The third year of our marriage started out simple enough. Eve, near the end, however, had mentioned that her depression had started creeping back up on her about this time. I often look back for hints about this.

What I see is that her Journal work had almost completely ended. Her haunted mansion was partially complete, but work had stopped on that. At the beginning of the year, Eve was obsessed with the online game Asheron's Call, and played it continuously. She ruled over a small monarchy of about 20 people. Eve loved collecting all the pretty trinkets and dresses and colored armor in the game. She filled notebooks with all her possessions and spent hours and hours organizing where to put them all and how to structure her vassals to best make use of Rank and Experience flow. Although she again was playing for 36 hours straight at times, this was normal behavior for her and I saw no big warning signs anywhere.

I got worried again as after a couple months, Eve had collected about everything there was in Asheron's Call and had gotten bored with it. Luckily, Diablo II came out at this time, and Eve dived headlong into that game and played and played it. This kept her busy and happy up through May.

In fact, she felt good enough that she attempted to quit smoking again! After consulting with my Doctor 'L', she agreed to try the nicotine patches to help. And they helped wonderfully! She had quit again! And everything looked stable enough in her life that I really had hopes that it would be permanent.

So something had to break.

I often wonder what might have changed if certain things were different. When I think about the question 'What was the final straw that broke Eve?', I keep returning to the Sesame Seed Chicken at TGI Fridays.

Eve and I went out for Dinner at least once a week. We alternated between Chili's, TGI Fridays, and a couple Chinese places (Before my allergies began reacting to the food). TGI Friday's is a nice place, but I always thought that they just didn't cook their food enough, at least their entre' dishes. They just heated them up a bit, and served.

On one night in mid-may, Eve ordered Sesame Seed Chicken (an entre'), and I ordered my normal hamburger. Because of a mixup, and incompetence, I was never served that night. They just clean misplaced my order, twice! Eve thinks that perhaps I was being protected by some higher power. Her Sesame Seed Chicken came, however, and twelve hours later she was sick with a colon infection caused by food poisoning.

How do we know it was the chicken? Unfortunately, the tests done on Eve were too late to confirm the bug. Eve's defenses had already cleared her of the infection, just the damage remained. However, the timing, and all the symptoms pointed to it. Just can't prove it in a court of law. And about a month after this occurred, a huge outbreak of e-coli infections swept through many restaurants in Milwaukee, including TGI Fridays.

The pain hit the next morning, and it was excruciating! Eve's description of it fit a condition that I have had a few times in my life. These attacks usually leave me after an hour or two, so I wasn't worried at this time about this being anything serious. I did, however, know how horrible the pain is for me, so I could just imagine what it was doing to her. She said that it was the most pain she had experienced in her life, and I believe her.

Three hours went by, with us trying a variety of treatments offered by on-call nurses. But none of these worked and I finally took her to Doctor L. Doctor L wanted to take her to the hospital right away, but there was a Gastro-Intestinal Doctor that was visiting and he didn't think it was necessary. Besides, Eve was feeling better now. I took her home.

But the pains came back during the night, and by morning Eve wanted to go to the hospital. I certainly didn't argue, being totally confused as to what was happening. So we packed up a few things, notified Doctor L, and headed out.

With 20-20 hindsight, Eve admitted that we should have stayed home. I would have taken far better care of her.

As it happened, Eve's spirit was crushed during her time at St Joseph's hospital. The chicken was incompetence, and I will never trust TGI Friday's again. But the Doctors and Nurse's at St Joseph's were monsters, and I will hate and despise them forever.