Would Your Love Be As Strong As This?

When Sue's husband suffered a brain injury that left him unable to talk or feed himself, friends urged her to walk away - instead she says: I love him more than ever By Tessa Cunningham for the Daily Mail

Published: 22:32, 13 June 2012 | Updated: 11:36, 14 June 2012

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Carefully squeezing a blob of paste on to the electric toothbrush, Sue Organ tenderly bends down. ‘Open wide, darling,’ she urges. As the toothbrush starts its familiar whirring, Sue is met with a beatific smile. Two huge periwinkle blue eyes lock on to hers. A soft hand reaches out for her.

It’s a morning ritual played out in millions of homes between a mother and child. But Charles isn’t Sue’s son. He is her husband. And he needs her help in ways most of us would find almost impossible to imagine.

Charles - a 6ft 2in ex-amateur rugby player - had an accident while competing in a charity bike ride in June 2007. Subsequent complications with his hospital treatment have left him with catastrophic brain injuries. The 62-year-old former successful businessman now needs 24-hour care.

Devoted: Sue and Charles Organ on their wedding day

He can’t walk, talk or feed himself. Even the most intimate jobs have to be carried out by Sue, 59, or a carer at their home in Coulsdon, Surrey. While the carers wash and dress Charles, Sue brushes his hair, cleans his teeth and massages his feet. She administers his medication and sets up the feeding tube which passes nutrients into his stomach, as Charles can’t swallow safely.

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Most of all, she has willed him to live, defying doctors who predicted he would remain in a vegetative state. Although Sue is cruelly aware that her husband is unlikely ever to lift her in his arms again or - most distressing of all - talk to her, the love between them remains palpable.

Pride of place beside his bed is a white board with ‘I love you’ scrawled on it in huge letters. It is Charles’s message to Sue. He wrote the words himself, holding the pen in his good hand and painstakingly spelling out each letter. ‘He did it all by himself while I was out one day,’ says Sue proudly. ‘It took him an hour. He was exhausted.’

'He can't speak and can communicate only by hand signals, thumbs up or down - but I know he loves me, too'

Before Charles’s accident, she couldn’t have imagined that such seemingly small things would mean so much. The couple lived the high life, an endless round of meals out, socialising with friends and action-packed holidays in South Africa, Australia and America. As Charles’s company flourished, Sue became his finance director and they bought a glorious, tumbledown farmhouse in France to renovate.

Today, their roles have changed beyond recognition. But one thing remains constant: their love. In an age of disposable relationships, Sue declares defiantly that it has simply never occurred to her to walk away. Theirs is an extraordinary love story - both heartbreaking and inspirational. It raises the question: how many of us would do the same?

‘I love Charlie even more now because he needs me so much,’ says Sue, an immaculately groomed woman whose girlish voice belies a backbone of steel. ‘He may be dreadfully injured, but he is still the man I married. He has the same sparkle in his eyes, the same lovely smile. The bond between us is unbreakable. He can’t speak and can communicate only by hand signals, thumbs up or down - but I know he loves me, too. It’s in his eyes. I also know that, if I walked away, he would lose the will to live.

He may be dreadfully injured, but he is still the man I married. He has the same sparkle in his eyes, the same lovely smile. ‘It doesn’t even matter whether he would have done the same for me. Actually, I don’t think he would have done - nor would most men. Charlie was incredibly squeamish and loathed illness. But I made a vow of marriage and I can’t envisage life without him or with anyone else.’

Sue, an administrator with a financial services agency, met Charles through mutual friends at a lunch party in Chipstead, Surrey, in early 1990. Aged 37 and divorced after a brief, childless marriage, she was resigned to living alone.

‘I took one look at this wonderful, fresh-faced man, absolutely bursting with energy, and I was hooked,’ she says. ‘We chatted all afternoon. It was Valentine’s Day a few weeks later. He sent me a huge bouquet of roses and asked me out to lunch.’

