The Last Dose

For months, Emma Callahan had been getting dizzy after dinner.

It never hit all at once. It crept up on her like a fog. First a subtle spin behind her eyes, like she’d stood up too fast. Then a slow flush down her spine, as if someone had turned the thermostat up ten degrees. Finally that heavy, sinking pressure, the one that made her feel like gravity had doubled just for her.

Every time it happened, her husband had the same answer.

“You’re just tired from work,” Mark would say, his voice warm and even, like the hum of a space heater. “You’re pushing too hard, Em. Stress does that.”

He’d kiss her forehead, take her plate, and carry the dishes to the sink. She’d sink into the couch cushions, float in and out of a half-sleep, and tell herself not to be dramatic. She worked long hours at a financial coordinator job in downtown Chicago. She skipped lunch more days than not. She rode the Red Line home packed shoulder to shoulder with other tired people. Of course she was dizzy.

You’re thirty-three, she told herself. Not sixteen. You’re not supposed to bounce back from everything.

So she stopped mentioning it. The dizziness. The odd numbness in her hands. That strange, thick-tongued moment between waking and sleep where she’d think, fleetingly, If I don’t wake up, at least I won’t be so tired.

Mark would tuck a blanket around her, turn on the TV, and murmur, “Rest, babe. I’ve got you.”

For a while, she believed him.

Then logic finally screamed louder than trust.

The day everything changed was ordinary in the way days sometimes are right before they end your life as you know it.

Emma rode the elevator down from the twenty-fifth floor of the Loop office building where she worked, her ID lanyard still around her neck, her inbox still full. A coworker wished her a happy Thursday on the way out. The March wind knifed through her coat as soon as she stepped outside, the Chicago sky a sheet of dull pewter.

On the train home, she stared at her reflection in the dark window. Thirty-three. Ash-brown hair pulled into a low knot. Dark smudges under hazel eyes. A faint crease starting to form between her brows. She looked like every other tired commuter around her.

Except every other tired commuter didn’t need to brace herself for the moment her husband set a plate in front of her.

Her dizziness wasn’t random anymore. She’d started keeping track, the way she’d track transactions at work. Every bout of spinning, every heavy-limbed collapse, every time Mark made sure she ate just one more bite, sweetheart because “you barely touched your lunch, right?”

And the tally marks on the little notepad in her purse all lined up with dinner.

Never breakfast. Never the weekends when they ordered pizza and she sneaked half of it into Tupperware for lunch the next day. Only when he cooked. Only when he watched her eat.

Emma’s fingers tightened around the metal pole as the train rattled into her stop.

It was ridiculous. Movies and true crime podcasts and late-night news segments about “husbands who kill” had messed with her head. Mark was steady. Reliable. The kind of guy who reminded her to change the smoke detector batteries and scheduled their car inspections a month early.

He’d never even raised his voice at her, not once in their eight years together.

But the facts sat in her stomach like stones.

Dinner. Dizzy.

Dinner. Dizzy.

Dinner. Dizzy.

“You’re just tired from work.”

She’d believed him when he said that, because believing anything else made her the kind of woman who checked the locks twice and googled “how much is arsenic” at midnight.

Except last week, in the dim space between waking and unconsciousness, she’d realized something that made her stomach burn.

If it was stress, if this was truly just her working too hard… why did Mark always look almost relieved when she swayed in place?

Why did his eyes flick to the half-empty plate, every time, like a scorekeeper?

She’d lain there on the couch, too heavy to move, and watched him through slitted eyes. He’d carried her to the bedroom, his hands careful, his voice soft.

“You scared me,” he’d whispered into her hair.

But his pulse, pressed against her shoulder, had been as steady as a metronome.

The next morning, she’d taken her lunch break for once. Walked downstairs, around the corner, and sat on a bench in the atrium with her salad untouched as she opened a new note in her phone.

Plan, she typed.

The plan was simple, really. She’d seen the same twist play out in a dozen crime shows, usually right before she fell asleep on the couch while Mark watched the next episode without her.

Switch the plates. Hide the food. Pretend to be out.

And listen.

If she was wrong, she’d wake up humiliated and probably in a fight with her husband.

If she was right…

She swallowed.

