My Husband Suddenly Insisted We Sleep in Separate Rooms — But One Night, I Heard Strange Noises from His Room and Discovered a Secret That Left Me in Tears…
It all started one November night, when the wind blew in from Lake Michigan, bringing the biting cold of a Chicago winter.
I, Clara, was combing my hair in front of the mirror, waiting for my husband, David, to come to bed. We had been married for seven years. David was an architect, as calm and steady as the buildings he designed. I was a literature teacher, romantic and sensitive. Our life was peaceful and happy, and we were planning to have a baby next year.
The bedroom door swung open. David walked in, but he hadn’t changed out of his pajamas. He was hugging a pillow and a thick blanket.
“David?” I asked, the comb stopping in mid-air. “Where are you going?”
David didn’t meet my eyes. He looked at the carpet on the floor, his jaw tensing, a sign of nervousness. “Clara,” he said, his voice hoarse and distant. “I think… from tonight, we should sleep separately.”
I was stunned. “What? Why? Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” he replied quickly, avoiding my gaze. “It’s me. I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. I’ve been tossing and turning all night. I don’t want to disturb your sleep. You need to get up early to go to school.”
“I don’t care!” I stood up and walked toward him. “You can sleep with me. You can…”
“Please, Clara!” he snapped, taking a step back as if I were the source of the disease. “I need my space. I need absolute silence. Please respect my decision.”
Then he turned and walked straight to the guest bedroom at the end of the hall and closed the door. The click of the latch sounded like a hammer hammering nails into the coffin of our marriage.
The first week passed in oppressive silence. David went to work early, came home late, and slipped into that “forbidden room” right after dinner. He locked the door. Always locked it.
Doubts began to creep into me like poison. Was he cheating? Was he bored with me? Was he chatting sex with someone in that room every night?
I began to notice small details. David had lost weight. His eye sockets were sunken. He drank a lot of water and went to the bathroom often. But every time I asked, he brushed it off: “Work pressure.”
The 14th night. I couldn’t sleep. I tiptoed out into the hallway, stood in front of the living room door. I pressed my ear to the oak door.
There was a noise inside. Not snoring. Not a whisper of a phone call. It was a regular thump… thump… thump, like someone was hitting the wall. Then a moan. Not a moan of pleasure. It was a moan of effort, of suppressed pain. “Come on… You can do it… One more time…” David whispered, sounding like he was gritting his teeth.
My heart clenched. What was he doing? Exercising? Self-harming? Or… doing drugs?
I was about to knock, but fear held me back. I was afraid of what I would see. I was afraid David would look at me strangely and send me away. I went back to my room, covered myself with the covers and cried silently.
It all came to a head on Christmas Eve. It was snowing heavily outside. We had an awkward dinner. David gave me an expensive diamond necklace—too expensive for our budget. It was like a gift of forgiveness. Or a gift of farewell.
2 a.m. I was woken by a loud noise. BOOM! It came from David’s room. It sounded like something heavy had fallen to the floor, followed by the sound of shattering glass.
I didn’t hesitate. I jumped out of bed and ran down the hall. “David! David! Are you okay?”
No answer. Just heavy, raspy breathing.
I turned the doorknob. Locked it. “David! Open the door! Or I’ll call 911!”
“Don’t…” His voice was weak. “Don’t come in here, Clara… I’m fine…”
“I’m not fine! You heard something crash!”
I ran to the kitchen, grabbed the spare key I’d hidden in a drawer. My hands were shaking so much I almost dropped the key chain twice. I turned around, inserted the key into the lock.
Click.
The door opened. The yellow light from the nightlight cast a scene that made me cover my mouth to keep from screaming.
The room was a mess. The nightlight had been thrown to the ground and shattered. David was lying face down on the floor, right next to the bed. He was wearing only a pair of underwear. And his body… The strong body of the husband I’d known was gone. David was emaciated. There were bruises on his back, arms, and thighs. Pinpricks.
But the most terrifying thing was that he was convulsing. His muscles were jerking uncontrollably, his limbs flailed weakly like a fish out of water. He was trying to reach a pill bottle that was rolling a few meters away, but he couldn’t.
“David!” I rushed forward, kneeling beside him.
He looked up at me. His eyes, always so steady, were now filled with shame and panic. “Get out…” he whispered, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Don’t look at me like this… Please…”
I didn’t listen to him. I held him tight, keeping his head from hitting the floor in convulsions. I reached for the pill bottle, read the label: Levod
opa/Carbidopa. I’m a teacher, but I know this drug. My dad took it. It’s a Parkinson’s drug.
