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Anna Castillo, casting director di THE PAPERBOY.
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Need a gift for a notoriously hard-to-buy-for person? He’ll treasure this personalized book of newspaper headlines

My Husband Has Been Sneaking the Butter Cookies Off the Top of the Refrigerator at 2 AM for Three Years. I Knew About It the Whole Time.

I Did Not Say Anything Until the Pharmacist at Our Drugstore Asked Me a Question I Could Not Answer.

I am writing this because Linda called me last Sunday morning and asked me if I had ever written the story down.

She said the woman who had been at the reading bench with us in the fall — the one whose husband had been a 2 AM eater for about a year — wanted to send it to her sister in Connecticut.

I told Linda I would write it.

I am writing it now.

For Sandra's sister.

For Sandra.

For Linda.

For Dan.

For me.

For the next wife who has been listening to the floorboard outside her bedroom door creak at 2 AM and has been pretending she has not been listening.

I am Mary Kate.

Most people in my life call me M.K. My husband calls me Mary Kate.

I am sixty years old.

I retired two years ago after twenty-eight years as a nurse on the cardiac step-down unit at our regional hospital.

I am married to my husband Daniel for thirty-five years. Most people call him Dan. He is sixty-two. He retired three years ago after twenty-eight years as a police officer in our town.

We have one grown daughter. Two grandchildren — a five-year-old grandson named Theo and a three-year-old granddaughter named Lucy.

I want to tell you about the kitchen at 2 AM.

Because the kitchen at 2 AM is what I had been carrying alone for three years before Linda the pharmacist asked me a question last fall that I could not answer.

I want to back up first and tell you who I was for the twenty-eight years before I retired.

I was a cardiac step-down nurse.

That means I worked on the unit where patients went after they had had a heart attack or a cardiac procedure and after they had cleared the ICU.

They came to us when they were stable enough to be off the most intensive monitoring but still sick enough that they could not go home.

I cared for those patients for twelve-hour shifts, three days a week, for twenty-eight years.

I watched a lot of men who looked like my husband come onto my unit.

I watched a lot of men who had been doing the work for years — the walking, the diet, the conversations with their doctors — and whose numbers had been creeping up despite everything.

I watched the men who had been buying time. I watched what happened to the men who had bought too much time.

I watched the wives in the chairs next to those beds.

I knew their faces.

For twenty-eight years, I had been the nurse who held those wives' hands at the end of the visiting hours and walked them out to the elevator and told them their husbands were stable and that they would call them if anything changed overnight.

I had walked a lot of wives out to that elevator.

I had seen the look on their faces when the elevator doors closed.

I retired two years ago. I had been retired for two months when I noticed the floorboard.

The floorboard is in the hallway between our bedroom and the kitchen.

It is the third board from our bedroom door. It creaks when something heavier than a cat steps on it.

The first night I heard it was about three weeks after I retired.

It was around 2 AM. Dan had gotten out of bed and gone down the hall to the kitchen.

I thought he was getting water.

He came back to bed about ten minutes later. He did not say anything. He got under the covers. He went back to sleep.

I lay in the dark and tried to figure out what had been ten minutes.

I got up myself. I went down the hall. I went into the kitchen.

The light over the stove was on the dim setting. The box of butter cookies I had been keeping on top of the refrigerator for Theo and Lucy when they came over was on the kitchen counter.

The box was open.

A few crumbs were on the counter.

I closed the box. I put it back on top of the refrigerator.

I went back to bed.

I did not say anything to Dan.

The next night, the floorboard creaked again at 2:14 AM.

Dan was gone for another ten minutes.

I lay in bed in the dark and listened.

When he came back I waited until his breathing was even.

Then I got out of bed and went down the hall.

I stopped before the kitchen doorway.

I stood in the hallway in the dark and looked into the kitchen.

The light over the stove was on the dim setting.

My husband was at the kitchen counter in his pajamas.

He had the box of butter cookies open.

He was eating cookies standing at the counter in the dark.

I watched him for about a minute.

I went back to bed.

