Sandra Parton - Endal - How one extraordinary dog brought a family back from the brink

‘After his accident,’ she said.

My heart started pounding hard. ‘What accident?’

I heard an intake of breath. ‘Didn’t anyone call you? Last week. He was involved in an accident. He’s OK, but he’s had a bang on the head.’

‘ When last week? Why wasn’t I told?’

There was a rustle of paper. ‘Last Friday, the sixteenth. I thought you knew. I’m sorry. He was admitted to hospital with concussion but then the ship was sailing and they didn’t want to leave him behind so they took him back on board to treat him there. But I suppose his condition has deteriorated a bit so he’s been transferred to a hospital again.’

‘Where is he? I need to speak to him. Do you have a number I can call?’ I needed to hear him tell me what had happened in his own words.

‘I’ll have to get back to you on that. But honestly, don’t worry. It doesn’t sound serious.’ She was embarrassed and obviously couldn’t wait to get off the phone.

Honestly, don’t worry? Straight away I got on the line to HMS Nelson , the naval base he was attached to, but no one there seemed to know anything. They all just promised they’d get back to me. I paced the house waiting for the phone to ring. Zoe was playing with a jigsaw on the floor and when Liam got in from school they started fighting with each other. Kids always seem to sense when you are anxious, which makes them seek even more attention, which just adds to your stress. I suppose I could have phoned and asked a friend to come round and keep me company but I didn’t want the line to be engaged when Family Services called me back, nor did I feel like talking to anyone. I just had to keep myself busy until I found out what was going on.

I was making the kids’ tea when I finally got a phone call, but it wasn’t exactly the information I’d been waiting for.

‘You’ll have to call the British Embassy tomorrow morning and they’ll arrange for a call to be put through to your husband’s hospital ward.’ They gave me the number.

‘How is he?’ I asked. ‘Is there any more news?’

‘No more news. Just that he’s had a bump on the head. Try to keep yourself busy and don’t worry about it too much.’

I thought, Yeah, right, you do that when it’s your husband. I just needed to speak to him and hear in his voice that he was OK. I’d trained as a nurse and knew that head injuries could cause a wide range of symptoms from a simple raised lump through to inflammation of the brain and all sorts of complications. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t tried to call me himself since the accident. Yes, it was difficult to get access to a phone, but surely the circumstances were exceptional?

When I finally got through to the hospital in Dubai, a nurse with a heavy accent said she would get Allen on the line. I waited and waited, trying not to think about how much a phone call to the Middle East must cost per minute. It sounded as though nothing was happening and I was about to hang up when I suddenly heard breathing down the line from thousands of miles away.

‘Allen, is that you?’

There was a pause. ‘Yes, it’s me. Who are you?’

‘It’s me! Sandra.’ I guessed it must be a bad line at his end. ‘How are you? What’s happened?’

‘Well, I haven’t got any clothes,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Was this a joke?

‘I haven’t got anything to wear.’ His voice sounded panicky.

I frowned. ‘You must be wearing something just now. Won’t that do?’ In the Navy they often lived in the same set of clothing for weeks on end and just learned to live with the smell of themselves and each other. Besides, Allen wasn’t the kind of person to bother about having a clean set of clothes. If he only had one pair of underpants for a week, he’d joked to me, he’d wear them right way round, wrong way round, back to front, upside down, and make do.

‘I’ve got no clothes,’ he repeated.

I was starting to get alarmed. ‘Allen, what’s happened? Why are you in hospital?’

‘I don’t know why I’m here. I can’t remember.’

I asked more questions but couldn’t get anything out of him. He just kept returning to his anxiety about his clothes.

‘I have to go, darling,’ I said at last. ‘This call is costing a small fortune. I’ll ring you back tomorrow, OK?’

‘Right, bye!’ he said and the line went dead.

This was very strange behaviour, and not like him at all. Our international phone calls were precious and we always ended them by saying ‘Love you!’ but he hadn’t given me time. He hadn’t asked about Valerie’s funeral or how I was coping or mentioned the kids. This was all so stupid. It felt unreal, as if it couldn’t be happening. I started phoning around everyone I could think of to find out what had happened, but I just kept hitting blank walls. No one seemed to know.

I hardly slept a wink; my stomach was tight with anxiety and my thoughts raced through endless possibilities. The next day I called the hospital again, hoping to get more sense out of Allen, but someone I presumed was a nurse explained to me that he’d been moved.

‘Where to?’ I asked.

‘We don’t know,’ came the reply. ‘You’ll have to ask his ship.’

I rang the British Embassy, and after some delay they called back to tell me that he was in a hotel room in Dubai. It was two hours before I could get through to him, and we had another brief, bizarre phone call in which he sounded vague yet on edge.

‘Someone’s stolen my stuff,’ he said.

‘I’m sure they haven’t. It’ll be on the ship waiting for you.’

‘It’s gone,’ he said, slurring a bit, which I presumed must be a side-effect of the painkillers he was taking.

He still didn’t seem to have a clue how he had been injured. It was most peculiar.

‘Should I fly out to see him?’ I asked the woman at Family Services. ‘I could find someone to look after the children for a few days.’

‘There’s no point in you going out because I think they are planning to medevac him home.’

‘When will that be?’

‘We don’t know yet.’

I had a conversation with an officer at the base, who said something I found very strange. ‘We’ve got no idea what he was doing off the ship that night. He and a friend seem to have gone ashore without permission and been involved in a car accident.’

‘But how is that possible?’ I asked. ‘How did they get off the ship? Where would they have got a car from?’

‘We don’t know. We’re running an investigation and we’ll find out more in due course.’

I didn’t believe for one second that he had gone AWOL. First of all, it would have been totally out of character for my ambitious, responsible husband, and secondly, I knew how difficult it was to get on and off naval bases. Whenever I went to pick Allen up after work at Collingwood or Rosyth or wherever he was, I had to get through strict security, showing photo passes and being noted and documented. You didn’t just wander on and off ships at will, especially in a war zone. There had to be more to it than that.

During the next two weeks, I only had a few more worrying phone calls with Allen, but dozens of frustrating calls with the naval authorities, without getting to the bottom of what was going on. I seemed to get different people every time, so I had to explain the situation from scratch, then they’d go off saying, ‘We’ll have to see if we can find anyone in the office who knows anything about this.’ It was all horribly frustrating. My husband was injured overseas and I couldn’t be with him and there was nothing I could do to help.

I tried to keep myself busy, doing endless housework, cooking, sewing, covering Liam’s school notebooks with coloured paper – anything to keep my mind occupied. I couldn’t bear silence and stillness because then the anxiety fluttered in like a big black moth. If they were going to medevac him home that meant the injury must be serious. Head injuries can cause brain damage. Why had he sounded so odd when I spoke to him?