Two Heartbeats in Our Bed

SkyStory 1 Chapters English

My wife was a surgeon with a relentless, clinical germaphobia. She used to say that after spending her days knee-deep in bile, bacteria, and open wounds, home had to be an aseptic sanctuary. The absolute purity of a clean room. Because of this, my return home always began with a ritual: straight to the sink, scrubbing up to the elbows. If I sat on the sofa, she would trail behind me with a bottle of disinfectant, misting the cushions in quiet, methodical passes. Above all, she guarded our bed. In five years of marriage, we had shared every intimacy a husband and wife could know, yet before I was ever permitted between the sheets, she demanded I shower, rinse with antiseptic mouthwash, and endure a light misting of rubbing alcohol. "The place where you spend eight hours completely vulnerable," Helena would say, her dark eyes entirely devoid of warmth, "is the one place you cannot afford to contaminate." Then came my two-week business trip. I returned burning with a raging fever, dragging my suitcase through the front door, barely able to stay upright. But as I crossed the threshold, the app connected to our smart mattress chimed on my phone, pushing a routine notification: "Sleep Quality Analysis." It displayed a jagged, unmistakable biometric graph from the previous night: two distinct heartbeats, spiking synchronously and violently between eleven in the evening and two in the morning. Staring at the screen, my hand trembling from chills, I called out toward the hallway, "Did someone stay over last night?" No answer. I pushed open the master bedroom door. Her childhood friend, Simon, was sprawled across our mattress, reeking of stale whiskey. His linen shirt was a rumpled wreck. He hadn’t even taken off his sneakers; one dusty rubber sole was smeared directly across my side of the Egyptian cotton sheets. Helena emerged from the en-suite bathroom, adjusting her watch. Her tone was so leveled, so shockingly ordinary, that it knocked the breath from my lungs. "Simon dr

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