I hold her sweaty hand as she drifts in her deep, deep sleep.

She is in her own world where I can't reach. Her dream. Her nightmare.

I sweep away her hair to the back of her ear, her droplet of sweat linger on my finger as I do that, and I caress her cheek softly.

Only at these time, I feel vulnerable as a husband, feeling weak. I can't do anything to help. I can't do anything to cast the bad dream away. I can't stop the trembling of her hand. I can't stop the frown on her eyebrows. Simply, I can do nothing right now.

Bad dreams always come to her as if she's not hurt a lot already. It's like a torture is held right by my side to my wife while all I can do is watching her without knowing what she's going through in the underworld of her mind.

It's been two years already. She has taken serious treatment for schyzoprenia since then, right after I found out about the illness when I saw her talking to particularly no one when she went home on some day. I remember I was like a paparazzi, tagging along to wherever she goes on that day from a distance, just because I was afraid something happened to her when I wasn't there. She said she was going to the cemetery of her relatives with an old friend but all I found was she talking by herself. I thought she was contemplating or something because people often do that, too. But when I looked closer at the cemetery, I was completely sure that she was indeed talking to herself as if there was a friend on her side.

She said she's just fine. But I knew that that was really not 'just fine'.

Now in her deep sleep, her breath hitches so many times it aches me. All I can do for every time she's like this, is clutching her to my chest, hoping that the warmth will chase away the cold in her hand, my presence could erase the loneliness in her own dream. I place my lips to her top and temple, hoping that the sore in the back of my eyes would finally subsides, too.

“I love you, Jieun.” The whisper only comes in a husky breath that could barely audible, but I keep repeating it.

That way, I drift to sleep every night.

...