He watched her, as he often did, on computer screens that reflected back four images of her from four different angles. She sat in the middle of the white room in her white gown, staring blankly at the white walls. Her hair was disheveled, falling out of the already loose bun and framing her white face with the full white lips that parted slightly to reveal perfectly straight white teeth. But, like everything else, they were a dingy, off white, not a pure and holy white or a bright and blinding white, a sad white, a white that has had to endure much, a tired and dejected white.

Her eyes suddenly came alive. Her head snapped around, the hair whipping into her face. She looked in horror at something only she could see. He wondered what horror it might be. A murder, perhaps? Or a hideous monster of some sort, or a desolate, hopeless landscape? A tornado? A war? Maybe it was him. Maybe it was a memory. A crash. He could remember almost as vividly as she could, if indeed that was what she was viewing. He remembered the night they took her away. She had been hunched, face wet with tears but eyes still alight with the fire he had come to know so well. Her hallucinations had been getting worse. The medication had not been working, had not been effective. She scared him so. He knew what she was doing and saying was not her fault, the hallucinations left their victims depressed, but she hurt him, more with her venomous words than any physical blow she could have dealt him.
“I hate you.” she spat, furious. “I hate you.” she had sobbed heavily into her hands while he kneeled hesitantly beside her. “It’s your fault she’s gone! It was you who took her from me.” She lashed out with her fist, connecting with his jaw and he stumbled back. Her fury grew, rising inside of her like a snake about to strike, and strike it had. That was the day he gave in. He called the hospital, had her taken away. The stress on him was too great. He couldn’t care for her on his own anymore. He watched with a steeled resolve as they forcefully restrained her, leading her towards the ambulance as she struggled, hissing, trying to free herself even though she knew she never would.
Now, her hands clutched at the padded floor as she turned into a kneeling position, eyes hostile, lips curled in a snarl. She’d always been a fighter, willing to confront rather than flee, even if that meant giving up her job, her husband, her sanity. Her teeth were bared now, twisted in a painful grimace as her visual hallucination gave way to a somatic one. She rolled on the floor in obvious pain, clawing at her own arms with nails they had kept down to the quick. He watched as doctors rushed through the hidden door, held her down as they had on that fateful day, and sedated her, her head lolling back as her body went limp. He watched the love of his life crumple to the ground.
That night he went home as exhausted as if he had been fighting the demons and not her. Lying in bed, he stared at the framed picture that froze in time the moments before his life had flown apart. Even with the evidence in front of his eyes, it seemed so foreign to him now it was hard for him to believe that was actually him, smiling with his arms around the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen. In her arms was a beautiful angel-child, wide blue eyes clear and bright, hair falling in feathery wisps across her forehead, her pink mouth wide in a gurgling laugh. When he dreamt, he did not dream of fire and metal, like he usually did, a horrific rendition of the car wreck that had taken his baby girl’s life and his wife’s mind. Tonight he dreamt of green grass and blue skies, of smiles and laughter and of happiness. He dreamt of something he once had in reality but now could only attain in dreams.