The doctors said it was heart failure. But he believed something else had happened.
“She would wake up at night,” he said, “with her eyes open, but not really there… as if someone else was driving her.”
I got goosebumps.
Then he confessed the worst part.
He had fallen asleep once. And when he woke up…
It was already too late.
After that, he turned the house into a fortress: closed closets, bells on the doors, latches on the windows. I felt as if I were living in a prison built out of fear.
I asked in a low voice, “Do you think I could…?”
He interrupted me immediately.
—No. But fear doesn’t require logic.
Then came the first real shock.
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He had been holding me, soaked in sweat, preventing me from falling.
He looked at me and said, almost desperately:
See? I wasn’t wrong.
I was afraid, of myself, of what was hidden inside me. But I also saw something new in my fear: I wasn’t going to let it break me.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” I asked.
“Because if I fall asleep,” he said, “history repeats itself.”
One night the light went out. In the darkness, for the first time, I took his hand. He didn’t let go.
I whispered: “What if I’m scared?”
