The (un)perfect couple, Textfreak1 [inspirational novels .txt] 📗

and I just wanted to let you know that you can go see her now, if you want to.”


Daniel nodded silently and stood up. Abruptly Dr. Reed’s beeper went off and he excused himself and left. “You want to come with me? After all, you haven’t seen her for months”, Daniel looked at Adam impatiently. He nodded slightly and followed Daniel down the empty hallway.
Daniel barely noticed the people around him. In that particular moment, it seemed there was nothing more important than to see his wife and to make sure that she was fine. After all, he did love her. ‘You do?’, a soft voice said in his mind. “Of course I do!”, he muttered. “I would never do anything to hurt her”, Daniel felt ashamed. Ashamed of himself, because he still thought he hadn’t done anything wrong. ‘But you already did’, the gentle voice replied with a slight giggle. ‘Weren’t it your actions which tempted Hannah to commit suicide?’. Daniel shook his head and the feeling of guilt overcame him. ‘It’s a bad feeling, isn’t it? As a lawyer you may not have had the pleasure of this feeling, so far. Daniel, you feel guilty’, the tone of the voice became serious. ‘You did something terrible and I know you would have done the same thing as Hannah in her place. “Yes!”, Daniel said aloud and doubled his fists.
“Yes, what?”, Adam asked confused and looked at him.
“Nothing!”, he countered.
Adam watched him warily, opened his mouth but closed it again. He didn’t want to bother him with questions about weird behaviour, because Daniel had enough to worry about.
The light of the rising sun shone through the curtains into Hannah’s room. The slight warmth gave Hannah a comfortable feeling. For one moment she forgot about the problems which swirled around her and just enjoyed that beautiful moment, she had so few of. She felt a little tired and her neck hurt, but given the circumstances Hannah had been in luck. If Daniel hadn’t saved her, she would probably be lying on a litter, down in the funeral parlor. She wasn’t quite sure if that had been the right solution to solve all problems. On the one hand, Daniel would be forced to talk about their issues, he had caused, but on the other hand she didn’t feel strong enough to speak about problems which definitely could end the marriage. Suddenly, she was jolted out of her thoughts, because Daniel entered the room followed by Adam.
“Good morning, honey”, said Daniel and kissed Hannah on her cheek.
“Hey”, she replied hoarsely and allowed Daniel’s kiss reluctantly. “What are you doing here, Adam? I thought you were in Europe, working for two more months”, Hannah didn’t bother to look at Daniel and focused on Adam. She sat up and waited for him to answer.
“Are you serious?”, Adam sounded angry, but Daniel had no clue why.
“I don’t really know what you mean, Adam”, Hannah looked confused and tried not to sound reproachful, because that wasn’t the behavior you’d show towards someone who had intended to commit suicide a few hours earlier.
“Do you really want to go on with this little small talk? You asked about my welfare, what’s next? The weather? Let’s face it, you tried to commit suicide”, Adam snapped, then took a deep breath and went on: “I told you what had happened to my sister and to my whole family! Four weeks later, you had no better idea than to tie a scarf around your neck and to jump from a chair?”, Adam was breathing heavily and looked furious. When he caught Hannah’s eye, the feeling of awkwardness took over and left the little room.
Daniel was really curious what all that was about, but now he had more important thoughts on his mind than that. He wanted to figure out why his wife had tried to kill herself, but he had a painful, burning feeling that he already knew the answer and wouldn’t like it at all. Actually, there wasn’t a single minute in which Daniel and Hannah couldn’t find the right talking point to discuss just anything. Daniel felt helpless, because he couldn’t deal with the situation and inside of him there was utter chaos.
How do you deal with a human being who survived a suicide attempt? That’s something you hadn’t learned at school. How blind can someone be to overlook the obvious problems one has? Is it respect making us fall silent in the wrong situations? Is it embarrassment, we feel when we are confronted with our friend’s problems or is it defenselessness which petrifies us? To put yourself in the situation of the one who demanded our help seems hard, because every situation is different and has to be treated differently.
“I know”, muttered Hannah without looking up, Daniel could see how hard it was for her, though.
“What do you mean?”, but he definitely knew the answer, before Hannah could say the words which seemed like needles, pricking into his heart.
“That you cheated on me, five months ago”, it was the first time that Hannah looked up accusingly and deeply into Daniel’s eyes, but he wished she wouldn’t.
Apparently his voice vanished, unable to speak, he nodded. His mind was paralyzed by the situation although Daniel had imagined this day very often, but it never occurred to him that it would hurt that much emotionally.
“You don’t need to answer. I just want you to know that I forgave you. Five months ago, I couldn’t understand how a loving person inflicts such a terrible loss to his beloved one. Now I understand how easy a mistake can happen to everyone of us.”
