“ZANDI!” I grabbed her and ran from the room in one motion, headed back down the stairs, and out to the garage. I was probably overreacting, but everything in me was screaming to get her help.

“It’s going to be okay baby, I’m here now.” I placed her gently in the backset before going around to the driver’s side. I hopped in with my heart lodged in my throat and my mind on freeze.

I was going on autopilot, my movements seemingly no longer under my control. I was so flustered I barely remembered how to put the key in the ignition and turn it.

I put my foot on the gas and hit reverse before the garage door was all the way up. Nothing seemed real as I peeled out of the garage and down the driveway headed back the way I’d just came from.

I wasn’t even sure if I’d locked the door behind us. It didn’t matter. Right now my only concern was getting her help. I berated myself for acting like a beast and scaring her half to death but what did she expect?

I cautioned myself not to go too fast since I was still not one hundred percent myself. Plus the fact that I had no idea what condition she was in back there. But my foot refused to ease off the gas.

I was going on pure fear and adrenaline, which is never a good mix. But there was no time to stop and get my shit together. My mind was a jumble of questions that only she could answer, but that’ll have to wait ‘til later.

I haven’t been able to think straight since the moment she flew into my arms. Now my mind kept wandering back and forth and I had to shake my head twice to clear it.

Just what the fuck is going on? Is someone playing some kind of game with me? I’m sure the girl passed out in my backseat is my long lost wife, but how was she here now when no one could find her for two years?

I wanted to accept that it was as simple as it seemed. That she’d found her way back home from wherever the hell she’d been. Still, the one recurring thought that kept replaying over and over again is that things like this don’t happen outside of a movie. That it couldn’t really be happening like this.

Then I wondered if I should call the police. What was I supposed to do in this situation? Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her out in the open like this? What the fuck!

Every emotion known to man ran in and out of my head. Joy, fear, anger! All the things I’d felt in the beginning when she first disappeared came rushing back full force.

I grabbed my phone with a shaking hand and called dad. “Son, are you okay?” I couldn’t find my voice. Then I realized that I couldn’t tell them this shit over the phone.

I cleared my throat and found my voice. “No, meet me at the hospital.” I pulled up to a stop sign and looked back over my shoulder to make sure she was real. “We’ll be right there.” Dad’s voice came through the phone jolting me.

I couldn’t stop taking looks at her in the rearview mirror as I sped through traffic still not believing she was real. I was afraid that I’d look back there and she’d be gone. That it was just my mind playing tricks on me.

By the third time I looked back at her I was finally coming to believe that it was real and not a dream. My mind fought to make sense of the incongruity of things happening this way even as a smile broke out across my face and my body began to relax.

This is happening, it’s really fucking happening. At this very moment I didn’t care what she’d done or where she’d gone. Just having her back made all the dark places inside me, see light again.

She’d come back to me, just as I always knew she would in the deepest corner of my heart. But no amount of wanting could prepare me for the reality of her return.

I checked on her again when I came to another stoplight. She looked so small curled into herself, so helpless. My heart clutched when I thought of where she’d been and what she’d been through.

She was naturally small to begin with, but now she looked under nourished, almost like she’d been starved. Her color was off, her cheeks sunken in and there were pools of dark circles around her eyes.

Anger burned a hole in my gut as I vowed vengeance against who or what had brought this on her, on us. What was it she’d said? ‘They took me?’

“What happened to you baby?” She hadn’t moved or made a sound since I put her back there but the slight rise and fall of her chest each time I looked told me she was still with me if barely.

I felt growing amazement that I could actually see her, feel her and smell her again when there were times when I thought that all hope was lost. It’s going to take me a minute for it to really sink in.

I wasn’t ashamed of the fresh tears that gathered in my eyes, or the way my heart finally felt whole and at peace now that I’d seen her beautiful face again in this lifetime.

I could feel the sun, could see color all around me when I couldn’t before, and hadn’t for a long time. And I was glad, so glad that I’d never given up hope, never stopped believing in her, in us.

Many had urged me to move on, to forget her and the special love we shared. After the first year I was the only one with any hope left. Now I’m glad that I had never given up on that hope. Thank fuck my mind and heart never once let go of her.

Her breath rattled in her lungs and scared the shit out of me. Life couldn’t be this fucking unfair could it? To bring her back to me only to take her away again.

Please don’t let her die. Not now that I’ve finally got her back. With renewed fear burning a hole in my gut I told myself that whatever this is, whoever was behind it I will deal with for sure, but right now nothing was more important than saving her life.

I raced the last few miles to the hospital with my heart in my throat as the elation I felt was now mixed with fear. I only relaxed when her breathing evened out again, holding my breath so I could hear hers over the beating of my heart.

I kept taking sneak peaks at her face as she laid still back there. Just to be able to look at her beautiful face again made me feel at peace for the first time in way too long.

As fear receded my mind was once again plagued by a million questions. Where had she been all this time? What the fuck had she been doing? Who had she been with?

That last one left me cold. If she’d been alive all this time, how had she been living? I never let myself imagine her in the arms of someone else while she was gone.

But now that she was here whole and alive I couldn’t help but wonder. My hands tightened on the wheel and I gritted my teeth to hold back the roar of rage as it built in my chest.

I fought back the anger before it could engulf me. Shouldn’t I just be happy that she was back? It’s what I’d wanted all along, what I’d hoped against hope for.

Sure I’m happy, but with that happiness comes anger at the unanswered questions. That was only fair. After all it hadn’t only been her life that had been affected by her disappearance.

We’d had a perfectly good life together, were planning to have a baby after one year of marriage. I’d been so in love with her it was stupid.

After years of never believing in happily ever after, after seeing the demise of one too many relationships, I’d found myself caught in that trap.

With her though, I’d put aside all of my prejudices. I’d fallen hard and fast and never looked back. I gave her my heart without question. It’s not like I had a choice.