“What’s wrong? What’s happening?” I ask, trying to keep my voice calm. I peer over the side of the bed and see him sprawled in his underwear against the poured cement floor. His cheek is pressed flat against the cool surface as he moans, “It’s a fever again, from the malaria. Will you bring me a wet facecloth?”

And I’m torn. I know I must, but to walk out of this room is terrifying. The malaria was five years ago. This night fever is their doing; I know it. A convenient excuse to separate us; just for a moment, that’s all they need. For an instant I wonder whom they’ve come for, him or me? Unfortunately I know the answer; it rings through my bones as clear as the doorbell.

“You.”

I scuttle across the bed and make my way to the washroom, flicking on lights wherever I can. Not that I believe it will really help. I don’t know what will threaten my shredded sanity more—the feeling of alien hands slipping around me in the dark or the plain sight of a stranger in our room. I reach the water basin and run the tap cold, holding a facecloth under the flow while murmuring an incoherent prayer. That he will be himself when I reach his side and that I won’t be taken on my short journey back.

I wring the excess water from the cloth and turn back to our bedroom. Something, and I can only describe it in such rudimentary terms, something moves in the corner of my eye as I turn from the mirror. My heart is racing of its own accord and my mind struggles to go on high alert though I’m still straining to shake off a cloud of sleep.

Fast now. I command myself and scurry like a night insect back toward our bed. The lights are off again and I momentarily panic. “Why are the lights off?” I ask, and I can no longer camouflage the hysteria that is twisting round my heart like an anaconda.

He doesn’t answer.

Flat now. On the ground, I crawl around the foot of our bed and hopefully, I can only pray, to his side. I reach out and search blindly as my eyes fail to adjust again to the darkness.

“Babe?” I call out, hoping that with the next stretch of my groping hand I’ll recognize a leg, an arm, something. The polished surface of the poured concrete slides under the sweaty clutch of my hands and knees. The facecloth that I intended to bring comfort is now just a damp and clammy mess, any soothing bliss it may have offered wrung out in my vise-like grip. “Ryan, where are you?” My voice slips out thinly through my chattering teeth.