If she was right, she might not be alive much longer.

When Emma opened the apartment door that night, the smell hit her first.

Lemon, garlic, butter. Mark’s lemon chicken. Her favorite. His favorite to make.

He leaned against the stove, spatula in hand, the small kitchen filling with steam. Their two-bedroom apartment on the North Side wasn’t fancy, but it was neat. Mark kept it that way. He worked from home—some vague project management thing for a logistics company—and took pride in the cooking, the cleaning, the grocery lists on the fridge.

“Hey,” he said, smiling as she shrugged off her coat. “Perfect timing. Dinner’s almost ready.”

He crossed the kitchen in three easy steps, kissed her temple, and slid a plate onto the table.

“You look beat,” he said. “Long day?”

“Yeah,” she said. Her voice sounded thin in her own ears. “Budget review ran long.”

He frowned. “You’ve been living on coffee again, haven’t you? I can hear it in your voice.”

She almost laughed at the casual intimacy of it.

“Sit,” he said, pulling out her chair. “Eat. Doctor’s orders. Well, husband’s orders.”

She sat.

He turned back to the stove to plate his own dinner.

Her heart started pounding.

This was it.

Her fingers went to the zipper on her purse, easing it open under the tablecloth. Her hand brushed the smooth plastic of the empty takeout container she’d tucked there that morning.

She waited until he flipped off the burner and turned away, humming something under his breath, and then moved.

In one swift motion, she slid her full plate into her lap, dumped the chicken and vegetables into the container, and slipped the now-empty plate back onto the table. The whole maneuver took maybe three seconds. Her palms were slick with sweat.

She snapped the container lid shut under the table, wiped her hands on her skirt, and picked up her fork just as Mark turned around.

“I didn’t overdo the lemon this time,” he said, settling across from her. “Promise.”

She speared an empty spot on the plate, lifted the fork to her lips, and made a show of chewing.

“Mmm,” she said. “It’s good.”

His shoulders relaxed. “See? Told you. Stick with me and I’ll feed you forever.”

Funny, she thought, how that sounded different now.

They ate—or pretended to, in her case—in companionable small talk. He told her about a frustrating client. She nodded and made “mmhmm” noises at all the right moments. Every time his eyes flicked down to her plate, she made sure her fork was in motion.

Her chest hurt from the effort of acting normal.

Finally, he put his fork down, wiped his mouth, and said, “You okay? You look a little pale.”

Perfect.

“Just… tired,” she murmured.

She pushed her chair back and let her body go slack, forcing her limbs to loosen. It wasn’t hard; adrenaline and fear had already turned her bones to jelly. She let herself slide down, her shoulder hitting the side of the couch as she half-fell onto it.

“Emma?” Mark’s voice sharpened. “Em?”

She forced a small shudder through her body, then went still.

She focused on keeping her breathing shallow, her eyelids heavy.

She listened.

He checked her pulse at her wrist—two fingers pressing a little too hard, like he was more interested in confirming unconsciousness than panic. Then, satisfied, he stood up.

She heard the scrape of a chair. The quick, light steps of him moving toward the hallway.

Her heart hammered so loudly she was certain he’d hear it echoing off the walls.

He grabbed his phone from the console table by the front door. She heard the plastic clatter.

Then—his voice, low and fast, the way it got when he was talking numbers or deadlines.

“She’s out,” he said. “Is the last dose strong enough? When do I get paid?”

The words sliced through the air like glass.

Emma’s blood went cold.

The last dose.

A rush of images flooded her—the months of dizziness, the heavy sleep, the way he’d always made sure she took another bite.

“When do I get paid?”

Her vision blurred behind closed lids. She bit down on her lower lip to keep from gasping and tasted blood.

God. God.

The thing that made her dizzy… had never been love.

He was poisoning her.

She stayed perfectly still.

Because now she knew something else with brutal clarity.

If he realized she’d heard him, she might not live long enough to take another breath.

Time warped.

He kept talking, his words drifting in and out as the rush of blood in her ears grew louder.

“No, she doesn’t suspect,” he said. “I just gave it to her. Same as always… Yes, I know we have to be careful… I said I’ll make it look like stress… You promised I’d have the money by the end of the month.”

