It was the same nightmare. I would wake up in my normal bedroom, the same I went to sleep in. It would, of course, be empty. And there was a knife on the nightstand. At first, the breeze would be full of whispers, but those grew into shrieks that invaded the room: “Follow her.” I would unwittingly pick up the knife and hold it right above my left wrist. My right hand would raise it up and bring it crashing down. Before the blood could spatter, I would wake up.
I hadn’t had a nightmare in years. Not after I started working more and getting less and less sleep. Jessica had begged me to cut back, even though we wanted a house and, eventually, a family and that required sacrifice. She also told me she got nightmares. Bad ones. I would often spend the early hours of my morning calming her down, but she wouldn’t look me in the eye; it was impossible to really reach her. Towards the end, Jess always looked like that. She wouldn’t tell me what was happening, even as I promised her she could trust me. I wouldn’t let her get hurt.
Everyone says that you’re blameless; that you couldn’t have done anything else. You know they’re lying to you. They look at you and secretly think: You let her die. You didn’t try hard enough. Follow her.
After she was gone, my mind splintered like a thousand pimply stars in the black of my brain. I couldn’t look at knives or blood or anything; it was all just memories shoved down a funnel. I couldn’t function. I didn’t want to heal. Eventually, I received a call from the inlaws demanding I get help, something else Jess had wanted for us. I knew I should try.
After charging Jessica’s phone, I found her therapist’s number for when things got bad. On the first ring, the woman picked up. For a few painful seconds, she thought it might have been my wife:
“Jessica. I’m delighted to hear from you. Tell me how you and Roger are doing. I…oh.”
“Hello Dr. Roberts, this is Roger, Jessica’s late husband. I was wondering if you could see me.”
Her office was tiny and scant. There was a velvety chair for me and a swivel for her. The room was cold, breezy even, and I was on edge immediately. Dr. Roberts was dressed in all black. Once she entered, she locked the door behind her with a key, then she slid the key under the door. Neither of us were getting out.
“Good morning Dr. Roberts, I’m here about my wife’s-”
“Her suicide? Or her homicide? It’s clear you’re too laden with grief to see things objectively.”
“No, that’s not right. I saw her with my own eyes. She had…excuse me…she had grabbed a knife and…”
“Like this one?”
Dr. Roberts pulled out a shiny, sharpened blade. My stomach dropped. The room melted away. And my reflection shone in the knife.
“It’s your fault she’s gone. You killed her. You knew she was suffering and couldn’t make it better. She was reaching for help. Yet every time you silenced your phone and left her to work, you were stabbing her. Over the years you had slashed her wrists for her.”
“That’s not…this isn’t therapy. I know I’m not responsible, but you’re supposed to…”
“Don’t lecture me about therapy, child. I was more present in Jessica’s life than you were. I was the last person she saw alive. You are nothing. She’d want you to die and face the same pain. Follow her.”
Dr. Roberts’ face had snapped with righteous anger. She was waving the blade around hectically. Spittle was flying out of her mouth, but her voice was slowly quieting like a radio being dialed off. Replacing her were whispers in the wind.
Suddenly I was in our bedroom. Jessica was sobbing, begging for me to help, to make her pain go away. And I couldn’t. Then the world flipped and the room was filled with blood. My wife’s body was slumped over the nightstand and she was gone. The medical examiner told me I found her hours after she was gone. He’d side-eyed me. Follow her.
“I can’t follow her. One of us has to live,” I was shouting over the increasingly furious wind which bounced off the walls of Dr. Roberts’ closet-sized office.
“Why couldn’t it be her?”
I didn’t know where the voice came from, but in my bedroom Jessica slowly rose up with dried blood still all over her shaking frame. She held out the knife. It was rusty with use and the smell made me gag. But, without wanting to, I took it. Her eyes were so sad; they held so much that I wouldn’t ever be able to know. I wanted to know. I wanted to know how I could have saved my wife. She was silently imploring me to Follow her. I raise the knife and close my eyes.
They opened in the office, right before I was going to slice open my wrist with Dr. Roberts’ never-been-used blade. I was holding it with my right hand and shaking. I quickly dropped it and jumped up, knocking myself over with the chair. She had gotten up from her swivel chair and was heading toward me, but I bolted out of the room.
With nowhere to go, I headed back to the house. After turning on The Bachelor, I fell into a restless sleep. At some point in the dark night, Jess’s phone woke me up. It was Dr. Roberts.
“I understand that you were a no-show for our meeting. Although I can understand for a recently grieving hus-”
My mind has splintered like a thousand pimply stars. Though I want to find closure in my new, lonely life, I know what’s waiting for me on our nightstand. And when I sleep in our bed, they’ll all still be telling me to Follow her.