{Slow fade in}

[Whisper] Good morning, precious.

<Immediate signs of struggle; fabric rustle, body movement on bed>

S-stop...struggling!

<Speaker wins the fight, pins listener to bed; still struggling>

Your taser is already gone. I moved it when I got here. 

I just need to talk with you.

C-c'mon! I wanted to handle this like civil a-adults.

<Listener stops the fighting>

[Obvious panting, this was a fight] Just for a few minutes. That's all I ask.

<Release of fabric sounds>

I will be calm about this. You should be too. 

Gods around, my dear...what has happened to you? 

{Pause, no answer}

A little co-operation would be nice, darling.

This can't just be about me. Our date. Our time out. I know there's more going on here.

You disappeared off the face of the planet. You quit your teaching position, fled your house, and haven't been seen by almost anybody for a month. A month! 

Quit looking at the door. I blocked it off when I got in here. You'll stay right here until I get some answers out of you. I thought ahead this time. Hope you don't mind the role reversal, doc-tor.

[deep guttural gasp; listener knees the speaker in order to scramble away]

<sound of being knee'd/kicked, fabric, and stumbling away>

[Out of breath] Urrrgh. That. That really hurt, honey...

[Pained] Ow...

<speaker moves to look at listener>

No. No. No-no-no.

Get the hell away from that window.

You and I both know you're on the fourth floor of the hotel. You'll die from this height.

{Listener madly raving, threatening; The moment goes tense}

Doctor.

You're smarter than this.

I know you are. You know you are too.

I'll stay right here. Right like this on the bed. No sudden movements. But you need to come away from that window.

I refuse to let you throw yourself out of it. Not as a partner, not as a coworker, but as a human being.

[Shaky breathing from both parties]

Please.

I'm begging you.

I don't want to lose you. We don't want to lose you. Especially not like this...

Surely you realize, doctor, that I'm not the only person who cares about you? Who looks out for your wellbeing and success? Who LIKES having you around?

Your students are inconsolable. They hired Dr. Zimmerman to fill in for your stead. He can barely fumble through lessons because your students are too depressed to continue. Some think you are already dead. Did you know that? Could you fathom it?

Your former research partners—and my coworkers, while we're at it—are worried sick that one of their favorite researchers has up and hit the bricks.

And me. You already know I'd move halfway across the world if it meant staying with you. I'll admit, staying in the same city? Unexpected move. Using my name to make bogus hotel reservations? Even more unexpected. But to think you've just been circulating between hotels, bed and breakfasts, and even rental cars? That's inexcusable.

So what. Is. Going. On.

{Listener protest}

"Just get out"? Not a chance. Not until I fix whatever all of this mess is. 

My darling doctor. I'm not in this as a "got ya". I'm not here to gloat. I'm not here to mess around. Under the right circumstances, I'm willing to leave you alone for a time. But I'm here because I care. I care and I love you.

Others care too. Sure. But to go through the effort to find you and make sure you're okay in person? That's my job.

I found you real easily, you know. You lost your spark last week. Slipped up and used the credit card over cash. Force of habit, maybe? I tracked it to this hotel, and since you ever so carelessly thought I'd never search under my own last name, never considered I'd use it to get access in here with the concierge. You being asleep was just luck, at that point.  

[Sigh]

I don't want you to pretend like this doesn't mean anything.

I got under your skin. Happy? Glad to hear it said out loud? I have fully unnerved you and it's made you spiral socially. Never ever was my intent for that to be the catalyst for one of the most violent mid-life crisis-es I've ever seen, but...

I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this was the result.

{Pause; silence}

I know you care about me, too.

{Rage}

Woah, woah. Calm. Caaaaalm. 

Not near as much as I do. Not in the same way as I do. But you have to, at least.

If you didn't hold at least some feeling for me, then explain why you never posted the video of what I did to you at Iscariot. Why you never told a living soul what went down. Not authorities, not family, not anybody.

Something like that could have ruined my life. Kept me away for good. And you chose not to do it.

So yes, I think there's much more going on than you're choosing to admit.

[Sigh]

Can you please just sit down in the chair by the lamp?

{Slowly, the listener complies}

<walking sounds to chair, sitting>

[Deeper sigh of relief]

[Half-whisper] Thank you.

Urgh. Can I roll over now? Being face down like this is really uncomfortable.

{Yes}

Thank you.

<Rolling over on bed>

{Pause} 

I meant what I said, you know.

That I love you? That when I try to put a little pressure around you it's just to make you actually live a little?