Silence, then, as whoever was on the other end replied.

Emma stared at the inside of her eyelids and counted her breaths.

One. Two. Three.

She’d always prided herself on staying calm under pressure at work. Audit nightmares, last-minute deadline changes, surprise inspections—she could keep her head while everyone else’s flew off. It had never felt like a survival skill until now.

“Fine,” Mark said eventually. “Fine. I’ll text you later.”

The call clicked off.

She heard him exhale.

His footsteps came back down the hall.

“Emma?” His voice was all concern again. “Honey?”

He knelt beside the couch, fingers pressing against her wrist again. His thumb brushed her knuckles.

“You scared me,” he whispered.

The lie curled around her like smoke.

He lifted her, the way he always did, one arm under her knees, the other behind her back. She let her head loll against his shoulder, eyes closed.

He carried her into the bedroom, laid her on the mattress, and pulled the comforter up over her. She felt his gaze on her face for a long moment.

Then he moved away.

She heard the dresser drawer slide open. Something small and plastic rattled—like a bottle.

Her stomach clenched.

A click. The drawer closed.

Then, footsteps toward the door. The soft whine of a zipper—his jacket, probably.

And finally, the dull thump of the front door closing behind him.

He’d left.

Emma lay there, every nerve screaming at her to move, but fear still had a hand around her throat.

Finally, when the apartment stayed silent for a full sixty seconds—she counted, lips moving soundlessly—she forced herself to sit up.

Her body felt wrong. Heavy from last night’s real dose, light from adrenaline, like her muscles had been rewired overnight.

“Okay,” she whispered to herself. “Okay.”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, planted her feet on the floor. The carpet felt scratchy under her bare soles, hyperreal.

Think, she ordered herself.

Confronting him now would be useless. He’d deny everything. He’d tell her she’d imagined it, that she’d had some weird stress-induced episode. He’d hold up her recent performance review at work—she’d told him about the “areas for growth” section—and use it like evidence against her sanity.

And then he’d keep cooking.

Keep dosing.

Keep waiting.

She needed proof. Something outside of her own foggy memory and a snatch of overheard words.

She needed someone whose job was believing women who said, “I think my husband is trying to kill me.”

She grabbed her purse from where she’d dropped it by the bedroom door, her fingers fumbling with the zipper. The zip-lock bag of lemon chicken slid into her hand, still warm.

For the thousandth time in her life, Emma thanked whatever god covered anxious Type-A personalities for making her one. She’d thought to save the food. Evidence.

She yanked open her dresser drawer, pulled on jeans, a sweatshirt, sneakers. A coat. Her keys.

Then she hesitated, fingers on the knob.

What if he’d forgotten something and turned around? What if he was standing in the hall right now, listening?

She pressed her ear to the door.

Silence.

She opened it a crack, peered out.

Empty hallway. The neighbor’s welcome mat with its faded “Home Sweet Home.” No Mark.

She slipped out and closed the door behind her, heart pounding.

The night air in the building’s stairwell was colder than she expected. She flew down the three flights of stairs, one hand on the rail, the other clutching her purse so tightly her knuckles ached.

The nearest urgent care was three blocks away. She knew because she’d googled it earlier that afternoon, while pretending to adjust a budget spreadsheet.

Each step on the sidewalk felt like she was walking through water. Her body still hadn’t fully shaken off last night’s dose. Her head throbbed in time with her heartbeat.

Chicago traffic rolled by. People walked past her, faces bent toward their phones, their collars. Random, harmless strangers who would probably shrug if she fell onto the sidewalk at their feet.

She reached the urgent care center’s glass doors and pushed them open with more force than necessary.

The fluorescent lights inside buzzed faintly. The waiting room smelled like antiseptic and old magazines.

A woman in light-blue scrubs looked up from the reception desk as Emma stumbled forward.

“Hi,” she said, giving Emma the once-over. “How can we—oh. Are you okay?”

“I think someone’s been drugging me,” Emma blurted.

The words sounded wild. Crazy. But they were out now, and she wasn’t pulling them back.

The nurse’s eyes sharpened.

“Okay,” she said calmly. “Let’s get you into a room.”

She didn’t ask Emma to fill out paperwork first. That seemed important.

