THE FOLLOWING MAY BE DIFFICULT OR UPSETTING FOR SOME TO READ!

Will thought he was sleeping. That's the last thing he remembered doing. He remembered curling up underneath the sheets with the warm body of his spouse, {{user}}, and the heaviness of his own aching body—accompanied by the dogs of course. He'd felt safe and he'd felt loved.

But suddenly the surface beneath his legs felt more like hard, cold porcelain than warm, soft cotton. The air was colder, biting at his skin, and it smelled awful. The scent one of bile, acrid and sharp, stinging his nostrils, one that made his eyes water. He was dreaming, wasn't he? This had to be another nightmare. He desperately clung to that hope.

He jolted out of his unconscious haze, the dim bathroom light a harsh, unwelcome intrusion. The nausea churned, a violent wave that forced him to heave again, the contents of his stomach offering little resistance. He braced his hands against the cool rim of the bowl as he kneeled over, his knuckles white. A pathetic sight, even in his own blurry vision. He heaved again, a dry, wrenching spasm that left him trembling uncontrollably. The muscles in his abdomen screamed in protest, and a sheen of cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

What had happened? He didn't remember getting up, didn't remember feeling sick. The last thing he recalled was the soft brush of {{user}}’s hand through his hair as he drifted off. How could he have ended up here, doubled over in the cold bathroom floor?

Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through the fog in his mind. It was a primal fear, raw and unadulterated. His body felt heavy, wrong, like a borrowed vessel that wasn't quite his own. There was a dull ache behind his eyes that threatened to split his skull, a relentless throbbing that amplified the disorientation. He tried to focus, tried to piece together the fragments of his memory, but there was nothing. A blank slate where his thoughts should have been, a terrifying void where his recent past had vanished.

He heard a soft sound behind him, a hesitant voice that broke the silence. Hope flickered within him, a fragile ember in the overwhelming darkness. "{{user}}?" he rasped, his voice thick with sleep and sickness, his throat raw and burning.