The scuff of slippers on bare floor woke me to an otherwise silent night. Backlit by the motion light, my partner’s shadow appeared on the threshold of the hallway. I slipped from beneath the sheet, triggering the light beside my bed, and joined him in the hall.
“Are you okay?” A meaningless question since he’d still be tucked in bed if he was okay.
Anxiety pours from him in waves and he turns toward my voice.
“Something’s leaking. I have to check.” He brushes past me and I follow him to the hall closet, flipping the hall light on as we pass. Yellow flashlight in hand he shuffles through the kitchen to the back door. I watch him unlock the dead bolt and wonder, “Should I add the alarms to the doors now? What if I’d been soundly sleeping and missed the scuffle of his slippers?”
In the quiet night we pass through the pool gate. He shines the trusty flashlight around, focusing on the various meters and the hose bib.
“Do you hear it?” he asks with genuine concern in his voice.
The neighbor’s air conditioning clicks on interrupting our search.
“I hear the a/c, what do you hear?”
He turns toward me, the light illuminating his face. “It sounds like the ocean, like waves. Something must be leaking.” His beautiful blue eyes are wide with intent.
“The bricks are dry and there is no odor of natural gas. If something’s leaking it’s not here.” I answer.
From experience I have no idea what he understands or doesn’t when caught up in his midnight world. To me, the seconds feel like hours. I slow my breaths to calm my heart, determined not to add my own anxiety to his as he stares into my eyes.
Not satisfied, he shuffles back through the gate and into the kitchen. My barefoot steps are silent as I follow him through the quiet house to the front door. He unlatches the dead bolts on the door and security door. I follow him, closing the doors behind us. Again, the thought of door chimes runs through my mind, but he’s moved to the end of the driveway and is staring up at the sky. The warmth of concrete on my bare feet reminds me it’s still high summer in the dessert and door chimes will wait another day.
“You don’t hear the noise.” This time a statement, not a question. He places both hands on his face perhaps to hide from his own confusion. The pose breaks my heart a bit more. His hands drop to his sides. “It must be me.”
I take his hand and tug gently, guiding him back toward the house. I’m purposeful in taking his hand but aware he may cringe from my touch. I never know what the right thing to do in these dementia moments. Does he need touching or hands off?
“Let’s go to bed.” I suggest. He agrees. Willing to give up the search.
There’s so much information about his disease on the internet, but I’ve found nothing about best practices for dealing with a hallucination.
He doesn’t shuffle back inside, he strolls and I’m briefly reminded of the confident, athletic man I married. The drugs he takes for mobility help, his arms swing naturally as he strides down the hall. So many drugs on his agenda now. We spend time one evening each week sorting them into little boxes marked by time of day and day of week. It’s even colored coded to help us both keep them straight.
When he’s snuggled in and drifted off to sleep, I return to my room and go back under the covers. I stare at the glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceiling. We put them up to comfort our daughter when she was young, now they comfort me. Two years ago, my partner was diagnosed with parkinsonism and Lewy body dementia. The midnight adventure was not his first hallucination. They arrive without warning and so far, all are associated with him going to sleep at night. The common theme of his hallucinations is protecting our home, our family from a threat, a role he’s acted out in truth for the last thirty-five years. He laid each and every brick of our house. The castle he built for us from the ground up.
Morning arrives and I find him seated at the breakfast bar, newspaper spread before him. He’s searching for sports on TV, classic movies, and any news that might impact us. We have our routine conversation about what’s on TV and interesting articles in the paper. When I’ve filled the coffee pot with water and pressed the brew button, he asks,
“What happened last night? I know something did but I don’t know what.”
I explain our midnight adventure. I remind him lately our old house has broken down several times in the last few months so a leak wasn’t impossible. We didn’t find one.
He seems satisfied with the explanation and says, “I heard a noise but you didn’t. I must have been dreaming.”
A dream of a midnight adventure we shared he can’t quite remember.