It was 2 a.m. and I still couldn’t sleep. I had tried counting sheep, I drank for a warm cup of milk from the cafeteria, but nothing was working. I’ve been in this bed for three days after I accidentally ate a cookie that had peanuts in them while at a work party. Luckily, my co-workers were able to find my epi-pen which bought enough time for the ambulance to arrive. I had spent most of my time talking with other patients and playing board games in the mess hall. The lady next to my bed had been in a car accident with her husband when she lost control of her wheel and hit a guard rail. The husband was in a coma, but doctors didn’t think he would make it. She was very calm about it, didn’t tear up at all, didn’t make eye contact when telling what had happened, but we all handle trauma in different ways. I turned on my other side to try and find a more comfortable position to lie down when the woman started hyperventilating in her sleep. I went to reach the call button on my bed to get a nurse when the women said something that stopped me in my tracks.

“I did it, I killed him, I finally killed him.”

At first I thought she was feeling guilty about the accident, but when she said finally killed him, my thoughts started racing. Was this not the first time something like this happened? Was the car crash planned before? Why would she want to kill him? I stayed up another hour trying to put the piece together before my body forced me to go to sleep. The next morning when I woke up I looked over to see the lady reading the newspaper like just any other Sunday morning. As we were eating breakfast I started to as questions.

“What work did your husband do?”

“He was a business man, traveled a lot around the country” She replied without looking up from the paper.

“Interesting, so what did you usually do for fun together?” I ask trying to get more information.

“He liked to golf, I wasn’t much for it but it was how we spent our time together” she mumbled. She buried her head deeper into the paper, giving the hint that she was done talking. I now sat there on my bed with a difficult choice to make: should I tell a nurse, contact the police, or just keep my mouth shut. It was obvious from our quick exchange that it was a loveless marriage. The husband probably spent many of those business trips seeing other women and clearly didn’t give her any attention when he was home. I felt sad for her in a way. To hate ones marriage so much that you go and try to kill your partner along with yourself. Something like this was very hard to keep to myself. When a couple of my friends visited they asked about any hospital gossip I may have picked up on from any patients or nurses. I held my tongue and said I heard nothing of the sort.

It was my final day in the hospital, I just needed to run through a basic check up and then I was cleared to leave. As I got up from my bed I could not help but notice the woman looking at me, studying me as if I was some animal. I just thought maybe she was still feeling a little concussed and followed the nurse to another room. When I came back the police where in our room questioning the lady about the accident and she had the same cadence as she did with me. Quite, plain, simple details like a child who had just been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. I knew at this point I had to let the police know of what I heard the night before. I let them leave the room and close the door. I told her I was going to use the bathroom and as I tuned to open the door, she grabbed me by the neck and wrestled me to the ground.

“Let’s keep this secrete between you and me” she said while closing my windpipe as hard as she could. I vision slowly started to fade and the last thing I could remember was the police opening the door, and prying her off my body