Love Me Do

For a long time, we just held one another. All the tears created by my lovely wife's situation had already been shed and wasted on bitterness.

"What did he look like?" Patricia asked, voice quivering slightly. "He..."

"Shhh," I said, keeping my voice soft. I stroked her silvering hair back, and forced a smile. "Just like they say, right? The businessman."

"Who says?"

"Well, ah, the... internet."

"The internet's wrong," she said sharply. "He looked like you. Since when do you listen to the internet, anyway?"

"Since... stop, he looked like me?"

That just flew in the face of everything I'd read. Then again, I'd only really skimmed the mass of information available about our current predicament, so maybe there's something that I'm missing. That's always how it seems to be - I feel trapped with a puzzle complete save for the final piece.

"You remember that ratty old brown suit? And... and his face..."

"It's going to be alright," I said as doubts began to fill my mind. "We always make it. We always solve the puzzle."

"I don't know, Basil... we're getting old. Eventually you reach a puzzle you can't solve."

"Well, it's not going to be this one," I said, standing tall. I gingerly removed my glasses and placed them in my breast pocket. "I feel like a young man. Maybe I should go put that suit on and tell the man what-for. Who does he think he is, stealing my fashion, anyways?" Patricia laughed softly, in spite of herself. "There's my honey. When are the doctors letting you out of here?"

"I don't know," she replied, removing her own glasses, and blinking up at me. "You look like you've lost ten years without those, you know."

"And you've lost thirty."

The doctors say that they're keeping her for another week, and bringing in a mental health professional. I'm not fooled any more, no pills are going to help us. I signed off on the appointment before I knew, but I'm sure that we'll be able to sort all of it out and get her released soon enough.