The reality of my wife’s accident began to sink in, a cold wave that threatened to drown me. If she was in a serious car accident, then who was this stranger? And why was she here, in our home, in our bed?

The officer, seeing the tumult of emotions crossing my face, spoke gently but firmly. “We’re going to get to the bottom of this. I’ll need to call in backup to secure the scene and investigate.”

Numbly, I nodded. My mind was a chaotic jumble of questions without answers. How could everything have changed so drastically in the span of a few hours? How was it possible that the world had tilted on its axis without me realizing?