I did not say anything.

I watched him eat butter cookies in the dark at the kitchen counter at 2 AM most weeknights for three years.

Not every night.

Three or four nights a week.

Sometimes the cookies. Sometimes a small piece of leftover bread with butter on it. Sometimes a slice of cheese.

Always at the kitchen counter. Always in the pajamas. Always standing. Always with the light on the dim setting over the stove.

Always for about ten minutes.

Always alone in the dark.

I was usually awake when he got out of bed. I was usually awake when he came back to bed. I never said anything.

I was a retired cardiac step-down nurse and I had been watching my husband eat butter cookies in the dark at 2 AM for three years and I had not said a single word about it.

I want to tell you what else was happening over those three years.

Dan's cholesterol had been creeping up since he retired.

He had been going to Dr. Ferrante every six months. Dr. Ferrante had been telling him at each of the last two visits that they were going to need to seriously talk about a medication if the next set of numbers came back like the last set.

Dr. Ferrante had been telling Dan with care. The way good doctors tell their patients these things. Not as an ultimatum. As a fact about where they were.

Dan had been buying time.

Dan had been telling Dr. Ferrante he wanted to keep working on the lifestyle layer.

Dr. Ferrante had been giving him one more cycle.

Two cycles in a row.

I had been at the appointments with Dan. I had been the wife in the chair next to the exam table.

I had been the retired cardiac nurse who knew exactly what Dr. Ferrante had been saying and exactly what he had been not saying out loud.

Dan had been putting on weight around his middle. Maybe twenty pounds over three years.

He had been carrying himself a little differently. His shoulders had been rolling forward. His head had been a little down.

He had been sleeping less. He had been getting up at 2 AM for the cookies.

He had been waking up tired.

I had been the wife next to him every morning at the breakfast table watching him pour himself coffee and butter his toast and pretend not to know that I had been watching him from the hallway in the dark the night before.

I had been the wife who had walked other wives to the elevator for twenty-eight years.

I had been frozen.

I went into our small independent drugstore on a Tuesday afternoon last October.

I had been going to that drugstore for about thirty-one years.

Linda has been the pharmacist there for thirty-one years.

I had been filling my own prescriptions with Linda since our daughter was a baby.

She had been the pharmacist who filled Dan's antibiotics for a couple of bad sinus infections over the years. She knew our daughter's name.

She knew that Theo and Lucy were in the family album behind her counter in a photo I had brought her last Christmas.

I went in for my own thyroid medication that Tuesday.

Linda was behind the counter. She had my prescription ready. She slid it across the counter.

She looked at my face.

She said: "M.K. Can I ask you something? Are you sleeping? You look tired."

I said: "Linda. I am sleeping fine. I just have a lot on my mind."

Linda said: "Honey. Walk with me to the back."

She came around the counter.

She walked back to the corner of the store where there is a small reading bench between the magazine rack and the photo printing kiosk.

She sat down on the bench. She patted the seat next to her.

I sat down.

She said: "M.K. I have known you for thirty-one years. Something is wrong with Dan. Will you tell me?"

I did not say anything for a long moment.

I had not been picking up any prescription for Dan. He had not been on anything.

Linda did not know about the cholesterol numbers. She did not know about the medication conversations.

I did not know how she knew anything.

I said: "Linda. How did you know?"

She said: "Honey. I have been watching you across that counter for thirty-one years. Your face has been different for about a year. I have been waiting for you to be ready to tell me. I am going to be ready when you are."

I started crying on the reading bench.

I told her.

I told her about the cookies. I told her about the floorboard. I told her about the three years of standing in the hallway in the dark and not saying anything.

I told her about the cholesterol creeping up. I told her about Dr. Ferrante and the two cycles.

I told her about being a retired cardiac step-down nurse who had walked too many wives to the elevator and who had been frozen for three years in her own house.

Linda listened.

She did not say anything for a long time.

Then she said: "M.K. I want to tell you about Frank. Will you let me?"

Linda is sixty-four.

Her husband Frank is sixty-seven. He is a retired postal carrier.

