The Returned

That had been harder than all the hell I’d gone through in those first few days and weeks. Letting myself accept that she was dead. That someone had hurt her on my watch.

Life had become a blur then. Nothing seemed real and life had started to lose all meaning. I understood in those days what it meant to exist without living. To go through the motions day after day but feel nothing.

I hadn’t stopped looking for her though. I’d done everything in my power to find her. Had lost countless hours of sleep in my quest but to no avail. And now just like that, she’s here, alive.

Beneath the anger burning in my gut, the truth is I don’t care where or why. I’m just happy she’s back with me. Even with the millions of questions playing at the edges of my mind, there’s no denying the absolute joy I feel at just seeing her face again.

As I watched her in the rearview mirror I made a vow to myself. A sacred promise, that I’ll never let her out of my sight again. That no matter what, from this day forth it’s going to be my mission in life to keep her by my side no matter what it takes.

We reached the hospital and I jumped out of the Rover and grabbed her from the backseat, holding her close to my heart. No matter what, I wouldn’t trade this moment for the world.

The hospital staff came running when they saw me coming in a panic with my bundle in my arms. Or it could be my wild yelling that set them into motion. “What seems to be the problem sir?”

“I’m not sure, I think you might need to call the cops. This is my wife. She’s been missing for two years. She just turned up tonight and she…she fainted.”

Fuck, should I have said that? My words like my thoughts were all jumbled and disjointed but they got the gist. They were moving even as I was speaking, calling out orders as they got her on a stretcher and rushed down the hallway to a room.

They tried keeping me out of the room but that wasn’t even a minute possibility. There was no way in hell I was letting her out of my sight any time soon, if ever again in this lifetime.

If they only knew what I’d been through searching for this woman they wouldn’t even have asked. I remained cool and collected even as I resisted their efforts to throw me out because I wanted them to focus on her.

Once they realized that there was no force on earth that would get me to leave they left me the hell alone. I stayed back out of the way while they looked her over, throwing questions out at me as they went. But I had no answers.

Fear gripped me in the gut when they made an issue over how long she’d been unconscious. “Save her!” I yelled the words threateningly at them as they rushed around.

When they started hooking her up to tubes and shit I thought I would lose it, but one of the nurses explained that Zandi was dehydrated and slightly malnourished.

That shit pissed me the fuck off until my vision went dark. Who the fuck had hurt my woman? I clenched my fists and took a few deep breaths to calm myself down.

I knew I was at my breaking point, that I was barely hanging on by a thread here. The more shit they found wrong with her the angrier I grew. The thought that someone had willfully done this shit to her was about more than I could take.

Wherever she’d been it was obvious that she hadn’t been seen to. I listened and watched attentively and gathered the fact that she’d been damn near starved to death. Who the fuck…

I’ve never seen myself as arrogant, never fed my ego or pumped myself up with bullshit. But fuck if I ever in my life expected some shit like this to happen to my woman, or anyone that belonged to me.

I started racking my brain, trying to find the angle, any angle that would give me some idea what the fuck was going on but as usual when it comes to anything to do with her disappearance, I drew a blank. Nothing made any sense. Why would someone take her to starve her?

Why hadn’t I been contacted about a ransom? I’m a pretty wealthy guy; there was no secret of that. And though my wife and I had never flaunted our wealth it was hard to hide, seeing as how I always got her the best.

There had been a huge write up about our wedding the year before she disappeared and I thought maybe we’d come to someone’s attention that way.