Page 20 of Prelude to Madness

He turned away from me, refusing to meet my eyes.

“Hey, we’ll work on it together. You and me. It’s always been us, together against the shitty world.”

Tear-filled eyes found mine. “I know, Silas.”

Doctors filed into the room, and I stepped back to let them do their jobs, taking the opportunity to grab a cup of the worst vending machine coffee.

I hung around outside until they were done.

“Well?” I asked one of them as they left.

“He seems to be fine. We’ll obviously do more tests, some scans on his brain, but to all intents and purposes, aside from the fact he’s underweight, he seems fine.”

Fine. I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank fuck for that.

“When can he come home?”

“Give it a couple of days for us to do the tests, but he should be good to go then, provided everything is ok.”

I shook his hand, thanked him, and walked back into Eric’s room.

“You had me fucking scared for your life, angel. I’m nothing without you.”

“You’ve always been my everything, Silas. I’m sorry for what happened.” He looked broken, a shell of his former self.

I believed him, but something was bothering me. I’d known him long enough to know when he was hiding something.

“What’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”

“Tomorrow, Silas. I’m tired now.” He closed his eyes. He was right. I needed to let him sleep.

This could wait. After all, how bad could it be?

A couple of days later, the doctors gave him a clean bill of health. The scans on his brain came back as normal, and he was allowed to go home. He’d seen a psychiatrist and talked to him for hours, and while he was happy the overdose had been accidental, he wanted to see him again.

Eric still needed help.

When we arrived home, he was exhausted, and I was more than ready to let him sleep and regain his strength, but as I walked out of the bedroom, he stopped me.

“Will you sit? We need to talk.”

Those dreaded words that usually signalled the end of something good. Hopefully, that wasn’t the case this time.

“Okay, we can do that.” My worry must have shown on my face, but I did as he asked and sat on the edge of the bed.

“It’s not what you think, but I need to tell you.” He looked down at his hands. “I feel like I’ve cheated on you.”

“How?” What did he mean? He’d been in a hospital bed for the past month unless it had happened before that.

“While I was in my coma, I dreamt. Dreams that make no sense to me. The first one was of you and me, except you were my captor, and I was your prisoner.”

“Is that how you see us, angel? You can leave at any time.” What the fuck was that all about?

“No, god, no.” He paused for a moment. “I enjoyed that part. It was liberating in a way, and that’s not what I’m talking about.”

He took a deep breath and told me about the other part of his dream. A dream within a dream, if you can fucking believe it.

A story of a life with another man. A husband who was so real in his head he thought it was true. Not only that, but he’d lived the life of this other man in his dream too. Felt his thoughts and his feelings. He’d fabricated a whole life for them in his head. Was that what he really wanted?