The Curious Incident
I want to tell you how it happened. It was quite a long time ago now, even though it comes to my mind so often; still it is very hard to believe, it was a life changing incident.
It is ten years to the day. Heading back to our small pitiful flat on the outskirts of Chester, having just been to the local shops to buy as much cheap food as was possible, to last us a whole week, I can vividly remember that I couldn't buy much because we were short of money again. We had car taxes, insurance and bills piling up with final demands due any day.
I was looking forward to getting home because I hadn't seen my husband Phil for the whole weekend; he had been working hard to raise some extra money so hopefully we could keep the dept collectors off the doorstep. We couldn't even afford our weekly lottery ticket, things were so tight.
As you can tell we were not the most well off family, we were both in poorly paid jobs and didn't spend our money as well as we could. I worked at the local pub and Phil worked at a textile factory. The main reason we were always quite poor was because we liked a drink and you can imagine too much of our wages ended up back behind the bar where I worked and cigarette costs a fortune even with staff discount. We both knew that this would largely affect our health in the years to come, but we were going through a bit of a bad time with our debt issues. So quitting was out of the question, (it would have been too stressful). Neither of us could not sleep at night with all the worry (of the debts), so the drink helped get us off to sleep.
As I was saying, I was looking forward to getting home to see my husband. It must have been about half a mile from home and then unexpectedly my rusty old Fiat conked out. I can remember being very angry and could have cried, because it was raining hard outside and I just didn't want to get out of the car. In the end I had to, struggling with the bonnet I couldn't find what was wrong. Getting back into the car soaked through, I sat back in the driver's seat wondering what to do next; I noticed ...
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As I was saying, I was looking forward to getting home to see my husband. It must have been about half a mile from home and then unexpectedly my rusty old Fiat conked out. I can remember being very angry and could have cried, because it was raining hard outside and I just didn't want to get out of the car. In the end I had to, struggling with the bonnet I couldn't find what was wrong. Getting back into the car soaked through, I sat back in the driver's seat wondering what to do next; I noticed that the petrol dial was below empty. Great that's just made my day. Could it get any worst? Now I'd have to carry these heavy bags home in this torrential rain.
Furiously heading off down Main Street, with two fully loaded shopping bags in my hands, I finally reached the flats soaked to the skin with my hands blue and numb from the weight of the bags. I pushed open the large heavy front door, and breathlessly struggled up the five flights of stairs to our flat (flat twenty one). Pausing on the threshold I drew my keys out of my drenched pocket, and opened the door.
I slumped into the kitchen and dropped the shopping bags down. Some of the items fell out on to the floor.
"PHIL! PHIL!" I screamed anxiously waiting for his reply whilst picking up the shopping, putting it away in the tired looking cupboards, and still trying to get my breath back from climbing the stairs. Impatiently I marched into the living room, the television was blaring out and there was my husband lying on the floor. My first reaction was that he was asleep.
"Great", I thought, "you're sleeping and I'm dragging shopping home in the pouring rain."
I tried to awaken him, but there was no response.
I shook him and called out his name.
My voice getting agitated because I thought he was pretending.
I then realised this was for real.
I couldn't wake him, what was wrong?
What had happened to him?
I rang for an ambulance.
I never took my eyes off him.
Anxiously I waited for the sirens of the ambulance. Four or five minutes of fearful waiting until they arrived, slight relief came as I heard the paramedics scrambling up the stairs. Swiftly opening the latch the paramedics rushed in. They started to do all sorts of tests on my husband asking me questions the whole time, some I couldn't answer, after what seemed like a life time, somehow they managed to awaken him. But he still had to go in to the hospital.
I went in the ambulance with Phil, he started to talk to me but I couldn't understand what he was saying. I could only hear my heart beating so loud, it must have been the fear. We approached the hospital and they took him into section E, many hours pasted and many tests were carried out. After a long night of anticipation, the doctor came in and told us that "Phil had suffered a fit possibly due to a large shock". It was a relief that it wasn't anything more serious and they said he would be fine although he would need regular checkups with his own doctor.
The doctor at the hospital said Phil could go home and organised a lift home for us. After we arrived we started to think about what could have caused this alarming incident, we were so exhausted we decided to head to bed. I don't think either of us had a great nights sleep but Phil said he felt much better when he woke the next morning. We chatted about he events of the previous day and but Phil couldn't remember anything about the fit or what could have caused it.
I made us a nice breakfast and then started on the house work. I told Phil to take it easy and I would look after him. I pulled out the Hoover from the cupboard, and began to vacuum the worn red carpet in the living room. I decided to Hoover underneath the sofas because I hadn't done so for at least three or four weeks. Slowly moving the sofa with all my strength, there to my bewilderment was a lottery ticket. I picked it up and screwed it up and put it in my jeans pocket. It took me nearly all morning to clean and tidy the flat; I'd just have time to prepare some dinner before going off to work.
As I got changed for work the lottery ticket fell on the floor I'll just check that ticket before I set off.
Typing in page four hundred and two on ceefax, I anxiously waited. The numbers appeared, the first was number twenty three; looking at the lottery ticket I saw I had twenty three, then the same with the next number two. I then begun to feel excited, the next number on the screen was thirty nine, and I had that! I couldn't believe my luck so far, looking down contentedly at the television to see that I needed numbers forty five, five, and seventeen to win the total jackpot. Looking at the ticket I noticed that I had all three of the numbers in a row. This meant that I had all six numbers which was the jackpot. Some how I thought that the ticket was fake or I had been set up in someway. I confronted Phil who was sat in the kitchen with an amused smile.
I asked him about it, and he suddenly realised that that was the explanation of why he had fainted because; he had won the lottery! I ran up to Phil and gave him a big kiss, and then started to leap around the living room with joyfulness. We had won four million pounds!!
As I said at the beginning it had changed our life around, we are no longer working, nor have any bills that we owe. And we moved into a beautiful mansion with a swimming pool. Instead of the old Fiat that broke down a lot, we now have a Jaguar. We were now contented enough to give up our bad habits, the smoking and drinking. And we have had two children, David and Paul. We love our life now and are so thrilled it had happened!!
James Winchester Short Story
English
P1