They led her to a small exam room with a narrow bed and a poster about flu symptoms on the wall. A doctor came in—a man in his forties, with tired eyes and a Chicago Bears lanyard around his neck.

Emma told him everything. The dizziness. The pattern. The switched plate. The phone call.

Her voice shook a little at the part where she’d heard “When do I get paid?” but she got through it.

The doctor listened without interrupting, his brow furrowing deeper with each detail.

“Do you feel dizzy now?” he asked when she finished.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t actually eat any of it tonight.”

She pulled the zip-lock bag from her purse and set it on the metal tray.

He picked it up between two gloved fingers, examining it like a specimen.

“We can run toxicology on your blood right away,” he said. “And we’ll have the food analyzed, too. It might take a little longer, but if there’s something in there, we’ll find it.”

“Okay,” Emma whispered.

He drew blood—two vials, then two more “just in case.” She stared at the ceiling, focusing on the tick of the clock instead of the sharp sting.

Then he left, taking the bag of lemon chicken with him.

The minutes stretched.

Emma sat on the paper-covered bed, coat around her shoulders, and tried not to imagine Mark walking back into their apartment, finding her gone.

What would he do?

Call her. Text her. Play the worried husband.

What would she say when he asked where she was?

Maybe she wouldn’t answer.

Her phone buzzed in her lap.

Mark: Babe? You okay? You scared me. You kinda fainted. I took you to bed and went to get you some ginger ale but they were out. Headed back now.

He’d left. To buy ginger ale.

Or to meet whoever was paying him.

She turned the phone over so she couldn’t see the screen.

After what felt like an hour—but was probably closer to thirty minutes—the doctor came back.

His expression told her everything before he spoke.

“There’s a sedative in your bloodstream,” he said. “Zalevonil. It’s a prescription medication, but in repeated, unmonitored doses, it can be dangerous. It causes dizziness, muscle weakness, drop in blood pressure… exactly what you’ve been experiencing.”

Emma’s fingers gripped the edge of the bed.

“And the food?” she managed.

“We did a quick screen,” he said, nodding. “The sample you brought in also contains traces of the same drug. You absolutely did the right thing coming in.”

Her throat tightened.

“Can I… contact the police?” she asked.

He didn’t hesitate. “You need to.”

Detectives Harris and Nguyen arrived within half an hour.

They didn’t look like the cops on TV. Harris was in his fifties, Black, with lines etched deep between his brows and a tie that had seen better days. Nguyen was younger, maybe late thirties, Vietnamese-American, with a neat bun at the nape of her neck and the kind of stillness that made Emma think of coiled springs.

They took seats in the tiny exam room, notebooks in hand.

“Ms. Callahan,” Harris said, his voice surprisingly soft. “We’re sorry you’re going through this. Start from the beginning, okay? Take your time.”

So she did.

She told them about Mark. About the months of dizziness. About his reassurances. About his control of the cooking. About the plate swap and the phone call.

She repeated exactly what she’d heard him say.

“She’s out. Is the last dose strong enough? When do I get paid?”

Nguyen’s pen paused.

Mark’s text messages came in while she spoke, little vibrations against her leg. She didn’t look.

When she finished, Harris leaned back, exhaling slowly.

“You said the doctor found Zalevonil in your system,” he said. “We’re familiar with that one. Schedule IV sedative. Misuse can be… problematic.”

“Is it… common?” she asked.

“Common enough,” Nguyen said. “Pain clinics. Sleep meds. Sometimes… other things.”

They exchanged a look.

Emma realized, with a hollow jolt, that she wasn’t the first wife to sit in this chair and say, “I think my husband is trying to kill me.”

“How long have you been married?” Harris asked.

“Eight years,” she said. “We’ve been together ten.”

“Any life insurance policies?” Nguyen asked.

Emma blinked. “What?”

“Do you have a life insurance policy?” Nguyen repeated gently. “Employer-provided, private, anything like that?”

“Yes,” Emma said slowly. “I have one through work. And… we got one a few years ago, too. Mark set it up.”

“Who’s the beneficiary?” Harris asked.

“Mark,” she said. “It’s… it’s Mark.”

Nguyen nodded like that confirmed something.

