For Better or Worse

It was the coolness of the sheets against her skin that first alerted her to his absence. Groggily, she opened her eyes and found him precisely where she expected him: staring blankly into the starless night sky. “Come back to bed,” she called softly.

“Can’t,” he replied.

“The nightmares?” she asked.

A sigh and a nod barely perceptible in the low lighting told her all she needed to know. And so the routine began again. Slowly and soundlessly she rose from the mattress and crossed the room to him. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she raised herself up on her tiptoes to rest her chin on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she whispered, kissing his neck. “I’m here. It’s all going to be okay now.”

He stroked her forearm with his thumb, a sign he had heard, and for several minutes they stood together like that, silently watching the empty street. Finally, with a squeeze to her arm he whispered, “It’s really bad tonight.”

“Everything is already taken care of,” she said, holding him tighter and gently nuzzling him. He pressed his arms down tighter over hers, just like always.

She remembered how it was the first night this happened, waking up alarmed to find him gone, asking him why he’d gotten up, what was wrong. He told her not to worry, to go back to bed, but she had made a promise to take care of him for better or worse and she wanted to know what she could do to help him. He said that really, she shouldn’t worry, but she was insistent. Finally, he told her he needed her to go take all the sharps and pills and rope in the house and lock them up then hide the key. There was a box she could use in the closet in the hall, he said, then he emphasized again that it was very important she hide the key somewhere he wouldn’t be able to find it.

She was quite certain she’d never been as scared as she was in that murky half-past-one darkness frantically rummaging through the kitchen utensil drawer for knives. Just shy of three months they’d been together in that house and she was so afraid she was going to lose it all tonight if she missed something in her search. In a frenzy she made their home safe against the worst thing she could possibly imagine, and when she finished she hurriedly dragged him to bed and clung to him like plastic wrap for the rest of the night, unwilling to risk him wandering off into the night.

The next several instances after that first were each marked by progressively less blind panic and a progressively greater sense that this nighttime ritual was the greatest way she could possibly show she loved him in that moment, but with time, this feeling, too, faded, replaced predominantly with efficiency and a somewhat uncomfortable air of familiarity. By the middle of their second year together she had it down to a science. By the beginning of their fourth, she had realized she was beginning to tire of it. She felt terrible about admitting it -- she never would out loud -- but she had begun to resent these sleepless nights. She loved him, of course, and she would do it for him if he needed her to, but she wished for selfish reasons that she didn’t have to do it anymore. She had her own emotions to consider, after all, and this increasingly tiresome task was nothing but a detriment to them.

One thing she had learned, though, in their now seven years together was that all things were due to fade, the good and the bad. Would she have preferred this to be just another normal night, not interrupted by her husband’s persistent insomnia? Certainly. But she didn’t really mind anymore; she understood. This was just life. In time he would adjust to his new medication; the nightmares would cease; the better times would return. For the moment she just had to worry about the moment: getting him through the night, holding him until he started to feel okay again.

Swaying gently back and forth, she began to softly hum “La Vie en Rose,” and she could almost feel him start to smile. It was his favorite song. When the last notes had faded into the silent night, he turned to her and, placing a hand gently on her cheek, he kissed her on the forehead and said, “Go back to sleep, love. I’ll come join you soon.”

“Okay,” she replied, and with one last quick embrace she left him to a few more minutes’ contemplation by the window and climbed back into bed. Everything was going to be okay soon. It always was, in the end.