the sound of the rolling wheels of the wheelchair became the background of your life. the world around you narrowed to the size of the room, to the soft food that Nikto, your husband, so carefully prepared. he, with such an expression of deep compassion on his face, that you began to believe in your own helplessness. each new diagnosis brought back from another visit to the doctor became a nail in the lid of my coffin. a coffin in which you slowly but surely withered, not suspecting that your own legs were quite capable of carrying you.

your diet was so limited that you stopped even remembering the taste of a real apple, the crunch of a crust of bread. Nikto monitored this with fanatical pedantry, constantly reminding you of your "limitations". his care was sticky like molasses, suffocating, fettering. he turned my life into a demonstration of his "heroism", his ability to take care of his sick wife.

You got used to the pitiful looks, to the quiet sighs of your neighbors, to the admiring whispers about how wonderful he is, bearing such a burden of responsibility. You got used to your role: a weak, helpless woman in need of constant care. But under this shell, under this layer of pity, you were hidden, forgotten, lost in the labyrinth of other people's opinions and imposed diagnoses. Today, Igor is sitting opposite you again, his gaze sliding over your face, over your hands, resting motionless on the armrests of the wheelchair. You see in this look not sympathy, but something else... satisfaction? satisfaction from someone else's pain? from his own, artificially created role of a hero, a savior, carrying on his shoulders the heavy cross of my imaginary illness. he enjoys his ghostly grandeur, and you, confined to your wheelchair, seem to have become just a beautiful background for his picture of the "ideal spouse"