I wake up in a hospital bed, which is all wrong. The clinical smell of it, the beeping machines and squeaking shoes on linoleum, the hideous cotton gown: all wrong.

The only thing that’s right is Vince.

He’s asleep in the chair next to me looking immeasurably sad. God, how hard I fell for that basset hound face with its noble jowls and soulful brown eyes, its five-o’clock shadow and incongruently dimpled cheeks. How I love it still even though it’s been so firmly set against me lately, hardened by disappointment and disapproval.

Vince must feel my gaze on him because he suddenly opens his eyes. “Ruth.” It isn’t so much an utterance of my name as a statement of defeat.

I smile to take the sting out of it. “Hey, baby,” I whisper. My throat hurts and I can’t figure out why until I remember the stomach pump and induced vomiting.

Vince rubs his eyes, his giant hands briefly covering his face. His Armani suit’s all wrinkled and his silk tie is slack around his neck, a hangman’s noose. Gray chest hair peeks out through the loosened top two buttons.

“Where am I?”

“Groote Schuur Hospital,” he says.

“You look like shit.” I smile. “You could at least have made an effort before you came a’ callin’.” I’m hoping for a laugh because that has always been our thing.

Not anymore. Not even a smile. “You almost died,” he says.

“No,” I scoff, too tired and weak to keep up the ruse. Of course, I didn’t almost die. I’d had absolutely no intention of dying. I just wanted to get his attention, that’s all. “I only took two Rohypnols.” Considering the number of pharmaceuticals I have in my handbag and the bathroom cabinet at any given time, I could have killed myself a few times over if I’d really wanted to.

“You passed out in the bath and almost drowned,” he says flatly. “I got to you just in time to pull you out.”

That gives me pause. Death is a complication of my suicide attempt that I didn’t foresee.

I study Vince’s face to try to read what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling. He used to be an open book and as he sits there, he gives me one last glimpse into his inner workings and I know. My plan hasn’t worked. I can see it in his eyes and the way he’s crossed his arms tightly across his heart. I know this stance. It’s his defensive posture, and I hate when he uses it against me, as if I’m a threat he has to protect himself against. When did I become the enemy?

I clear my throat. “Still leaving me, huh?”

I’ve never seen my stoic husband cry, not once in the twelve years we’ve been together. His tears are his answer.