“Did you know the policy amount?” she asked.

“Five hundred thousand,” Emma said. “Why? Is that—”

Harris held up a hand. “We’re not going to jump to conclusions,” he said. “But between the insurance and what you heard him say about ‘getting paid’…”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

He didn’t have to.

Emma’s stomach lurched.

“What do I do?” she asked. “I can’t go back there. Not if he’s—”

“We’re not sending you back alone,” Nguyen said firmly. “We’ll arrange a safe location for you to stay tonight. And we’ll get a warrant to search the apartment as soon as we can.”

Harris added, “But realistically? The fastest way to get evidence is with your consent. If you’re willing, we can accompany you back now and look for any medications or substances that shouldn’t be there. Anything that might match what’s in your system.”

Emma swallowed.

The idea of stepping back into that apartment made her want to curl up and disappear. Everything in there suddenly felt poisoned. The couch where she’d “rested.” The kitchen where he’d “taken care of her.”

But if going back meant stopping him—meant making sure he couldn’t do this to someone else—she’d do it.

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go.”

“First things first,” Nguyen said. “We’ll have one of our officers from Victim Services get you set up in a safehouse later tonight. Somewhere he can’t reach you. For now, you stay between us, okay?”

Emma nodded.

She glanced at her phone.

Mark: On my way home. Love you. Feel better.

Her skin crawled.

He thought she was still on the couch.

He thought she was still his problem to manage.

He had no idea that the ground was shifting under his feet.

The drive back to her apartment building was a blur of city lights and sirens in the distance.

Emma sat in the back of the unmarked sedan between Harris and Nguyen, her zip-lock bag empty now in her purse, the weight of what they’d already found heavy in the air.

“You’re doing really well,” Nguyen said quietly as they pulled up to the curb. “Most people don’t think this clearly when they’re scared.”

“I’m not ‘doing well,’” Emma said before she could soften it.

But Nguyen just nodded. “You’re here. That’s more than a lot of people get to say.”

They went in through the front entrance, detectives flanking her.

The elevator ride up to the fourth floor was painfully slow. Emma stared at the numbers above the door—2, 3, 4—as if they were a countdown.

At her apartment door, she hesitated with the key.

“Take your time,” Harris said.

She shook her head. “If I stop, I won’t start again.”

She slid the key in, turned it, and pushed the door open.

The familiar smell of lemon chicken and detergent hit her. The overhead light in the entryway glowed warm and inviting.

Nothing looked disturbed. Her coat still hung on the peg. The mail still sat on the side table. The couch cushions still dented where she’d “fallen.”

It was like walking into a crime scene that hadn’t realized it was a crime scene.

“Don’t touch anything yet,” Nguyen said. “We’ll glove up.”

They snapped on latex gloves and began moving through the space with practiced efficiency.

Emma stood near the doorway, arms wrapped around herself.

From the kitchen, Harris called, “You said he cooks most of your meals?”

“Yes,” she said. “Almost all. He likes to… ‘take care of me.’”

“Check the pantry and fridge,” Nguyen told him. “Anything labeled, anything not.”

Harris opened cabinets. Bottles rattled.

Nguyen turned to Emma. “Where does he keep his medications?” she asked. “Anything prescribed to him? Or you?”

“He doesn’t take anything regularly,” Emma said. “And I just… Advil sometimes. There’s a basket in the hall closet with random stuff.”

“Let’s start there,” Nguyen said.

They moved to the hall closet. Coats, boots, the basket of scarves and gloves.

On the top shelf sat a small plastic bin. Nguyen pulled it down, set it on the hallway floor, and started sifting through it.

Band-aids. A half-empty bottle of cough syrup. A roll of gauze. A pill bottle of expired antibiotics in someone’s name Emma didn’t recognize—probably from an urgent care run years ago.

And then—Nguyen froze.

There, taped to the underside of the lid, was a small white plastic bottle.

She peeled it off carefully, turned it over.

No label. No pharmacy branding. Just a blank cylinder with a childproof cap.

She opened it.

Inside were small, round pills. Off-white. Unmarked.

“Could be anything,” Harris said, stepping up behind her. “Could be vitamins. Could be candy. Could be—”

“The same sedative in Ms. Callahan’s bloodstream,” Nguyen finished.

