“I continue to stare, my eyes missing nothing, remembering the moments we just shared together. But in all that time she does not look back, and I am haunted by the visions of her struggling with unseen enemies. I sit by the bedside with an aching back and start to cry as I pick up the notebook. Allie does not notice. I understand, for her mind is gone. A couple pages fall to the floor, and I bend over to pick them up. I am tired now, so I sit, alone and apart from my wife. And when the nurses come in they see two people they must comfort. A woman shaking in fear from demons in her mind, and the old man who loves her more deeply than life itself, crying softly in the corner, his face in his hands.”

“A woman shaking in fear from demons in her mind, and the old man who loves her more deeply than life itself, crying softly in the corner, his face in his hands.”

“You are afraid?”“I am not!” Spoken too quickly, the words rang false.“I thought you merely uneasy but now I see there is more than that. Why? It is not as though I am a stranger to you.”“But you are, stranger than any man I have ever met before.”Dragon grimaced and caught her hair in his hand, drawing her head back slightly, the better to look at her. “Ever do you pick my vanity. There will be nothing left of it soon.”She stared back at him in bewilderment. “What have I said?”“It is what you have not, but never mind, I am resolved, what sighs and moans of pleasure, what cries of delight I wish to hear, I will have from you, wife, before this night is done.”

“I'm gonna sit alone in a quiet room and cry until I cant cry no more. I am tired of all the pain inside and I am tired of all the tears falling from my eyes.”

“She laughs and looks out the window and I think for a minute that she's going to start to cry. I'm standing by the door and I look over at the Elvis Costello poster, at his eyes, watching her, watching us, and I try to get her away from it, so I tell her to come over here, sit down, and she thinks I want to hug her or something and she comes over to me and puts her arms around my back and says something like 'I think we've all lost some sort of feeling.”

“I don’t remember waking up that Sunday morning —- perhaps I never slept. Iwas just sitting up in bed watching Sarah sleep. She’d slept naked in my bed but she hadn’t let me have sex with her. I didn’t care. I loved watching her sleep. The light was falling through my window, all over the blue sheets of my old bed, and onto her face. I lifted up the sheets and watched her breasts move with her breath. They seemed to be sleeping themselves. I hoped that she wouldn’t wake up. I laid the sheet back over her, right up to her chin. I looked up and out of my room.I thought, This must be what praying is like.”