The Wife

55: Something Isn't Right

The next few weeks were quiet. Or as quiet as they could be with the kids you had. Your scars, physical and emotional were healing and your husband remained true to his word: he never left.

But something had changed in him. He didn't have the desire to do much anymore. He stopped styling his hair. He stopped putting his make-up on. He even stopped dressing up in his fancy clothes. And so you worried about him.

"Bungee. Do you want me to do your hair? I'll put it in a bun." That was your favorite "up" hairstyle of his. As he laid his head on your lap, he turned and buried his face into your stomach.

"It doesn't matter." He mumbled.

"Will you color with us, Daddy?" Akio asked politely.

"Perhaps later, Aki, my love." He sighed, feeling like he didn't want to be separated from you.

"What's wrong, Bungee?" You whispered softly, lightly stroking his face. He had a mask of indifference on and it was throwing you off.

"Nothing is wrong. I'm happy to be home." His voice was listless, as it had been since the end of that fateful night.

"Akio, Zenko, can you watch your sister for a few minutes? Make sure she doesn't eat the crayons." You began to stand up, grabbing Hisoka's hands to pull him upward.

"Yeah, Mama." Zenko didn't even look up at you. He was just tickled pink that his Daddy was home.

Hisoka groaned as you dragged him upstairs towards your bed room and towards the bed. You jumped up on it, sitting cross-legged in the middle. Slowly, he joined you.

"Bungee."  You started.

"Yumi." He responded back blandly.

"Talk to me. You're off. You're having another episode." You looked at him with sympathy. "We've been through this before. I see your mask. I see you giving up. I see you Bungee. Talk to me."

He hesitated and there was a pregnant silence between you both. He was torn as his brain refused to let him talk and his heart begged him to say something. He was hurting. He was hurting so badly that he almost felt like he couldn't go on. And he knew he was prone to this kind of feeling, however rare it had become. In fact, he could almost remember back to the last one that had been this bad.

You on the other hand, remember each and every one of them vividly. It was depression. Hisoka was often able to fight off the most severe symptoms by throwing himself into his family, but your separation from him and the following trauma must have set him off.

That had been the biggest fear of separating from him. Even if you didn't want to think about it, you had always played a part in triggering the onset of these episodes. But you were also his confidant: his reason to keep going. It was a little bit twisted and you couldn't help but have a flashback of the time you almost lost him.