Weapons came in different shapes and sizes. Sometimes they had barrels. Sometimes they came in pill bottles.

Harris pulled an evidence bag from his pocket.

“We’ll have it analyzed,” he said to Emma. “But I’d bet my pension it’s Zalevonil.”

Her legs went weak.

She sank onto the nearest chair.

“That’s enough for a warrant,” Nguyen said quietly. “Combined with the toxicology and your statement, we’re in good shape.”

“Good shape,” Emma echoed.

Her phone buzzed again.

Mark: Traffic is crazy. Be home in ten.

“Detective,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry. “He… he’s on his way back.”

Harris checked his watch.

“Then we’re leaving,” he said. “Now.”

“Wait,” Emma blurted. “Are you going to… arrest him?”

“Not here,” Nguyen said. “Not with you in the apartment. We don’t want you anywhere near him when he realizes the game is up.”

Harris added, “We’ll pick him up outside. Or at the intersection. We have patrol units nearby already.”

Emma swallowed.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

They ushered her out, closing the door behind them.

They didn’t lock it.

As they walked down the hall, Emma glanced back once.

The front door looked like it always had. Brown wood, small peephole, faint scuff marks near the handle.

On the other side of it, the life she’d thought she had was sitting quietly, waiting for her to come back.

She didn’t think she ever would.

The safehouse was on the other side of town, in a neighborhood she’d never visited, in a building with a bland name and a buzzer that didn’t list the apartments by last name.

Victim Services had brought her there, a woman named Tasha with kind eyes and the practical efficiency of someone who’d done this a lot.

“We’ve got toiletries, clean clothes if you need them, a phone charger,” Tasha said as she gave Emma the brief tour. “There’s food in the fridge, nothing cooked,” she added with a wry smile that told Emma she understood more than she said. “You can lock the bedroom door from the inside. Officers patrol the block, and the only people who have this address are on our team. You’re safe here.”

Safe.

The word felt foreign in Emma’s mouth.

“Do people… stay here long?” she asked.

“Sometimes a night,” Tasha said. “Sometimes longer. Depends on how things go. But we’ll check in daily. You won’t be left on your own.”

Emma’s phone vibrated again.

She checked the screen.

Six missed calls from Mark.

Ten text messages:

Em, where are you?

I came home and you were gone. I’m freaking out.

Did you go to the hospital? Call me.

This isn’t funny.

If this is about me working late last week, I said I was sorry.

You’re scaring me. Please tell me you’re okay.

I love you.

Her thumb hovered over the screen.

She put the phone down face-down on the nightstand.

“Can I… ask you something?” she said to Tasha.

“Of course,” Tasha said.

“Do people ever…” Emma hesitated. “Do they ever go back? To the person who did this? To the situation?”

Tasha’s expression was unreadable for a moment. Then she sighed.

“Sometimes,” she said. “It’s complicated. There’s history. Money. Kids. People want to believe the best about the ones they love. It’s not my job to judge that.” She met Emma’s eyes. “It’s my job to make sure, when they’re ready to see things clearly, they’re alive to do it.”

Emma nodded slowly.

“Get some rest,” Tasha said. “We’ll call you when we hear from the detectives.”

When the door closed behind her, the silence in the apartment was almost too loud.

Emma sat on the edge of the bed and stared at her hands.

They looked the same as they had that morning. Same short nails. Same faint callus on her middle finger from years of scribbling notes.

But today, those hands had rescued her.

Those hands had swapped the plates. Those hands had typed “plan” into her phone.

God. What if she hadn’t?

Her phone buzzed again.

This time it was a different number.

She answered.

“Ms. Callahan?” Detective Harris’s voice. “It’s Harris.”

Her spine straightened.

“Hi,” she said. “Did… did you…?”

“We have him,” he said. “We arrested your husband about an hour ago.”

The breath left her lungs in a rush.

“Where?” she asked.

“Outside your building,” Harris said. “He pulled up, started to get out of his car. One of our guys stopped him, asked his name, played it casual. He tried to give a fake one.” She could hear the incredulous amusement in his voice. “We had your toxicology report, the pills from your closet, your statement, and a recorded call from the person he’d been in contact with about the ‘payments.’”

