Pounds harder than the ones from when I could hear Sonya going at the closet door months before blasted the bathroom door. I watched the door shake on its hinges. I feared it would only hold up for about a dozen of those powerful strikes before it came down.

A few more strikes shook the door, but then stopped. Maybe the sun came up, sunrise was approaching? No. The power on the other side of the door turned its attention to the door handle. I watched the gold handle rattle like a toy in front of my face.

The door handle seemed much more vulnerable than the door. Good thinking psycho Sonya.

A few twists of that handle had the thing spinning around in the door, no longer attached to the wood. I saw the handle scrape out of its hole and fall to the hard tile of the bathroom at my feet.

A single crazy eye appeared in the hole.

“Sonya…it’s Jake,” I said as calm as I possibly could at that moment. “I know something is really wrong with you right now, but I just need you to know that I love you and I only mean you good. Please, I just want to get that through to you,” I said.

A few crazed scrapes ripped on the other side of the door, but the eye remained. I stared at the eye with tears forming in mine.

“Please…Sonya.”

The scrapes stopped. The eye vanished from the hole in the door. I let out a deep breath and then turned around. There was a little window above the shower/tub behind me and I saw a sliver of gray light coming out of it. Sunrise must have come.

I gave myself a few minutes to catch my breath. Just focused on breathing in and out at a steady pace. I wiped heavy sweat off of my face with my t-shirt.

“Jake…”

I heard Sonya’s voice through the door.

“I’m sorry,” Sonya went on.

—

Sonya eventually talked me out of the bathroom. She wrapped me in a huge hug and leaked tears all over my body. She quivered in my arms for minutes before we went outside and we caught our breath and lowered our temperatures.