Sleeping With The Enemy by M.N Providence Page B

him out here! I don’t want to see you!’
    ‘Alright,’ he
surrendered, rising up and moving back from the bed. The agony of hurt was
etched in his face.
    Rosina picked up
a glass of water from her bedside table and hurled it vehemently at him. It crashed
against his forehead and cut him badly. Momentarily blood trickled from a gash
the glass had made on his face.
    At that precise
moment, nurses burst noisily into the room and forced him out. He stood outside
the room and looked in through the glass windows as they tried to calm Rosina
by drugging her.
    Blood dropped
from the gash on his forehead and fell on his shirt. He did not feel the pain.
The pain he felt was on the inside. He felt helpless. He stood there and died a
million times, watching the love of his life fighting for her sanity, and
knowing that he had driven her to the edge of reason. He was guilty, he knew,
but he also wanted to hold her in his arms and make her forgive her.
    He stood there
and felt helpless, and with each dying moment of his increasingly worthless
life, he knew that he would always love her more than she could ever hate him.
     
    * *
* * *

She was heavily
sedated. She opened her eyes but they held no life. They were the dead eyes of a
zombie. She noticed him sitting there on the bed next to her and slowly pulled
herself to sit up.
    They looked at each
other for a long time and didn’t speak.
    He took her left
hand in his hands and stroked it gently, affectionately. ‘What happened, Rosina?’
    She responded in
a weak, tired voice. ‘My mind told my body to commit suicide, but my body
refused…so my mind punished my body…’ She looked down.
    He reached
forward to stroke her hair but she flinched back with such severity that he
shamefully drew back his hand.
    A moment of
tense silence passed in the room.
    It was broken by
her, pulling her hand from his grip. ‘I think it will be best for both of us if
you stop coming here.’
    ‘No, Rosina.’ It
was a cry of agony, a plea for reason to come to her mind. ‘You cannot do that
to me…to us .’
    She fell silent.
    ‘You have to
think properly about this—.’
    She glared at
him. ‘I’m irrational, practically losing my mind…and you want me to be
accountable for my actions?’
    He didn’t
respond immediately. Looked down at his hands pensively, then brought his gaze
back to her eyes. ‘You told me once that to love is to receive a glimpse of
heaven.’ He paused and swallowed hard. ‘I would like to know what happened.’
    ‘I jumped high
for joy, and you removed the ground from beneath my feet.’ Tears fell in  rush
from her eyes and she fell back on the bed and sobbed bitterly, covering her
face in her hands.
    He wanted to
take her in his arms, but he was also afraid of her reaction to his touching
her. He sat there and felt the tears race down his face.
     
    * *
* * *

She came to him
in his dreams.
    She was wearing
a pretty floral dress and was barefooted. He stared at the milky white of her
feet and loved her. She was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen. She
looked beautiful and adorable, like an exotic princess he wanted badly but
couldn’t have.
    She was holding
a mirror close to her face. For a long time she gazed into the mirror, until he
was forced to ask her, ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘I’m looking in
the mirror, trying to find myself, and it hurts me a lot because I can’t see
myself.’
    He swallowed
hard and didn’t respond.
    She placed the
mirror down and looked at him. Her eyes were lifeless. He felt a wave of mixed
desire and sympathy overpower him, but he didn’t move to hold her.
    ‘I’m trying to
let go of you,’ she said quietly. ‘But my heart won’t permit me to.’
    A powerful
emotion overcame him and he fought back the tears that stung his eyes, but his
eyes clouded and she saw the hurt in them, but she was too far gone to accept
any mutual grief with him. She wanted him as far away from her life as
possible.
    ‘I want you to
go