Charles, a bachelor, pursued Sue relentlessly. But, after her failed first marriage, she was reluctant to commit. ‘Why fix something that isn’t broken?’ she says. ‘With or without a ring, I felt totally secure. Not that Charles was the most trustworthy boyfriend - far from it, in fact. He loved the attention of women - that was one of his charms. He was this most wonderful, sensitive, generous-spirited man. He would walk into a room, call “Hello darling”, and every woman would look round. He was a cheeky devil. I’d catch him out and we’d have a terrible row, but he would always win me round. He would lift me in the air. Twirl me around the room until I stopped being cross.

‘ “I love you and only you, Sue,” he would say. It may sound daft but, even though he played around, I knew I could lean on him 100 per cent. He was a giver. After he was injured, so many people came forward to tell me the incredible things he did for them. He operated an open house for friends in trouble. Charles never mentioned it. He wouldn’t have wanted to brag. He loved people. He would meet someone and, in half an hour, he would know their life story. He was a great raconteur, but he was also a wonderful, intuitive listener.’

Happy memories: Charles and Sue at Christmas in 2003

Before the accident Charles employed more than 50 people and his business had a turnover in excess of £10m

Charles finally wore down Sue’s resistance and they married in September 2001 at their favourite restaurant in Oxted, Surrey. By now, Charles’s wet fish business, which he set up in the mid Seventies and ran with a partner and his younger brother, Richard, employed more than 50 people and had a turnover in excess of £10 million. He had a hugely lucrative contract supplying fish to restaurants around the south coast and airlines flying from Gatwick and Heathrow. Life couldn’t have been better. The couple enjoyed a string of holidays. Then, in March 2005, they bought their French farmhouse.

Tucked in a hamlet near Toulouse, the home was to be their dream project and eventual retirement home. ‘The day we moved in was the happiest of my life,’ says Sue. ‘The house was a shell, but we held a huge party. Even the mayor came. We put out tables with bottles of champagne, bread, cheese and olives. The sky was iridescent blue. The nightingales were singing in the trees. It was magical.’

As they threw themselves into renovating their new home, Sue and Charles divided their time between France and Surrey. They started learning French and the ebullient, ever-gregarious Charles soon knew everyone in the area. They were due to attend a party in France in June 2007 when Charles remembered he had agreed to join a team of friends taking part in the annual London-to-Brighton cycle ride. They were raising money for the British Heart Foundation.

I couldn’t believe what was happening. I went to the chapel and prayed: “Please don’t take Charles away from me”. I couldn’t imagine life without him. Now I just wonder if I was being selfish.

‘I tried to persuade Charles to go to the party. But he didn’t want to let his team-mates down,’ recalls Sue. The decision had catastrophic results - Charles came off his bike and hit his head on the road. Tragically, he wasn’t wearing a helmet. A paramedic discovered him thrashing around in distress at the roadside. Charles was rushed to Brighton’s Royal Sussex County hospital. ‘One of his team-mates rang me at midday with the news,’ says Sue. ‘My heart stood still.’

Fighting her way through traffic, she eventually got to Charles’s bedside three hours later. He was sedated. Looked deathly pale. But, as Sue burst into tears of shock, the doctor reassured her that, although a scan showed Charles had sustained a head injury, there appeared no need to worry. That night Sue accompanied Charles in an ambulance to London’s Charing Cross Hospital for monitoring. As the days passed, he seemed to improve. He chatted to Sue. Talked eagerly about getting home. ‘I’m so sorry to have worried you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been such an idiot.’

However, ten days later, complications set in and Charles suffered a massive bleed on the brain. ‘He was rushed into surgery. Suddenly, it was touch and go,’ recalls Sue. ‘I couldn’t believe what was happening. I went to the chapel and prayed: “Please don’t take Charles away from me”. I couldn’t imagine life without him. Now I just wonder if I was being selfish.’

Sue’s prayers were answered. Charles pulled through. But the damage to the right side of his brain had been devastating. Lying motionless in a hospital bed, his eyes unfocused, it appeared he was lost to Sue for ever. Charles was transferred to Mayday Hospital in Croydon, where doctors warned Sue it was likely that Charles would be in a semi-vegetative state permanently, unable to walk or talk and with a tracheotomy tube to help him breathe. They said that he could never come home.

