Death in Her Hands

Experience should have taught me that first impressions are often misleading.

Was futility a subject worthy of exploration?

Whoever had written the note understood that by masking one’s peculiarities, one invokes authority. There is nothing as imposing as anonymity.

I always had poor circulation, low blood pressure, “a weak heart,” my husband had called it. Or perhaps I was hungry. I have to be careful, I told myself. One day I might faint in the wrong place and hit my head, or cause an accident in my car. That would be the end of me.

He was my husband, my one and only, the only man I’d ever loved. To watch him suffer was to suffer.