Linda told me that for years Frank had been a 2 AM kitchen visitor.

She said it like that. She used the same phrase. The 2 AM kitchen.

She told me Frank had been eating crackers and cheese in the dark at their kitchen counter. He had been doing it for years. She had known about it the whole time.

She told me Frank had been carrying twenty extra pounds around his middle for the last decade.

She told me Frank's cholesterol had been creeping up for years.

She told me she had been doing what I had been doing.

She had been watching.

She had been frozen.

She told me, sitting on that reading bench, what she thought the 2 AM kitchen actually was.

She said: "M.K. The kitchen at 2 AM is a place. It is a place men in their sixties go when they cannot sleep because something underneath the sleep is heavier than they have been willing to name. It is not really about the cookies. It is not really about being hungry. It is about a low-grade dread about a body that has been quietly carrying its own diagnosis around without saying the diagnosis out loud."

She said: "I figured that out about Frank about four years ago. I did not know what to do about it for another year."

She told me what she had done.

She had finally sat Frank down at their breakfast table on a Sunday morning four years ago. She had told him she had been watching the 2 AM kitchen for years. She had told him she could not watch it anymore.

She had asked him to go back to his doctor and have the medication conversation he had been postponing for two years.

Frank had agreed.

He had gone on a low-dose cholesterol medication that his doctor had been recommending for two years.

Linda told me that around the same time, she had started reading about beetroot for cardiovascular wellness.

She had landed on a small company called Rosabella.

She told me they cold-pressed their beetroot at low temperatures. The active compound — the betalains, the deep red pigment in the root — had been studied for decades for cardiovascular wellness.

It supported the body's natural antioxidant balance, supported healthy circulation, and supported healthy cholesterol levels already within the normal range.

The pigment was delicate. Sensitive to heat. Most processing methods damaged it. Cold-pressing at low temperatures preserved it.

The capsules were a deep, dark crimson when you opened the bottle. That color was the pigment, intact.

She told me she had brought the bottle to Frank's doctor before he had started.

His doctor had said it was a sensible thing to add to the medication. Add it to what he was already doing. Don't change anything else. The supplement is in the additive layer.

The medication is in the primary layer. They are different things.

Frank had been on both for four years.

Linda told me, quietly, that the 2 AM kitchen visits had stopped about four months into the combination.

Frank had been sleeping through the night.

She did not claim the supplement had done that.

She did not claim the medication had done that either.

She told me she had watched the combination of the medication doing what it was supposed to do at the cholesterol level, the supplement doing what it does at the wellness layer, and Frank no longer carrying the low-grade dread about his body that he had been carrying for years, all happen together.

She said: "M.K. I am one wife at a drugstore reading bench. I am one story. I am not telling you what is going to happen for Dan. I am telling you what happened for Frank."

She said: "Have Dan talk to Dr. Ferrante. Have the medication conversation. Take it seriously. Then if Dr. Ferrante agrees, add the supplement around the medication. Do not subtract anything."

She tore a small piece of paper from a pad she had in her cardigan pocket and wrote the name down for me. She wrote her cell number underneath.

She handed it to me.

She said: "M.K. Will you come back here and sit on this bench with me again when something has changed? I want to know."

I said: "Linda. I will."

I walked out of the drugstore with the piece of paper in my purse.

I sat in my car in the parking lot for twenty minutes before I drove home.

I did not sleep that night.

I lay in the dark next to Dan.

The floorboard creaked at 2:14 AM.

Dan got out of bed. He went down the hall.

I got out of bed.

I went down the hall after him.

I stopped before the kitchen doorway.

I stood in the hallway in the dark and looked into the kitchen.

The light over the stove was on the dim setting.

My husband was at the kitchen counter in his pajamas.

He had the box of butter cookies open.

He had one in his hand.

I had stood in the hallway and watched him do this for three years.

I had walked too many wives to the elevator for twenty-eight years.

I walked down the hall and into the kitchen.

Dan turned and saw me.

He set the cookie down on the counter.