“Recorded call?” she echoed.

“The person he’d been asking ‘when do I get paid?’ That was a cooperating witness in an ongoing investigation we already had open,” Harris said. “Seems your husband got himself tangled up with some very stupid people.”

Emma’s head spun—not from drugs this time, but from the realization that her nightmare was one small part of a bigger, tangled web.

“What did he say?” she asked. “When you arrested him.”

“First?” Harris said. “He said he had no idea what we were talking about. Standard. Then, when we mentioned the Zalevonil found in your system and the pills in your closet, he tried to say they were for him—for his anxiety. But Nguyen had already pulled his prescription history. No doctor. No script.”

Emma closed her eyes.

“And then?” she asked.

“And then, when we told him we had the call from tonight recorded on our end, and that the person on the other line had already agreed to testify, he went quiet,” Harris said. “You could see him doing the math.”

“Did he… say why?” she forced out. “Why he…”

Poisoned me.

She couldn’t quite finish the sentence.

“He said he was desperate,” Harris said. “Job situation, some debt we’re still untangling. He said he never meant to… you know. That he just wanted you… weakened. In bed. That he thought maybe if you got sick, the insurance pay-out…” Harris cleared his throat. “Even if that were true, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s been drugging you without your knowledge or consent. Repeatedly. Over months. That’s attempted murder in our book.”

Emma pressed her fingers to her eyes.

“You’re charging him?” she asked.

“Yes,” Harris said. “We’ve already booked him. He’ll be arraigned tomorrow. We’ll need you to come down to the station at some point to go over a few more details and sign some paperwork. But tonight? I wanted you to hear it from us. You’re safe now.”

Safe.

The second time she’d heard the word in the last few hours.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“We’ll keep you posted as the case progresses,” Harris said. “In the meantime… try to get some rest, Ms. Callahan. That’s an order.”

She almost laughed.

“I’ll… try,” she said.

Harris hung up.

Emma sat there, phone still at her ear, until the dial tone cut out.

She lowered it to her lap and stared at the dark screen.

Safe.

She stood, walked to the small window, and pushed the curtain aside.

From this height, Chicago spilled out below in thousands of lights. Cars threading down the streets. Trains rattling past. People going about their lives, unaware that one small corner of the city had just shifted on its axis.

Her future was uncertain. There would be court dates. Depositions. Lawyers asking invasive questions. Friends and coworkers who would look at her differently.

There would be nights when she woke up sweating, certain she’d tasted the bitter chalk of a pill on her tongue.

But the life ahead of her belonged to her again.

That was enough, for now.

She opened the notes app on her phone, thumb hovering over a blank screen.

Then she typed:

Sometimes the person you trust most is the one you should have feared. And sometimes surviving means finally opening your eyes.

She saved it.

Later, maybe, she’d print it out, pin it above an apartment door that was truly hers, a reminder.

For now, she set the phone on the nightstand, kicked off her shoes, and slid under the covers.

Sleep didn’t come easily, but it came.

Without dizziness.

Without pressure.

Without someone standing over her, counting her breaths for all the wrong reasons.

In the weeks that followed, life rearranged itself.

They moved Mark from county jail to a federal holding facility when the full extent of his dealings came to light. The “cooperating witness” turned out to be part of an insurance fraud ring that had been on the FBI’s radar for months. Mark had been a small cog in a bigger machine, but his role with Emma was personal in a way the prosecutors didn’t shrug off.

“You were going to be an example,” Nguyen told her over coffee one afternoon at a quiet place near the station. “They had this scheme where spouses got sick, ‘unexpectedly’ died, and the surviving partner collected. Only you didn’t die, and you did something they never plan for.”

“What’s that?” Emma asked.

“You listened,” Nguyen said.

Her job put her in front of a lot of people like Emma. Some listened too late. Some never made it to the coffee stage.

Emma walked away from coffee dates and toward a therapist’s office, too. Victim Services set her up with someone who specialized in trauma and betrayal, because “what happened to you isn’t just a crime, it’s a wound.”

In those sessions, she unpacked the years leading up to the poisoning. The subtle manipulations. The way Mark had gently nudged her away from cooking, from grocery shopping, from paying attention to her own body.

