The second hospitalization lasted much longer.

I didn’t know how long it would be at first—only that it wasn’t like the first stay. There was no clear plan, no short horizon. Days stretched into weeks, and at one point I realized I had been in Chapel Hill almost continuously, moving between the hospital and whatever hotel room I could find nearby.

I booked rooms one day at a time. Sometimes two. Often at the last minute. I didn’t know when I’d be able to leave or when she’d be discharged, so I stayed close. That felt nonnegotiable.

I spent hours at her bedside—sitting, holding her, being careful of the IV line in her arm, trying not to cause pain. I tried to sleep beside her in the hospital bed when I could, angling my body so I wouldn’t disturb the tubing. When that wasn’t possible, I went back to the hotel and returned early the next morning.

At some point during that stretch, Lynn looked at me and said quietly, “This must be expensive.”

“Yeah,” I said.

I didn’t want to burden her with the details. Money felt irrelevant compared to what was happening in front of us. I thought that would be the end of it.

A moment later, she asked again, gently. “No, sweetie… how much is it?”

I hesitated. Then I told her the truth. “It’s probably over two thousand dollars.”

For a moment, there was a flicker of shock on her face. Then it faded.

We didn’t say anything else about it.

What mattered wasn’t the number. What mattered was that neither of us was really thinking about money at all. We were thinking about whether she would be okay. About whether this was serious in a way we couldn’t undo. About things that didn’t have prices attached to them.

The room went quiet again. And we stayed there—together, holding something unspoken between us.

I was still trying to believe that if I stayed close enough, if I did everything right, if I didn’t look too far ahead, things would stabilize.

I was still trying to hold onto hope.

Lynn’s Not Coming Back to Me?!

After weeks in the hospital—long days and nights that blurred together—Lynn was discharged and went to stay with her mother. It was early September. I believed it was temporary.

Not long after that, Lynn told me she wasn’t coming back.

I don’t remember exactly where I was when I heard it. I don’t remember the room, the light, or the time of day. I remember the sentence arriving the way early-September news arrived that year— flat, factual, almost routine. Not because it didn’t matter, but because my mind no longer knew how to register magnitude.

It was too much information.

Once that sentence existed, everything before it began to rearrange itself, as if my memory were trying—poorly—to reverse-engineer how we had arrived here.

I remember taking her back to the hospital. I remember driving. Parking. Walking beside her.

I remember staying with her for a while and then leaving, though I don’t remember deciding to leave. I don’t remember weighing options or thinking anything through. I only remember that at some point I was no longer there.

Later, I was there again.

I seem to remember working during this time. I don’t remember choosing to work. It feels more accurate to say that work happened. Clients appeared. Sessions occurred. Words were spoken. I must have thought this was what I was supposed to do, or maybe it was simply the only structure I still recognized. I don’t remember thinking, Lynn wants me to do this. I don’t remember thinking anything that clear. I only remember moving from one thing to the next.

Lynn was in the hospital again. That much is certain.

I have a flash of her walking slowly down a hospital hallway, an oxygen tank rolling beside her. I don’t remember why—whether they were testing her strength or encouraging movement or simply trying to keep her lungs working. I only remember the image: her body tethered, slowed, and my attention narrowing to the sound of the tank and the effort in her breathing.

I remember sitting with her. Holding her. Being careful of the IV line in her arm. Trying not to cause pain. I remember trying to be strong while she was awake and crying when she wasn’t.

I remember talking to her about my work—about the grievances and the civil suit—though I don’t remember deciding to do that either. I don’t know why I told her. I only know that I did. The information came out in pieces, stripped of detail, because detail would have been unbearable. I did not want to overwhelm her, but I also did not know how to keep anything inside. Everything was leaking.

I don’t remember panic when I spoke. I remember a flattened quality to my voice, as if I were reading from a file that belonged to someone else.

Sometime during that hospitalization, Lynn told me she would stay with her mother after discharge. She would need to remain on IV antibiotics. Her lungs were too compromised. The environment at home was not clean and sanitary enough for her recovery.

I heard this the same way I heard everything else: without visible reaction.

There is a version of this moment that exists only in retrospect, where I immediately say, I’ll clean the house. I promise. I’ll do whatever it takes. There is a version where I list solutions and make plans and reassure her and myself. But that version of me was not available then.

I cannot fully explain why.

It wasn’t defiance. It wasn’t indifference. It wasn’t a lack of love. It was as if the part of my mind that could organize reality into solvable problems had gone offline. The thought I can fix this did not occur to me. The thought this is fixable did not occur to me. All that occurred was the next sentence, the next update, the next fact.

Lynn said she would stay with her mother. I absorbed it.

I do not remember arguing. I do not remember bargaining. I don’t clearly remember pleading, though I know there were moments of crying and desperation that would surface later and continue for months. What I remember most clearly is nodding, perhaps. Agreeing, perhaps. Understanding, intellectually, that this made sense—without understanding what it meant.

I remember visiting her at her mother’s place after discharge. I remember carrying her upstairs, her body light in my arms in a way that frightened me. I remember the IV antibiotics, the quiet of that house, the sense that I was present but not fully there.

By early September, everything arrived like routine news: hospital updates, professional threats, housing implications. Each piece came stripped of emotional context, as if my nervous system had decided that allowing feeling to accompany information would be fatal.

I was watching myself receive news.

I don’t remember the order of events clearly. I don’t know whether I spoke about the grievances before Lynn said she wasn’t coming back or after. I don’t know whether, in any given hour, I was more concerned about her health or my collapsing career. What I know is that both were happening, and that my mind could not hold them at the same time.

Only much later did I understand what was happening to me.

This was dissociation—what trauma specialists call derealization—a coping strategy in which reality begins to feel distant, dreamlike, and unreal. At the time, I didn’t have language for that. I didn’t think in terms of attachment rupture or nervous system collapse. I only knew that I felt slightly outside my body, watching a life that had once belonged to me continue without my participation.

When Lynn later told me—over the phone—that she wasn’t coming back, the words did not land as a revelation. They landed as confirmation.

Some part of me must have registered the meaning. Most of me was gone.

By then, my mind had already flattened reality into manageable fragments. Each announcement—about her health, her living arrangements, my work—was received the same way: noted, filed, unintegrated.

I was not choosing calm. I was surviving overload.

What happened next is difficult to recall. The days that followed blur together. I remember smoke and fog and a sense of watching rather than living. I remember feeling as though I were already gone, even while my body continued to move through rooms, hallways, and conversations.

The sentence she isn’t coming back stayed with me—not as a thought, but as an atmosphere. Everything else unfolded inside it.