What’s behind the wall? It’s just empty.” the nurse repeats, the sad look of pity back in her eyes, her whole face reads reluctance. All of a sudden everything starts coming back to me. That day. I got the call, it had been from my wife. I was so happy. So happy that she called me. I had been trying to get her to fall in love with me again. But that call… she called to tell me she wanted to divorce. Immediately I started heading home, pleading with her the whole way not to do this. Only to hear her say she had met someone else. She was so sorry but she was with him now. Then rage filled my head. When I came to I was over my wife’s dead body, knife still in hand. The blood… there was so much. It was staining her beautiful blond hair I loved so much. What had I done? She was dead. I had killed her. Then it goes blank and there’s nothing else.
              As the memories flood in, tears started to fall without me even knowing. Just what had I done?
              “You went insane, into a fit of rage upon hearing that your wife was leaving you for another man.” The nurse started closing in with her syringe. I barely noticed, the tears and overwhelming sadness were too much. That could be poison for all I care, my wife was gone and I was the reason why. Why did I do that? It was my fault she cheated, I didn’t focus enough on her the starting years of our marriage. I just wanted to succeed in my job for her. Without her, life is pointless.
              “You stabbed her to death in your kitchen. Upon seeing what you had done, you went into a mental shock. You could barely speak or eat, even breathe. You tried to kill yourself several times while in police custody. All of this contributed to your lawyer using an insanity plea to save you from the death penalty.” She kept inching closer with the needle, still calmly explaining. I don’t want to hear anymore. “So you ended up here. You’ve actually been here for eight years” Now this shocks me enough to look at her through my tears. It had been maybe a year, no more.
              “That’s right. You probably think it’s been a year at most, but actually it’s been eight years next month. Your brain’s coping process for what you’ve done is making you forget. By the time you make it back to the reality of what you’ve done, your brain can’t handle it, and to preserve itself, everything from just before the murder is pushed into your subconscious. Somehow you always figure out you have a mental block and end up fixating on something, and that something will set off a trigger and make you remember what you’ve done. That’s why your room is so barren; it’s because we tried everything from removing all the objects to different medicine regimens. But nothing ever works. It is a very destructive cycle. Sometimes you forget for a few weeks, sometimes longer. This time is the longest you’ve forgotten.”
              By this time I’m struggling with the restraints. There’s no reason to live anymore. My wife is gone, I did that, and I’m crazy. I glance at the wall. She catches me looking and keeps talking.
              “Yep, this time it seems like you fixated on the wall outside your window. We thought maybe this time we had gotten it right with the medication. You seemed to stay normal for the longest this time. Next time, we’ll get it right. Obviously we never mentioned anything about how you arrived or your wife since that would set you off. It’s futile to pull at your restraints, by the way. We aren’t going to allow you to kill yourself here; you always try to do that at the end of the cycle. I’m going to give you this sedative once you start to slip out of consciousness; you won’t remember your past once you wake up.”
              Sure enough, my vision is starting to blur. I’m really slipping out of consciousness, and this nurse had the needle right above my arm ready to send me to a world where I don’t remember. I keep trying to pull at the straps, but it’s futile. My strength is going. The needle goes in. My eyes are almost closed. Why am I struggling again? I’m so tired… everything is going black…
              Sunlight gently slides over my closed eyes like a sheer ethereal veil. It’s a warm feeling I hadn’t felt for a while. It feels fuzzy and comfortable, like a cold ice cube slowly sinking and melting into a hot cup of coffee. It’s a smooth feeling that made me want to sleep for a thousand years.
               Keeping my eyes closed a minute longer to make the feeling linger, I listened for sounds to surround me. Usually when you wake up there’s some sound that envelops you, be it the sound of the air conditioner turning on or the sound of someone else moving around the house. In the early hours of the morning with eyes closed even the smallest sounds are loud, familiar. But today there is nothing. Absolutely nothing at all, which was alarming. My wife is always up before me, busy with something be it cleaning or cooking. But today the sound landscape is flat and dead, no noise at all.