Every time she felt her eyes begin to close she forced them open and if that didn’t work, the voices that would suddenly scream in her ear usually did the trick. Once the voices started, they usually didn’t stop. The only time that she could escape them was if she was in a car or another voice, a man’s voice that from what she could tell so far was obsessed with Gilligan’s Island,  p**n , and harassing Tristan, which was odd, appeared.

Then again, was there really anything about this situation that was normal?

She was married to a man that had spent more than a decade pretending that he didn’t know she’d existed and then made her life a living hell once he was forced to acknowledge her. Tristan was an equal opportunity ass**le, she thought with a small smile that quickly disappeared with a grimace as her stomach chose that moment to perform somersaults.

Clamping a hand over her mouth, she squeezed her eyes shut and willed her too sensitive stomach to calm down. There was no way that she was going to leave the safety of her comforter when she knew that something in the dark was waiting for her.

As her stomach began to settle, she couldn’t help but will a certain voice with an Irish brogue to come to her rescue and yes, sadly enough she did think of that voice as a protector of sorts. He seemed to be able to handle the voices and make them go away. In her book that made the man’s voice a godsend. The only problem was that he normally didn’t come around unless Tristan was with her.

She should be comforted by the fact that her hallucinations liked Tristan, but oddly enough she wasn’t. It probably had something to do with the fact that she was going crazy and wouldn’t be able to hide it for very much longer. No doubt by this time next week she’d be fitted for a straight jacket while Tristan filed for divorce. Her stomach rolled violently with the thought of never seeing Tristan again.

This wasn’t right. After everything they’d been through, they deserved a better ending than this. They deserved a real chance. They should get a chance to celebrate anniversaries, have babies and grow old together, but none of those things were going to happen now.

When Tristan had finally managed to convince her to take a chance on him, mostly by exhausting her with sex until the point where she would have done or said anything to get some rest, she’d been afraid that Tristan would quickly regret marrying her and leave her. Never in a million years would she have ever thought that she would be the reason why things ended.

She loved him so much and it killed her to hide this from him, but what choice did she have? Whether Tristan decided to stay with her or not, she’d already made her own decision about their marriage. She was going to leave him. It would be the hardest thing that she’d ever done, but if Tristan tried to be noble and stick it out with her, she would be forced to do what was right.

She knew from her studies and internships what most likely waited for her. If she didn’t spend the rest of her life in and out of institutions then she’d live her life completely dependent on pills and therapy, hoping, hell, praying that she didn’t have another setback. It wasn’t an ideal life. She knew that a lot of people with mental illness managed to lead somewhat productive lives and that she’d most likely figure out how to do that with time and help, but she just couldn’t put Tristan through that.

If he stayed with her, they would always be waiting for the day when her medication no longer worked or her problem escalated to the point that medication no longer helped her. It wasn’t the kind of life that she wanted for Tristan. She wanted him to have a real chance at happiness and if he stayed with her, he would never get that chance.

How sad was it that she wished that those tests she’d taken when the voices first started had come back differently? she wondered with a choked sob. At least a tumor or a blockage would have explained why this was suddenly happening to her. It would have also been a lot easier to tell Tristan.

She would have been terrified to tell him, but she would have been more terrified by the news and would have needed him. He always made her feel better and she knew that once he found out that she was losing it that he would do everything that he could to make her feel better. Just the thought of Tristan’s arms wrapped around her as he whispered in her ear that everything was going to be okay had her reconsidering holding off on telling him until she received an official diagnosis.

Maybe she should-

Any thoughts of confiding in Tristan evaporated when a rough, callused hand that definitely was not Tristan’s, suddenly clamped down tightly around her ankle. It was also at that point that she realized that perhaps she wasn’t crazy after all.

*-*-*-*

“Are ye sure that ye can’t hear that?” Shayne demanded, letting Tristan know that the night of bullshit was far from over.

With a resigned sigh, he turned around and headed back downstairs. If he was going to be forced to hear Shayne bitch, then he was going to do it with an ice cold beer and leftover pizza. Hopefully Marty would be able to fall asleep in the meantime.

He’d go check on her in a little while and if she was asleep, he’d leave her alone. He’d get some work done and then crash on the couch. He hated to do it, but she really needed some sleep and if she asked, he’d tell her that he’d fallen asleep by accident. It was a pretty believable lie since he was barely getting an hour of sleep a night, but he couldn’t completely blame the spirits for that.

Those damn dreams on the other hand….

They were driving him out of his f**king mind.  Every time he fell asleep those damn dreams tormented him, making his heart ache and leaving him with a sense of loss and longing that left him on edge all day. On more than one occasion he’d actually found himself in the bathroom, vomiting, the sense of grief too much to bear.

“Let it go, Shayne,” he said as he strolled past Shayne and made his way to the kitchen.

“It’s a quick thumping sound,” Shayne said, obviously set on bugging the shit out of him so he simply tuned him out as he grabbed a beer and the aluminum foil covered plate of pizza left over from dinner and headed for the living room, hoping that Shayne would be too focused on his little noise obsession to notice.

“This is bugging the shit out of me,” Shayne whined as he followed after him.

“Really? I couldn’t tell,” Tristan said dryly as he placed his food on the coffee table and sat down on the couch.

“I know that I’ve heard it before, but I just can’t remember where,” Shayne said as though Tristan cared.

He didn’t, so he focused on the stack of folders in front of him.

“I can’t believe that ye can’t hear it,” Shayne grumbled.            

“Believe it,” Tristan said absently, taking a sip of his beer.

“Ye know, lad, I’m beginning to think that ye don’t care,” Shayne said with a putout sigh.

“That’s probably because I don’t”

“That hurts, lad. I’m being tortured by a phantom sound and ye-“

“Don’t care,” Tristan said, cutting him off.

“Ye’d care if ye had to listen to this damn thumping day and night,” Shayne said and Tristan didn’t need to look up from the folder on his lap to know that the man was pouting.