He did not say anything.

I did not say anything for a long moment.

Then I said: "Dan. I have been watching you do this for three years. I have not been saying anything. I am sorry."

He looked at me.

He looked at the cookie on the counter.

He looked back at me.

He said: "Mary Kate. I have known you have been watching. I have not been saying anything either."

I started crying in the kitchen at 2 AM.

He came over and put his arms around me.

He said: "Mary Kate. I have been ashamed."

I said: "Dan. I have been frozen. I have been ashamed too."

We stood in the kitchen at 2 AM holding each other for I do not know how long.

Then I said: "Dan. I want to sit at the kitchen table with you tomorrow morning. Will you?"

He said: "Yes, Mary Kate."

We went back to bed.

We did not sleep.

We lay in the dark facing each other and held hands until the alarm went off at six.

We sat at the kitchen table the next morning.

I told him everything. The three years of watching. Linda at the bench. Frank. The reading bench. The medication and the supplement.

I told him I had been a cardiac nurse for twenty-eight years and I had been frozen because I knew too much.

He listened.

When I was done, he was quiet for a long time.

Then he said: "Mary Kate. I have not been telling you something. I have known the cholesterol numbers have been bad. I have known Dr. Ferrante has been waiting for me to be ready. I have not been ready."

He said: "I am ready now."

I said: "Dan. Will you call Dr. Ferrante on Monday?"

He said: "I will. Will you come with me to the appointment?"

I said: "Yes, Dan."

We went to Dr. Ferrante the following Thursday.

I had been Dan's wife at his appointments for thirty-five years. I had been the retired cardiac nurse in the chair next to the exam table for two of those years.

I had never been the wife at the medication conversation.

Dr. Ferrante is a careful man. About my age. He had been Dan's doctor for fifteen years.

He took Dan's pressure. He took a fresh blood draw — he had said on the phone he wanted to run a new panel before the conversation.

He sat down with us in his office while we waited for the lab.

He said: "Dan. I am glad you came in with Mary Kate today. I have been waiting for this conversation. I want to lay it out the way I have been wanting to lay it out for two visits."

He laid it out.

The cholesterol numbers had been creeping up. The lifestyle layer had been doing what the lifestyle layer could do. The numbers were now in the range where a low-dose medication was the right move.

He told us about the medication. He told us what it could do and what it could not do. He told us about the studies. He told us how he would monitor.

He told us he wanted to start Dan that week.

He told us he wanted to do a six-week check-in.

He told us, in the same conversation, that he wanted to be clear about something.

He said: "Dan. Mary Kate. The medication is going to do one job. It is going to move the cholesterol number. It is the primary thing. There are other layers a body in its sixties is asking for support in too. I am happy to talk about adding something in the additive layer on top of the medication if either of you have been reading."

I told him about Linda at the reading bench. I told him about the Rosabella. I asked him whether he would be comfortable with Dan adding it to the medication.

Dr. Ferrante said: "I have been hearing about beetroot for cardiovascular wellness for a few years from a handful of my patients. The research is decent. It is sensible. It does not replace the medication. It supports the layer around it."

He told us he was comfortable with Dan adding it.

He told us to start the medication first. He told us to add the supplement a couple of days later when the medication had been started.

Dan picked up the medication at the pharmacy on the way home. Linda was behind the counter. She did not say anything. She filled the prescription. She smiled at us when she handed it across the counter.

I ordered two bottles of Rosabella from the website that night. Two because I had been planning to start it myself too.

The bottles arrived three days later.

Dan started the medication on a Friday.

We both started the Rosabella the following Monday.

Two capsules each with a glass of water in the morning.

He did not change anything else. I did not change anything else.

I want to tell you what happened over the next twelve weeks.

I am not going to make a claim about what caused what.

I am going to tell you what happened in the order it happened.

The first thing was the cookies.

About six nights after Dan started the medication and four nights after he started the supplement, the floorboard did not creak.

I lay in bed at 2:14 AM and listened.

It did not creak.

I waited.

It did not creak the next night either.