But David is only 34.
After 10 minutes, the seizure was over. David was lying on the floor, sweating profusely, breathing heavily. I wiped his face with a towel and helped him to bed.
“Why?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
David looked up at the ceiling, avoiding my eyes. “The doctor said it was early-onset Parkinson’s. It progressed very quickly. Faster than normal.”
“Since when?”
“Six months ago. When you started dropping your paintbrushes. When your hands started shaking when you held your coffee cup.”
“Then why did you want to sleep separately?” I took his shaking hand.
David took a deep breath, then pointed to the corner of the room, where a tripod was standing, facing the sofa. There was a video camera on it.
“Look at that,” he said.
I walked over and picked up the camera. I turned on playback mode. The screen lit up. It was David. He was sitting on the sofa, facing the camera.
The video was taken last night. In the video, David was trying to button his shirt. It was a simple act: buttoning a shirt. But for him, it was a struggle. His hands were shaking. His fingers wouldn’t listen. It took him 5 minutes to button one button. Then 10 minutes. Sweat poured out. He started swearing, then slapping his thigh in frustration. “Do it! You have to do it! You can’t be a cripple!” He yelled at himself in the video.
Those were the sounds I heard every night. He wasn’t practicing. He was practicing living. He was practicing buttoning, holding a glass of water without spilling it, tying his shoelaces. He was practicing in the dark so that when he showed up in front of me the next morning, he could act like a normal, perfect husband.
I scrolled to the next video. This time, David was sitting still, looking straight into the camera. He was crying.
“Hello, Clara,” David said in the video. “If you’re seeing this, it means I’ve failed. I can’t hide it anymore.”
“I’m sorry we slept separately. I know you think I don’t love you anymore. But the truth is… I’m scared. I’m scared you’ll wake up every night and find me twitching. I’m scared you’ll see me wet the bed because I’ve lost control of my sphincter. I’m scared you’ll see me not as a man, but as a patient who needs care.”
“We’re planning on having a baby, Clara. You deserve a husband who can hold your baby, who can play ball with your baby, not a cripple who needs his wife to change his diapers when he’s 40.”
“I’m going to… after Christmas… find an excuse for divorce. I’m going to make you hate me. I’m going to say I cheated. I’m going to hurt you so you’ll leave me. Because I’d rather you hate me than have you waste your youth caring for a soulless corpse.”
I turned off the camera. The room was silent, except for the howling of the snow outside the window.
I went back to bed. David was looking at me, waiting for judgment. Waiting for me to loathe him, or pity him, or leave like he had planned.
“You’re an idiot, David,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes. “You’re the stupidest man in the world.”
“I know,” David laughed bitterly. “I’m sorry. You can go. I’ve prepared the property papers, you’ll get the house…”
I climbed into bed. I crawled under the covers, lying down next to him. I wrapped my arms around his thin, shaking body.
“Listen carefully,” I whispered in his ear. “I’m not marrying an architect. I’m not marrying a perfect man with steady hands. I’m marrying David. I’m marrying the man who stayed up all night making a dollhouse model for my niece. I’m marrying the man who drove five hours in a snowstorm just to buy me my favorite cake.”
“But Clara… it’ll get worse. You’ll lose your mobility. You’ll…”
“I know,” I interrupted him. “And when your hands can’t button your shirt, I’ll button it for you. When your feet can’t walk, I’ll be your feet. When you can’t hold a spoon, I’ll feed you. That’s not a burden, David. That’s what the oath ‘In sickness and in health’ means. Are you going to take away my right to love you?”
David buried his face in my chest. For the first time in months, that proud man sobbed like a child. He cried for fear, for loneliness, and for relief that the wall of secrecy had fallen.
“Don’t send me away again,” I kissed his hair. “And don’t ever lock this door again.”
“I won’t,” he sobbed. “I promise.”
The next morning, I called David’s doctor. We started a new course of treatment. Not to cure Parkinson’s—there is no cure—but to live with it.
We still had our children. A beautiful little girl named Hope. It was true that David’s illness was getting worse. There were bad days when he couldn’t get out of bed. But he didn’t hide it anymore. He let me help him. He let me see his weakness, and in that weakness we found a new strength of love.
u that we never knew before, when everything was perfect.
The camera is still there, but it’s not for desperate videos anymore. It’s for David trying to do physical therapy, for him laughing as Hope learned to walk (they learned to walk together), and for us slow dancing in the living room, me putting his foot on mine to guide him along.
