her deepening depression. She remembered that several weeks after Tom’s accident, they were sitting in the corner of The Green Man public house, close to her home on the edge of the village green in the small village of Hosden, on the outskirts of Maversham.

David’s wife, Heather had just disappeared into the cloakroom, and he turned to her. ‘Sarah my love, you can’t go on like this any longer you know.’

‘What do you mean, David?’ she said, sniffing and sighing in abject misery.

‘Well look at you,’ he said with compassion written all over his face. ‘You’ve lost an awful lot of weight. I guess you haven’t been eating properly, have you?’

‘No, there is only me to cook for,’ Sarah said pulling a face. ‘I can’t see the point anymore.’

David reached over and grabbed her hand. ‘Sarah, you have to keep strong for Tom’s sake. You have to be there for him when he wakes up.’

‘And you think that Tom will wake up?’ she said, her confused mind filled with doubt.

‘My dear girl, who knows what will happen? But please listen to me; you can’t just disintegrate into…’

‘Do you mean a pathetic woman who bursts into tears at the slightest provocation?’ Sarah said interrupting him.

‘No, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s not good for you.’

‘David, I know you’re right, I can’t go on like this. I’m not eating, I’m not sleeping and I can’t stop thinking about Tom and our past lives together. There isn’t anything in the future for me right now. I feel that life isn’t worth living anymore without my rock, my friend, and my…lover.’ She closed her eyes and sighed. ‘Sorry too much information, I guess.’

‘Sarah, please don’t apologise. The feelings you’re having right now are quite normal, in fact I would be surprised if you were not feeling this way. It all has to come out, and you can’t just bottle it up inside.’ David paused for a moment and squeezed Sarah’s hand. ‘Yes, Tom is in a coma, and nobody knows what is going on in his brain until the brain stem tests are completed. What you are going through is a kind of pre-grief process and your brain is readying itself for the possibility that he might not recover. In that event, it will eventually start to adjust.’

‘I’m not sure that I want it to, David. I would feel like a traitor to Tom. I wake up each morning and reach out for him and there’s nobody there, just me.’ Sarah looked away, trying to hide the fact that tears were rolling down her cheeks.

‘Look, as your friend and a doctor, I think it is time for you to consider taking some antidepressant tablets until you can come to terms with what’s going on in your life.’

Sarah stared hard at him. ‘David, I couldn’t. Aren’t they addictive?’

‘Yes, they can be if taken for a long time, but I’m thinking about one of the best treatments for depression on the market and just what you need right now. They will enable you to put your emotions back on an even keel. Why don’t you talk to Mark Howard about it?’

‘Well, I suppose I could talk to him, if you feel that’s what I need.’

‘Yes I do. I also feel that knowing you as I do, you won’t need to take them for long,’ David replied with heavy emphasis.

Sarah had always had a deep seated resistance to taking pills or tablets of any kind, but she took David’s advice and spoke to her own doctor, and he agreed that she should start taking them. After a couple of weeks, Sarah became a lot less tearful and her sleep patterns returned to something approaching normal.

The noise of an ambulance’s siren as it sped by, brought Sarah back to the present. She knew that her mood had nothing whatsoever to do with a missed tablet. She was at rock bottom, at the end of her tether, or whatever other cliché her brain could come up with.

How could she be contemplating ending Tom’s life? A little voice inside her head argued with her. “Tom’s life ended when the aircraft hit that lonely mountain in Switzerland, and you know it. Keeping him alive artificially only prolongs your agony, and postpones the inevitable outcome. Let him go: let him go.” Deep down Sarah knew that what was about to happen was the only course open to her. The recent tests indicated that there was no brain stem function, and confirmed it was only the machine that was keeping him alive, and she was about to give permission for this machine to be switched off. Pain shot throughout Sarah’s whole body. To her it felt like contemplating cutting off one of her own limbs, and did she really have the courage to watch whilst the machine was being turned off? ‘Yes,’ Sarah told herself. She had to be there to hold Tom’s hand until the end, just to let him know that he wasn’t alone. The taxi drew up outside the hospital, and her heart began to thump. She paid the driver and entered the hospital.

