“Are you crying?” Russel asks me.
His voice is so gentle. So pained to think I might be in any sort of turmoil or anguish.
“I don’t want to answer any more questions.” I choke on the words. I didn’t expect to break so easily.
The agents turn and look at me.
“We need to go,” Russel tells them. “My wife is unwell.”
He doesn’t wait for their permission but stands me up, holding onto my elbow. My legs nearly collapse under me.
“Are you all right?” he asks, worried. “Do you need a doctor? Is there a doctor she can see? I think it’s the stress. She isn’t well …”
I hear the hint of panic in his voice, and that’s when I crack. I let the pieces of my soul that I’ve tried so desperately to hold together all these years crumble to shards around me.
“She’s in shock or something,” my husband insists, and still it takes the men in the room several seconds staring at us before one of them says, “I’ll see what I can do.”
Russel is trying to support my weight, trying to keep me from falling to the ground. I can’t stand the feel of his fingers clenching my arm, can’t stand the memory of Henry’s grip on my body.
“Let me go,” I shriek, only half aware that I’m yelling at my own husband and not a man who’s been dead for ten years. “I don’t want to stay here. I want to leave.”
A childlike voice from the doorway carries over the sound of my hyperventilating. “What’s wrong with Mommy? Is she all right?”
I don’t process the child’s words or Russel’s answer. Someone’s hurrying toward me. Seconds later an oxygen monitor is clasped to my finger, a blood pressure gauge wrapped around my arm.
“Has she had anything to eat or drink lately?” a voice asks my husband.
“Here, someone take my wallet and go get her something from McDonalds,” he says, and I want to laugh at the thought of Russel ordering me fast food.
My breath returns to me in short, choppy gulps. I want to pass out. I want to ignore the faces around me, the worried expressions, the shouted questions.
“She’s unwell.” I’ve lost track of how many times Russel has repeated himself. Unwell, unwell, unwell …
My wife is unwell.
The man has no idea.
No idea whatsoever.