The third night the floorboard creaked at 2:08 AM. Dan got out of bed. He went down the hall.

I got up and stood in the doorway of the bedroom.

I could see the kitchen from there.

Dan went into the kitchen. He did not turn on the light over the stove.

He went to the kitchen sink. He poured himself a glass of water. He drank the water at the sink in the dark.

He set the glass on the counter.

He went back down the hall and got back into bed.

He had not opened the box of butter cookies.

The kitchen had been a kitchen at 2 AM. Not a place.

I lay in bed in the dark next to my husband and listened to him fall back asleep within fifteen minutes.

The next four nights, the floorboard did not creak.

By the end of the second week, the floorboard had creaked once. Dan had gone for water. He had come back to bed in five minutes.

By the end of the fourth week, the floorboard had not creaked in over ten nights.

The kitchen at 2 AM stopped being a place.

I want to be clear about something.

I am not telling you the supplement did that. I am not telling you the medication did that. I am not telling you the kitchen-table conversation did that.

I am telling you what happened in the order it happened.

The kitchen at 2 AM had been a place for three years.

By the start of week five, it was a kitchen at 2 AM.

That is what I saw.

About six weeks in, Dan started losing some of the weight around his middle.

He had not been trying to lose weight. He had not changed what he was eating.

He had been walking the dog with me in the evenings again — that had been about three weeks in — but he had been doing the standard half-mile loop, not anything more.

He had just stopped putting it on. And then he had started taking some of it off.

He did not say anything about it for a while.

He came down to breakfast on a Saturday morning at the start of week eight wearing a pair of jeans I had not seen him wear in two years.

He sat down at the kitchen table.

I poured him coffee.

He said: "Mary Kate. The jeans fit."

I said: "Dan. I noticed."

He smiled at me across the table.

He drank his coffee.

We did not say anything else about it.

I did not want to draw attention to it in case drawing attention to it broke something.

Around week ten, Dan started playing with our grandson Theo again.

Theo had been waiting for it. Five-year-olds notice these things.

Theo had been asking Dan to play catch in the backyard. Dan had been begging off for over a year. He had been telling Theo Grandpa was a little tired today.

Theo had been accepting it the way five-year-olds accept things, without understanding what they were accepting.

The Saturday morning at the start of week ten, Dan went out into the backyard with the foam baseball and the foam glove and Theo.

He played catch with him for almost an hour.

He came inside with grass on his knees.

Theo came inside behind him.

Theo said to me: "Grandma. Grandpa is back."

I said: "Honey. He is."

Theo said: "Where was he?"

I said: "Honey. I do not know. But I am glad he is back."

Theo nodded.

He went out to the backyard with Lucy to look at something.

I stood in the kitchen and tried to keep my face still.

I did not entirely succeed.

Dan was at the kitchen sink rinsing the foam baseball.

He pretended he had not seen my face.

Dan went back to Dr. Ferrante at the twelve-week mark.

Dr. Ferrante ran the bloodwork. Took his blood pressure. Listened to him describe the last twelve weeks.

He sat back in his chair.

He said: "Dan. The cholesterol is in a much better place. The medication is doing what we wanted it to do. The fact that you also added the supplement and that you have been walking and that you have been losing some weight is supporting everything around it. I am pleased."

He told Dan to keep doing everything he was doing.

He told us to come back at six months.

I sat in the chair next to the exam table and tried not to make a fool of myself in Dr. Ferrante's office.

He did not pretend not to notice.

He looked at me.

He said: "Mary Kate. You walked a lot of wives out to the elevator on your unit for a lot of years. I am glad you are not walking yourself out tonight."

I said: "Dr. Ferrante. So am I."

We drove home.

Dan held my hand on the console the whole drive.

I want to be careful here.

I am not the doctor in this story. Dr. Ferrante is.

I am a retired cardiac step-down nurse who had been frozen in her own house for three years.

I do not know for certain what fraction of what changed was the medication, what fraction was the supplement, what fraction was that Dan and I started talking honestly about a kitchen at 2 AM that had been a place for three years.