Later, she was sitting in a small room next to the consultant’s office, and Mr. Arthur Jameson walked in. He was tall, quite slim, bald, and wore large gold tinted glasses.

‘Sarah,’ he said looking at her with a pained, but sympathetic expression on his face. ‘Come through to my office, and if you are quite sure that this is what you want, the papers are ready for your signature?’

‘Yes, I am sure, thank you.’ Sarah walked into the Consulting Room and looked around her. It was an ordinary room, but she was here to carry out an extraordinary task. She was about to sign her husband’s life way.

‘Please sit down, Sarah,’ Arthur Jameson said, holding out an ordinary pen for her to use.

She stared at it. She was surprised that yet again even at a time like this, an everyday object could still impinge upon her consciousness. Sarah knew she should be focusing on what she was about to do and not be swayed from her task.

‘Thank you, Mr. Jameson,’ she said. ‘I know we are doing the right thing for dear Tom.’ But despite her apparent assertiveness, all she really wanted to do was to run away and hide. But a sudden picture of Tom surrounded by machines forced itself into her mind, and with shaking hands, Sarah forced herself to sign her name opposite the small crosses. She knew there was no going back.

******

Chapter Two

Several long months had passed by since Sarah had agreed to switch off the machine keeping her beloved Tom alive, she reflected. And yet during that time some of her life had changed, but conversely, so little. Sarah still missed him. The house felt too quiet, and there were so many memories of their too few, but happy years of married life together.

Sarah drove her car into the garage, and sat for a few moments before taking her shopping into the house. She sighed. Her 34th birthday was turning out to be a long and frustrating one, as she tried to cope with irate clients whose work was taking too long to complete, or even started for that matter. Sarah and her partner, Toby Archer, in the thriving firm of Patterson, Wenham, and Archer – a law practice situated in Maversham’s quaint high street – were both feeling the pressure. After Tom’s accident and his death, Sarah and Toby had each taken over half of his clients, and they always seemed to be playing catch-up. They both knew that they needed another partner to help with the increasing workload, but so far, Sarah had refused point blank to make the decision to find a replacement for Tom.

David Browne, and his wife Heather, suggested that they all went out to dinner that evening to celebrate her birthday. At first Sarah had refused, but she eventually agreed to go. The fact that it was her decision to end Tom’s life was never far from her mind, but she knew that she should pull herself together, go into the house, open up any letters or cards that might be there to welcome her, and prepare for yet another evening out without Tom beside her.

It was a wet and windy early October evening, and dark, threatening clouds hovered on the horizon as David drove Sarah and Heather to a fashionable restaurant on the outskirts of Maversham. The gusty wind made the car shudder, bringing down branches, twigs and a shower of leaves of varying sizes and colours resembling an artist’s palette. They fell and fluttered downwards, competing with the heavy rain as the windscreen wipers fought to cope with them. Autumn had always been Sarah’s favourite season. The colours of the leaves, all shades of green and yellow, through to bright gold and brown, always managed to set her mood dancing. But this year, it reminded her of the passing of time.

Sarah was still not in full control of her emotions. How could she be? Since Tom’s death everyone told her that she had done the right thing, but her conscience continued to bully her, instilling in her a kind of confusion that she was certain nothing or nobody, could ever cure. Before the machine was turned to the off position, her conscience had told her there was no alternative, but ever since then it had condemned her.

‘Sarah darling, come back to us. We’ve reached the restaurant.’ Her closest friend Heather’s voice pulled her out of her introspection. ‘Are you quite sure you’re alright, only you’ve hardly uttered a word since we left your house?’

‘Sorry, Heather. I’m having one of those brown studies you hear about, only in my case, it was a black one.’

‘Sarah, it’s your birthday,’ Heather entreated. ‘This is a wonderful restaurant as you know and the food is always gorgeous. We’ve booked a table in the corner away from the main restaurant.’ Sarah tried to smile.

David placed his arms around both of them as they entered the main eating area, which was full of happy smiling people,

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