When It Rains, It Pours

When I woke up, I was told that I'd be able to see my wife if I'd answer a few questions. So I did, and I told most of the truth. I of course didn't tell them of my conversation the man in the cowboy hat, and I explained my wound by telling them that the man had a knife. I think I volleyed the questions quite well considering I was up to my eyeballs in morphine.

I had to go up three floors to see my wife. I didn't know whether or not she was a patient and asked if she was ok. They told me that yes she was a patient, and yes she was physically fine. When I finally entered her room I could see that she was being restrained.

"Let her go!!!" I screamed. "Why do you have her tied down like some criminal?"

"We can't," the doctor replied. "If we loosen her restraints she scratches at her eyes. Do you see the marks on her?"

I could see them just fine. It looked as though a cat scratched at her eyes. One of them was a bright red color. It looked like one of those cherries that you get on top of a sundae.

"What happened?" I asked her.

"You know exactly what happened Sweetie Pie."

A scream caught in my throat. It was that same sound. It was the sound of insanity, and it was coming from my wife this time.

"You gave her to him, didn't you? Answer me Sweetie Pie, you gave her to him didn't you?"

"What do you mean? I don't understand."

The rest of what she said was a blur. The doctors made me leave because they said I was upsetting her, and it sure seemed to me that they were right.

I was released from the hospital the next day. My wife is still there. Sometimes I ask to visit her, but they never let me. They say she doesn't want any visitors. Her mother tries to go every week, usually on Saturday, but Jenny will never let her come up. I try to tell myself that things will change eventually; that everything will go back to some semblance of normalcy, but it doesn't seem likely. I pass most of my time doing crossword puzzles and watching television, and am careful not to go outside when it rains. Not even to roll the windows up. Every bolt of lightening causes me to jump and survey my surroundings, and every clap of thunder tenses every muscle in my body.

I haven't seen my daughter since this whole thing started five long years ago and I've began to lose hope. They say that if you don't find an abducted child in the first 24 hours that the odds of ever finding it decreases exponentially every day that passes. Jenny's mother thought we should put up a gravestone in the family plot for little Kyla, but I'm not ready for that yet.

The worst of it though, is not knowing what I said to that old man before darkness overtook me. I try to go back to that moment and think about what it is that I said -actually that was the whole point of writing this story down- but every time I get to that part, all I remember is the look of recognition on the old man's face, and how he complimented my taste. Perhaps that's for the best though, maybe it's best if some things are left to the darkness. Maybe some things work better there.