I visit you in the hospital. I’m scared but want to see you, want you to know that I’m still here, still your wife, still in love with you. I want you to know that I’m here, despite the fact that you tried to kill yourself and told me it was a done deal, you would be dead by the time I found you. I’m still here and so are you.

We talk, but you have nothing to say. You feel ‘empty’. You ‘can’t communicate’. You are still in your bloody clothes. I keep looking at you. I want to scream and hit out at you, shake you back to our world. But I don’t. I speak slowly and softly. For once in my life I don’t speak my mind. I make a conscious effort not to blurt everything out. You are shaking and smoking. I try to establish how much of the night before you remember? I keep reassuring you that I am still here, and so are you.

We only spend a little time as we are both exhausted. Neither of us believes we are in this waking nightmare.