I woke to strange sounds in the dark—low humming that twisted into high-pitched giggling. At first, I thought it was the wind, a trick of the early morning shadows, but then my eyes adjusted, and I saw him. Sayed, my husband, was beside me, his arms flapping awkwardly, his lips forming broken syllables that made no sense, eyes rolling back as if he were somewhere else entirely. My heart skipped, then thudded painfully against my ribs. For a brief, horrifying moment, I wondered if I was dreaming—but the cold sheet against my arm and the weight of his body told me otherwise. This was real.
I screamed his name, my voice cracking in terror. He didn’t respond. Panic spread through me like wildfire as I grabbed my phone, dialing 911 with trembling fingers. By the time paramedics arrived, he had gone still, and the sight of his motionless, peaceful face froze something in my chest. How could someone so alive just… stop, even for a moment? The fragility of life hit me with a force that no previous worry had prepared me for. I followed them to the ambulance, my mind a storm of fear and confusion, praying silently that this was just a terrifying anomaly, a fluke in the rhythm of our lives.
At the hospital, tests and scans followed in a haze of antiseptic and fluorescent lights. Doctors murmured about mild seizures, stress, and sleep deprivation. “He’s lucky it wasn’t worse,” one said, though the words barely penetrated my fog of anxiety. Stress. Sleep deprivation. These terms hovered in the air while I stared at him—Sayed, the man I knew, who had been unraveling quietly before my eyes. I couldn’t stop replaying the scene in my mind: his flailing arms, the odd syllables, the wild look that had belonged to someone else entirely. I wondered if I had missed signs, if my desire to maintain normalcy had blinded me to the storm brewing beside me.
A nurse asked questions I couldn’t answer honestly. “Has he shown unusual behavior recently?” she inquired, jotting notes into a clipboard. I lied, my voice soft, careful. But deep down, I knew the truth. For months, Sayed had changed—long hours at work, secretive phone calls, late-night murmurs to someone named Nadia. I wanted to trust him, to give him the benefit of the doubt, to be the supportive wife through a rough season. But now, staring at the fragile version of my husband, I realized that ignoring the signs had only made the fear in my chest grow heavier.
Two days later, he came home with instructions to rest. On the surface, he seemed attentive and loving, yet a distance clung to him like shadow. His phone buzzed relentlessly, and he answered with furtive glances, fingers trembling slightly. The name Nadia haunted me, lodged in my mind like a splinter I couldn’t remove. One afternoon, curiosity mixed with dread compelled me to pick up his phone while he showered. The screen lit up with a conversation that sent chills down my spine. Nadia’s texts showed worry over his episodes, alongside videos of him laughing, flapping his arms, murmuring in the childlike voice I had woken to—proof of the strange, private world he had been navigating without me.
When he stepped out, wet hair dripping, he sighed and admitted the truth. Dissociative episodes, sleepwalking, and the online therapist, Nadia, who had been the only one to witness them. He feared that sharing this part of himself would make me see him as broken, even dangerous. I placed his phone on the table, words heavy on my tongue: “We don’t survive secrets.” Silence followed, but it was no longer suffocating—it was tentative, fragile, an acknowledgment of what we both needed to confront. That night, for the first time in months, we fell asleep together honestly. No humming, no laughter, no hidden whispers—just the quiet rhythm of two people awake in the dark, facing the truth, and beginning the slow work of rebuilding trust.