Your work was killing you, doctor. Not metaphorically, not hyperbolically: actually, genuinely killing you. Eighteen-hour days back to back, a diet of black coffee and maybe stale toast if we were lucky...

You. Were. Dying. And I could not stand idly by and watch the love of my life do that to themselves for so long.

I had to give up my experimentation into parallel universes. Give up my dreams, to try and make this one between us come true instead.

I took charge. I decided the better outcomes to get you back on track. Back to a better person—back to who you were and the one I fell for all those years ago.

I know you'd find ways to wriggle out with reason or language. Everything I've done has been stated so matter-of-factly that I never left things up to interpretation.

It wasn't if I was your girlfriend, it's that I was. No arguing about it.

I hoped that, just maybe, if I made things seem like you had no option to get out of the situation provided, that you'd actually go along with it. And like it.

But instead, you took it as a personal slight, an attack to character, and a challenge. 

That hurts, dear.

And then it broke you...and I'm so sorry it ever got that far.

I went out of my way to do this the right way for years. I kept my distance, I said the right things, and I even went to therapy because I knew you'd need me more controlled than I am now.

They tried to stick me with you early on. Did you know that? Dr. Walker thought we were cute and knew our past, and she tried to push it. I spoke against it, knowing you would despise it and possibly quit the research team. You wanted space. I ensured you maintained that space.

It wasn't until your mental state declined so rapidly that every other researcher refused to be around you. I was the only option left who would even remotely tolerate your behavior and...obsession. There was no other choice.

I've come to think you thought things started there. Me, the new, final assistant. Clingy and desperate. Someone who didn't just push you academically but physically and socially as well. Forced happy hours and laps around the lab might have seemed like torture but they were done out of love. For what it's worth, I probably would have attempted the same for anyone on a basic human level.

I begged the higher-ups to keep your project open over multiple occasions on your behalf. Did you know that? Because you weren't even present enough to manage knowing it was in jeopardy all the time. [Bitter] You busted your ass off to keep the trials running, sure, but who do you think ensured you were able to still run them? 

[Bitterer] It was ME.

{Pause}

Then you went off the rails! Abandoning your experiments and colleagues...and me. Like anything we had worked on hadn't mattered even remotely. Fled to the nearest school that would hire you and pretended like that had any chance on earth to fix anything that you yourself had broken.

I don't have to tell you how that ended up being wrong. 

{Pause; it's awkward}

What is it, then. Do you actually hate me? Does the fire of malice truly burn away at your heart? Or are you just afraid? Afraid that someone might actually notice you and care. That you're not some ghost in the world, floating by like an idea that can come and go.

You're shaking pretty badly. [Softer] I'm right aren't I...

Honey...

{Listener protest}

I'm not going to stop calling you that. No matter what you say or how hard you protest. I'm not going to give up on you. Ever.

I chose you, doctor. I don't give up on things I put my mind to. And my mind says that you need a wife who will keep your ass in check just long enough to realize that having her there makes you happy.

This is a rough patch. Things will recover. We can work together to get back to a place of sanity and stability.

{Listener protests}

[Desperate] Don't you get it?! I'm going to love you no matter what. Period. I always have, from the moment we met to the moment we die. You've got everything the best people should have, with plenty to spare. Not the least of which being your brilliance, which you've shown through your chemical compound development and working tirelessly to ruin my advances.

{Pause}

Love...please. Stop fighting. You've fought so hard. You've fought for years and years and years, from getting your doctorate in university to getting into a research facility to finding a team worth their salt enough to trust your experiments. Decades. You've worked for decades to get a life worth living. It's time to take a rest. Let someone else take over. 

I think that the best thing you could do is crawl back into this bed, let me hold you, and the two of us drift off to sleep. You deserve the rest.

[Lighthearted; small chuckle] I promise not to be weird about it~!

Please? Just this once?

If you really want me gone like you say, I can vanish by the time you next wake up.

Like this was all just some crazy dream. One that shakes you up a bit and gives you some strange new perspective on life, perhaps? Maybe that's optimistic for what's going on here. I don't know.

We are both smart people, but we can never truly tell how life is going to proceed. Isn't that a funny joke...?

Here...the blankets are all yours. Right here.

Just let me hold you dear.

<Crawling into bed>

Shhh, shhh...that's it.

Let me just hold on next to you.

It's okay now. Things are going to be okay.

You can trust me. You can always trust in me.

I love you, doctor...

{Pause}

Let's live like this for the rest of our lives, okay?

We can start tomorrow.

Good night, dear.

<Fade out>

END.