I sat there numb, staring at his motionless body in the emergency room, heart thudding in my ears. He was hooked to machines, a plastic mask over his mouth, chest rising and falling slowly. The nurse asked me, “Has your husband had any unusual behaviors lately?”

I wanted to say no. But something stopped me.
The last few months had been weird. Not alarming, just… off. He’d started staying up later than usual, always saying he had work stuff to finish. I’m not nosy by nature, but I’d catch him shutting his laptop as I walked into the room. Once, I heard a name I didn’t recognize—“Nadia”—when he was on a call, and when I asked who she was, he said it was just someone from procurement.

His phone was suddenly always on silent, and he’d take it with him into the bathroom.
I chalked it up to stress. We’d been through a rough patch financially. His small logistics firm had nearly gone under during the pandemic, and we were just starting to recover. I thought maybe he was ashamed, trying to keep me from worrying.