Chapter 6 — The Vision That Broke Me Twice

I drifted in and out of consciousness, the world tilting like a ship caught in a storm I never saw coming. Cold sheets beneath me. A ceiling I didn’t recognize. Shadows that moved even when I didn’t. Everything felt distant—like I was watching my life from the far end of a tunnel. And then… he appeared. Leo. Standing in a haze of light I couldn’t focus on, blurry around the edges, but unmistakably him. My husband. My heartbreak. My undoing. I tried to speak, to reach for him, to ask why he wasn’t holding me, why he looked whole while I was sinking—but my body wouldn’t listen. My fingers twitched, nothing more. His figure shifted. Another form stepped into view. Barbara. Her laugh floated toward me like poison wrapped in honey. She touched his arm—too familiar, too comfortable—and I felt something inside me claw for escape. “No…” I whispered, or thought I did. The sound never made it out. The two of them stood so close their shadows merged. My vision flickered, colors bleeding into each other. My chest tightened, my lungs forgetting how to work. Lupus didn’t just flare—it roared. Leo leaned in. Barbara tilted her chin up like she’d been waiting her whole life for this moment. And he kissed her. Right there, in the blurred world between dream and memory. In the space where my fear became its own kind of truth. The pain exploded. Hot. Violent. Alive. My joints burned as if someone had lit tiny fires inside them. My muscles seized. My heartbeat slammed against my ribs, each thud heavier than the last. I tried to scream. To cry. To move. Nothing happened. All I could do was watch the man I loved press his mouth to someone else’s, while my own body betrayed me in the cruelest way possible. The scene kept looping—Leo’s hand on her waist, Barbara’s fingers in his hair, their mouths meeting again and again, like my mind wanted to make sure the blade cut deep enough. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to stop feeling. But the pain had become a living thing, and it wouldn’t let me go.