Rob and Suze

Blanketed in silence, Suze labored to regain a dreg of composure. The built-up frustration from the day's fruitlessness had manifested itself in her bedroom, minutes before bedtime. She gazed listlessly at the muted television, laying beside a total stranger.
"You still don't remember anything?"she blurted out. The timbre of Suze's crestfallen question coaxed Robert to lay down his newsprinted shield. She repeated, "Anything?"
"No," he stated flatly, "You've been asking me all day, and the answer is still-"
"I took you to Ray's BBQ! Christine, your favorite waitress, served you your favorite meal. I had to sit through the Godfather for the thousandth time and it didn't spark anything?"
Robert chewed on the question, along with the rest of the day's events. On the muted television, a commercial for perfume featured two jovial lovers, bounding across a moonlit cityscape. After mulling it over, Robert silently shook his head. "The doctors said it wouldn't be this easy. It could take months, years. Susan, It might not even-"
Suze spat, "I know what they said. I know what happened to you," Then her tone lowered into a delicate drawl, "But we were married for fourteen years. We were Rob and Suze In Two's! You even introduced us to your business partners with that stupid nickname."
"Really?" Robert quietly mused to himself. He feigned an expression of recollection, but it soon faded into deadpan, "Why on earth would I do that, Susan?"
"Stop calling me Susan. For as long as we've been married you've called me Suze." Her face was rouged with frustration. She bemoaned, "You are my husband. No, you were my husband."
Robert sequestered himself in his newspaper once again. Susan, defeated, wiped her soupy tears on the comforter and rolled over to the fringe of the queen-sized bed. The muted television still splashed novas of color into the room, but neither of them paid any attention to it.
The loud rustling of low-grade paper snuck into Suze's earshot, and she sat up. Robert's hold on the newspaper was no longer steady, as he shook and tussled with the World News section. He was misty-eyed.
"I'm reading this article about Japan," he whimpered. "Hundreds of people are dead, and thousands are homeless. There are huge pictures of toppled buildings, refugees and flooded cities. But no matter how big the headlines are, or how many times it's explained to me, I will never know what it's truly like to be in their place. To me, it's just black and white." Using his index finger, Robert carved intricate valleys and mountains into the plushness of the comforter. "No matter how hard I try, Suze," he lamented.
Sharing nothing but their bewilderment for each other, their thoughts ebbed from their cramped quarters, and silence flooded the room.