I know what we added.

I know what I stopped pretending about.

I know what the cookies stopped being.

I know what my grandson said to me on a Saturday morning in week ten.

I also know we are sixty and sixty-two, and there will come a day when no medication and no supplement and no honest 2 AM conversation will hold back the slow turning of the years.

I am not pretending otherwise.

I also know — and I want to say this very clearly — that the medication Dr. Ferrante prescribed is doing the work the medication was supposed to do at the cholesterol level.

The supplement is supporting the layer around it. They are different things.

Neither one of them would have done what they have done together if I had kept watching the cookies from the hallway and not saying anything.

What I am telling you is what we did. What I stopped doing. What I noticed. What our doctor said about it.

That is all.

If you are a wife who has been listening to the floorboard outside her bedroom door creak at 2 AM for years and you have been watching your husband eat butter cookies or crackers or cheese standing at the kitchen counter in the dark, and you have been pretending you have not been watching, here is what I would say.

Stop.

Tell him you have been watching.

Take him to his doctor.

Have the medication conversation. Have it honestly. Do not run from it.

If his doctor recommends a medication, let him take the medication.

Then, if his doctor agrees it is a sensible thing to add, add the supplement in the additive layer. Around the medication. Not instead of it.

Do not subtract anything. Do not change anything else.

Give it a few weeks before you decide anything.

Bodies are different. Some men notice something within the first few weeks.

For Dan, the first thing I noticed was the floorboard not creaking about six days after he started the medication and four days after he added the supplement.

That is the whole story.

P.S. Linda called me about two months after Dan started everything.

She said: "M.K. There is a woman who comes in here on Tuesday mornings to pick up her thyroid medication. Her name is Sandra. Her husband has been a 2 AM eater for about a year. She does not know I have noticed. I have not known how to bring it up with her. Would you be willing to come in on the Tuesday morning she usually comes? Just be at the reading bench. I will introduce you."

I came in the next Tuesday.

Sandra was in the magazine aisle. Linda waved me back. The three of us sat on the bench.

Sandra was sixty-one. Her husband was sixty-three.

Linda introduced us. She said: "Sandra. M.K. is a retired cardiac nurse. She wanted to talk to you about something. Will you let her?"

Sandra said: "Yes."

I told her.

She listened to the whole thing.

When I was done, she said: "M.K. I have been watching my husband at the kitchen counter at 2:30 in the morning for over a year. I have not said anything. I have been a fourth-grade teacher for thirty years. I do not know how I let it go this long."

I said: "Sandra. I am a retired cardiac nurse. I let it go for three years."

She started crying on the bench.

Linda put one hand on her shoulder and one hand on mine.

We sat on the bench for almost an hour.

Sandra called her husband's doctor the next morning.

Her husband saw his doctor that Friday. His doctor had been wanting to have the medication conversation for a year and a half. They had it that day. He started the medication that weekend.

Sandra called me three weeks later.

She said: "M.K. The floorboard."

I said: "Sandra. I know."

That is how this works.

A pharmacist watches your face across a counter for thirty-one years.

She asks you a question on a reading bench.

You tell her something you have been carrying for three years.

She tells you about her own husband.

You go home and you do not stand in the hallway anymore.

A year later you sit on the same bench with the next woman whose husband has been a 2 AM kitchen visitor.

P.P.S. Here is what I would tell you to do if you are thinking about trying the supplement.

Check with your doctor or pharmacist first. That is the most important step. Especially if he is already on a medication or about to start one. Tell the doctor everything.

Then take two capsules with a glass of water in the morning.

Do not change anything else. Just add this. The supplement does not replace any medication a doctor has prescribed.

Give it a few weeks before you decide anything.

Some men notice something within the first few weeks — a little more steadiness through the day, a little more presence at the dinner table, a little more sleep through the night.

Others take longer.

Be patient with the body.

P.P.P.S. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee.

If you are not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. No questions asked.

That is a sensible policy for a supplement. It gives you time to actually see whether it helps.

