“Are you sick, George?”

Sharon looked up from her book and over at her husband, who was slouched into the sofa. His face was pale and his eyes were glassy. He had been coughing all day. He looked at her and smiled warmly. 

“I’m alright, honey,” he assured her.

Sharon shrugged and returned to her book. “If you say so.”

George stood up and walked toward the bathroom. “I’ll just take a cold pill.”

His words rang in Sharon’s ears like tinnitus. She creased the spine of her book and placed it pages-down on the table.

“That’s bad for the book, you know,” George said, opening the medicine cabinet. He picked up a bottle of Benadryl. It rattled in his hands, the sound sending pins down Sharon’s spine. “Similar to how eating an egg that was once in a monkey’s mouth is bad for a person.”

Sharon held her face in her hands. She couldn’t stand to look at him. It was like he was taunting her. She had tried to convince herself that it wasn’t his fault that he was like this, but he had clearly made no effort to improve. It was a virus that infected every little part of their marriage, slowly killing her love for him. 

George walked behind her to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. He brushed his hand down the back of her head as he went. 

“You know what this is like?” he asked. She wasn’t going to answer. She couldn’t. “This is just like-”

“Stop it!” Sharon snapped, her eyes filling with hot tears. “You’re doing this just to hurt me!”

George was unaffected. He stared at her, completely dead-eyed. She couldn’t tell if he found joy in her suffering. He must have, if he was to continue torturing her like this. 

“You didn’t let me finish,” he said. “This is just like Osmosis Jones (2001).”

Sharon slammed her fist on the dining room table. “You can’t keep doing this!” she sobbed. “It’s wrong! It’s disgusting! You’re being disgusting!”

“I’m wrong?” George laughed at the thought. “I’m taking allergy medicine. Was Drix not an allergy pill Frank took? Really, Sharon. You’re being delusional.” He put one bright pink pill in his mouth and took a large swig of water, seemingly savoring the bitter taste as it went down. He sauntered back over to the living room, picking up a disc from the DVD shelf before he sat back down.

Sharon looked at him from the corner of her eye, unable to recognize the creature sitting in her husband’s place. Any memories she had of the man she married were gone and replaced with images of toothy animated grins and the sound of Bill Murray vomiting. She didn’t have to fully see the DVD cover to know what he was going to watch. The TV screen flashed on, but Sharon couldn’t stay in the room. 

She ran to the bedroom and grabbed her suitcase from the top shelf of her closet. She tore clothes off the hangers, taking as many of her things as she could. George had made it abundantly clear that he no longer had any room in his heart for her. Any love he had left within him was reserved only for Chris Rock and David Hyde Pierce. She refused to indulge him for a second more. Sharon took a deep breath and walked back into the living room. There lay George, fast asleep, the Osmosis Jones DVD menu on the TV, and the cursor hovering over play. 

The sight struck a chord within her. This man, who ruined her life and broke her heart, was just laying there, helpless on the couch. He was only going to dive further into this addiction the second she walked out the door. He would die without her, and she knew it. But what would she do without him? He had stripped her of her independence and covered her back up with inappropriate dated movie references. She didn’t know anything else. 

Sharon placed her suitcase on the floor. She walked over to the couch and fell to her knees. She took George’s hand in hers, still incapable of looking at him. She could only look at her tears hitting the floor. Whether or not she wanted it, her life was dedicated to taking care of this man, no matter what humiliation he put the both of them through.