Charles was a keen cyclist

‘I wondered if I had done the right thing, if it wouldn’t have been kinder to let him go,’ Sue says quietly. ‘This poor, wounded man could do nothing for himself. He couldn’t even breathe unaided.’ One might have imagined that Sue would quietly walk away. Few would condemn her. Friends urged her to rebuild her life, arguing that Charles was beyond her help.

But Sue refused. Then one day, around three months after the accident, something remarkable happened. ‘I was sitting by his bed when I took his hand,’ Sue recalls. ‘I felt his thumb gently start to rub mine. It’s the little ritual we always had before we went to sleep at night. I was so excited. I knew then my Charlie was in there. I knew he recognised me. All I had to do was get him better and get him home.’

Hospital staff were still dubious, so Sue videoed Charles to provide proof of his progress. ‘I used to be shy but, suddenly, I found my voice. I had to fight for Charlie and prove that he wasn’t beyond hope,’ she says.

It was agonisingly slow. But gradually Charles began to regain strength in his right arm and to focus his eyes. In December 2007, he was transferred to the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in Putney, South-West London, for rehabilitation. He had sessions of physio. Speech therapy. Sue visited every single day for 18 months, learning how to gently move Charles and administer medicines. Determined to stimulate his brain, she read him the newspaper and played him music.

‘One day I put on a DVD of a David Attenborough programme about fish,’ she recalls. ‘Charles was engrossed - his eyes didn’t leave the screen. At the end, he grabbed my hand. He was saying “thank you”.’ Sue sold Charles’s business and their former home in Coulsdon, Surrey, and bought a ground-floor apartment. ‘I got the keys on our seventh anniversary. I should have been so happy, but walking through that door alone, knowing Charlie would never walk beside me again, was desperate.’

She sought help from the Brain Injury Group (thebraininjurygroup.co.uk), a network of specialist care workers, medical professionals and solicitors who work together to assess people’s needs and seek compensation to help secure their future. Finally, in July 2009, two years after his accident, Charles came home. He is cared for 24 hours a day by a team of carers, currently paid for by the local Primary Care Trust. It means Sue can leave Charles occasionally. Even have the odd night out with friends. Charles has physiotherapy. Hydrotherapy sessions at a local swimming pool. He may be wheelchair-bound, but he attends parties and family events. He even attends rugby matches. His close band of friends visit regularly.

‘His eyes sparkle when they come in the room. He loves listening to the rugby stories. You know from his face he is drinking in every word,’ says Sue. Although Charles cannot talk, Sue chats to him constantly. ‘I ask him what he wants to do each day. Give him a list of choices. Sometimes I write them down and he picks. Other times, he gives a thumbs up or down. Charles is still here, making decisions, telling me what he thinks. Often I’ll see him looking at me across the room. His eyes won’t leave me until I come over to him. Then he beams that lovely, lopsided smile and I melt. It’s the same Charlie I fell in love with.’

Every night, Sue snuggles up beside Charles for a cuddle and a chat about their day. ‘It’s what couples do,’ she says simply. ‘We talk a lot about France: my dream is to spend part of the year there with Charles.

‘My goal is to get him strong enough to use a wheelchair independently. The stronger I can make him, the better his life will be and the more he can do. He can hold himself steady on a plinth now - which he couldn’t do three years ago. It’s a tiny hope but, most of all, I long to hear his wonderful rich voice again. That really would be a miracle.’

There’s one thing Sue won’t share with Charles: her grief at what’s happened to him. ‘I sometimes cry all night,’ she admits. ‘But I can’t let Charlie see, it would devastate him. I’m at his side in the morning, a big smile on my face. I have to be strong for his sake. Instead when I’m down, I pour my heart out to friends. I met a group of wonderful women: Lynne, Anne, Lois and Judy at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. They have husbands or sons like Charles and are shoulders to cry on.’

Last year the women set up BIG (Brain Injury Group), a website and online forum to provide support for others. ‘The past is gone,’ says Sue. ‘But Charlie and I still have dreams - it’s up to me to achieve them, for both of us. I love Charlie with every fibre. I will never walk away. Charlie knows that.’