A near death experience

I had the most bizarre phone call today - from a friend in Penzance who said she was thinking off popping round to see how me and the kids were doing, and to pass on how sorry she was to hear about Terry.

'What about Terry? I haven't heard anything.'
'Oh, have you not? Well I heard that he died in hospital...'

Now how do you respond/react to that?! News that your ex - the father of your four kids - is dead? Probably one of the most surreal moments ever.

The thing is, although obviously shaken, I didn't take it too badly. Just calmly asked who her source was, and whether she was sure we were talking about the same Terry, as obviously no word had trickled back to me. I didn't cry, didn't freak out, but did say that I needed to hang up so that I could call his parents and find out what's what.

So I dialled their number, wondering what the hell I would say to them, and lo and behold - Terry answered the phone.

'Phew, that's a relief.'
'What is?'
'Well, I thought... heard rumours... that you were dead.'
'?'

Turns out, he was in hospital - had been for ten days, having surgery on his broken arm. Apparently he should never've been let out of Treliske the first time around. He was under the knife for more than 6hrs, heavily sedated for 3days, and will be out of action arm-wise for at least a month. Hopefully, he'll be ok to play the guitar again (eventually) but that's going to take an awful lot of physio.

Understandably, he was pretty miffed that I hadn't brought the kids up to visit him, but I had no idea that he was even in! All I heard (after the fact) that he was dead?! He claims to have rung and spoken to Eddie last Monday to say that he was going in for the operation but I can't say that the message ever got passed onto me.

Still, the weirdest conversation I've ever had on the phone. Funny thing was, at the time I was being told that he was allegedly dead, I hadn't felt it - didn't have that sense of dread that you'd expect if indeed it was the case. It didn't sit right at all, so maybe we do intuitively know these things. Although it wouldn't surprise me for one second if he had truly died (what with his liver, and lymphoma, and overall poor health) I knew it wasn't now.

A huge relief. I'm really not ready to have that conversation with the kids, just yet.