“What do you mean with you can understand how easy a mistake can happen?”, Daniel looked confused, not because he found his voice again, but rather he wasn’t aware of any mistakes his wife had ever done.
“You’ll come to know soon”, replied Hannah with a cold blooded voice and a creepy smile on her face. This odd behaviour should have worried Daniel, but he just thought it was a side effect of the medicine.
It became quiet again and Daniel pretended as if the bird outside the window was highly fascinating. Unfortunately, the slight drizzle turned into a flood of raindrops which patterned hard against the window and Daniel couldn’t make out the bird through the dense rain any longer. ‘Maybe the wind blew it away’, he thought and couldn’t quite believe his own ridiculous thoughts, though. The sun, shining powerful through the drizzle earlier, was now nothing more than a little point one could make out because of the heavy black clouds, now covering the gloomy sky.
Suddenly someone knocked on the door and it turned out to be the nurse who stuck her head into the room. Smiling and quite proud of her white teeth which dazzlingly white (Daniel was pretty sure) must have come out of a carton saying: “Natural white for your teeth. Even you can smile like a Hollywood-Star! (No Guarantee)”
“What is it?”, Daniel asked as if she would have interrupted them in an important conversation. The effect was astonishing. The smile on the nurse’s face vanished and she glanced at him with a sight saying: Shall you be rude to me again I will get you down.
“Two policemen are waiting outside and want to speak to Mrs. Miller. Alone!”, she added and her sight became even colder. Daniel hesitated for a moment then went out of Hannah’s room without saying anything else.
In the corridor Adam was sitting on a chair, starring at the white wall, ostensibly thinking about something. When Daniel was about to sit next to him, the two policemen appeared behind a corner whispering excited and didn’t notice Adam or Daniel.
For a couple of minutes they were just sitting next to each other without saying a word. Daniel had the impression that Adam hadn’t even noticed him yet. When he reclined his head, curiosity about his weird behaviour and the reference to his family hit Daniel’s mind once more. “What happened to your family?”, he asked and tried not to sound too curious.
“Why do you want to know?”, Adam asked without looking at him.
‘Because I'm bursting with curiosity’, Daniel thought, but didn’t say it out loud, of course. After all, his parents had taught him a spark of decency.
“Well”, Adam breathed heavily and without waiting Daniel to answer he began to tell the story of his family which made his heart bleed everytime he did: “My grandma and grandpa had died right before we had been born, in a car crash. Cancer had been a big problem for my mom and she died of it when I was six. My sister couldn’t quite understand what had happened, she had just turned four. Leaving only my father, my sister and my uncle. Until my sixteenth birthday nothing unusual had happened. Then my dad returned from a business trip on Christmas Day and got shot. He died in front of our eyes. The case was closed when the police thought a good friend of our family, who was also an former lover of my mother, wanted to kill us to get the inheritance. He was killed in front of us, too. The only relative who was left then, was our uncle”, Adam paused and his eyes filled with tears. “Apparently the police shot the wrong man, because my uncle was the actual murderer and he tried to kill us just to get the inheritance which was inherited to his sister, my mother. We were alone in his apartment and the police had no clue that uncle Victor was the devil who had torn us apart. He aimed a gun at me and shot”, again Adam stopped and buried his face in his hands. “My sister jumped in front of me and got hit by the bullet. She pushed him out of an open window with the last of her strength. He died on the way to the hospital just like my sister.”
Daniel looked at Adam pitiful and tried to find something to say, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t possible for him to imagine being without a family. Daniel knew that his mother and father would die someday and that was OK, but to actually see how life was shot out of them like Adam did, was disturbing. Now, it had become comprehensible to Daniel that the suicide-attempt had been a sort of flashback for Adam.

* * *

“Miss?”
Hannah looked up, right into the tired-looking face of a policeman. His hair showed grey spots and his three-day beard seemed to make his face look even more sunken. Hannah’s eyes moved away from his face to his right hand. A white mark on his ring finger made her assume that he got divorced recently. His colleague looked tired, as well. ‘Well, you aren’t looking like a supermodel, either!’ she thought and tried to catch a little glimpse of herself in the mirror and nearly screamed. Her neck was laced with bruises and she didn’t even want to look at her hair. Normally, she looked perfectly when leaving the flat.
“Misses Miller?”, said the, potentially divorced, policeman again.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I was preoccupied and didn’t notice you”, Hannah replied with a forced smile. In the presence of people she always tried to cover her true feelings up.
“Given the circumstances it’s understandable. I’m officer Jackson and this is my partner Mayfair.