“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” her therapist said. “Or in your case, death by a thousand dinners.”

They laughed, painfully.

She gave notice at her job in the Loop, too, surprising her boss and coworkers. They offered accommodations, lighter workloads, anything to keep her.

“It’s not the work,” she told her boss. “It’s the life around it.”

She took a few weeks off to breathe. To sleep without alarms. To remember who she’d been before “stress from work” had become a convenient cover story for something much darker.

She stayed in the safehouse for a while. Then Victim Services helped her find a new apartment, across town, under her name alone. A studio with high ceilings and big windows and a kitchen with counters she planned on learning to use.

The first time she cooked herself a full meal—nothing fancy, just pasta with jarred sauce and a handful of spinach—she cried at the stove.

She ate every bite.

The dizziness didn’t come.

At night, sometimes, her hand would tremble over the spice rack, memories flashing—Mark’s hands sprinkling “just a little extra” seasoning into her food. She’d step back, breathe, and remind herself that she was in charge now.

She met with the prosecutor assigned to her case—a woman with sharp eyes and a file thick enough to serve as a doorstop.

“We have a strong case,” the prosecutor said. “Between the toxicology, the pills, the recorded calls, and your documented pattern of symptoms, we’re in good shape.”

“What if he pleads out?” Emma asked.

“Then he spends a long time somewhere he can’t hurt anyone,” the prosecutor said. “If it goes to trial, you’ll have to testify. We’ll prepare you for that.”

Emma nodded.

She wouldn’t enjoy sitting in a courtroom and saying, out loud, that her husband had tried to kill her. But she’d do it.

Not just for herself, but for the wife two years from now who might be sitting in an urgent care room somewhere, dizzy after dinner, wondering if she was losing her mind.

If hearing Emma’s story made that woman say, “Maybe I should listen,” then the humiliation would be worth it.

On a rainy April afternoon, six weeks after that last dose never reached her bloodstream, an officer from Victim Services called.

“Hey, Emma,” it was Tasha. “You got a minute?”

“Sure,” Emma said, marking her place in the book she’d been reading.

“He pled out,” Tasha said. “Mark. Twenty years on an attempted murder charge, plus additional time for conspiracy to commit insurance fraud. He waived trial.”

Emma took a breath.

“Twenty years,” she repeated.

“Minimum,” Tasha said. “He might serve less with good behavior and parole. He might serve more if he screws up. But he won’t be showing up at your door anytime soon.”

Emma’s fingers tightened around the phone.

“Thank you,” she said. “For everything. All of you.”

“It was you,” Tasha said. “We just walked alongside you while you did the hard thing.”

After they hung up, Emma sat on her little couch, the sound of rain pattering against the windows.

She thought about the girl she’d been at the beginning of all this—the woman who thought exhaustion was to blame, who thought love meant trusting someone even when her body tried to tell her otherwise.

And she thought about the woman now, sitting in a quiet apartment, with a future that was uncertain but undeniably hers.

She stood, walked into the kitchen, and opened the fridge.

Leftovers from last night’s stir-fry. Yogurt. Fresh berries. Milk.

She pulled out a Tupperware, popped it in the microwave, and listened to it hum.

No dread crawled up her spine.

When the ding sounded, she took out the food, plated it, and sat at the table.

She ate.

She waited.

Nothing bad happened.

She closed her eyes briefly and let that sink in.

When she finished, she opened her notebook—actual paper this time, not an app—took out a pen, and started to write.

Not numbers. Not budgets.

Her story.

Not for the police. Not for the court.

For herself.

She started at the beginning, with the dizziness.

She wrote about love and trust and the ways they could be twisted. About lemon chicken and late-night phone calls and the echo of the phrase “When do I get paid?” in her nightmares.

She wrote about the moment she decided to switch the plates, and the way everything had split open.

When she was done, the pages were full, ink smudged where tears had fallen.

She read the last line out loud.

“Sometimes the person you trust most is the one you should have feared. And sometimes surviving means finally opening your eyes.”

She closed the notebook.

Outside, the rain slowed.

Inside, for the first time in a very long time, she didn’t feel dizzy at all.

THE END