P.P.P.P.S. Rosabella is a small operation.

They harvest and bottle on their own schedule. I keep an extra bottle in the house just in case.

I started taking the supplement myself the same day Dan did.

I am sixty. I am a retired cardiac step-down nurse. I had been carrying my own version of what Dan had been carrying.

I had been walking around for three years with a low-grade dread of my own — about my husband, about the wives I had walked to the elevator, about the future I was afraid I had been silently signing us up for.

The low-grade dread has been quieter since the Tuesday at the reading bench.

I do not know if that is the supplement. I do not know if it is the doctor visit. I do not know if it is the kitchen at 2 AM not being a place anymore. I do not know if it is having told Linda.

I know all four of those things happened.

The box of butter cookies is still on top of the refrigerator.

Theo and Lucy come over on Saturdays and Lucy asks me for a cookie.

I get the box down. I give her one. I give Theo one. I give Dan one. I have one myself.

We eat them at the kitchen table together at three in the afternoon.

That is what the kitchen is for now.

That is what I want to tell you about.

The supplement is one thing.

The medication is another thing.

The kitchen at three in the afternoon with all four of you at the table eating a butter cookie is a third thing.

It is the thing I had been afraid I had been losing.

It is the thing that has come back.

https://track.tryrosabella.com/8ae97cac-2146-42d6-af75-de0e59d15644

Individual experiences vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

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My Husband Has Been Sneaking the Butter Cookies Off the Top of the Refrigerator at 2 AM for Three Years. I Knew About It the Whole Time.

I Did Not Say Anything Until the Pharmacist at Our Drugstore Asked Me a Question I Could Not Answer.

I am writing this because Linda called me last Sunday morning and asked me if I had ever written the story down.

She said the woman who had been at the reading bench with us in the fall — the one whose husband had been a 2 AM eater for about a year — wanted to send it to her sister in Connecticut.

I told Linda I would write it.

I am writing it now.

For Sandra's sister.

For Sandra.

For Linda.

For Dan.

For me.

For the next wife who has been listening to the floorboard outside her bedroom door creak at 2 AM and has been pretending she has not been listening.

I am Mary Kate.

Most people in my life call me M.K. My husband calls me Mary Kate.

I am sixty years old.

I retired two years ago after twenty-eight years as a nurse on the cardiac step-down unit at our regional hospital.

I am married to my husband Daniel for thirty-five years. Most people call him Dan. He is sixty-two. He retired three years ago after twenty-eight years as a police officer in our town.

We have one grown daughter. Two grandchildren — a five-year-old grandson named Theo and a three-year-old granddaughter named Lucy.

I want to tell you about the kitchen at 2 AM.

Because the kitchen at 2 AM is what I had been carrying alone for three years before Linda the pharmacist asked me a question last fall that I could not answer.

I want to back up first and tell you who I was for the twenty-eight years before I retired.

I was a cardiac step-down nurse.

That means I worked on the unit where patients went after they had had a heart attack or a cardiac procedure and after they had cleared the ICU.

They came to us when they were stable enough to be off the most intensive monitoring but still sick enough that they could not go home.

I cared for those patients for twelve-hour shifts, three days a week, for twenty-eight years.

I watched a lot of men who looked like my husband come onto my unit.

I watched a lot of men who had been doing the work for years — the walking, the diet, the conversations with their doctors — and whose numbers had been creeping up despite everything.

I watched the men who had been buying time. I watched what happened to the men who had bought too much time.

I watched the wives in the chairs next to those beds.

I knew their faces.

For twenty-eight years, I had been the nurse who held those wives' hands at the end of the visiting hours and walked them out to the elevator and told them their husbands were stable and that they would call them if anything changed overnight.

I had walked a lot of wives out to that elevator.

I had seen the look on their faces when the elevator doors closed.

I retired two years ago. I had been retired for two months when I noticed the floorboard.

The floorboard is in the hallway between our bedroom and the kitchen.

It is the third board from our bedroom door. It creaks when something heavier than a cat steps on it.

The first night I heard it was about three weeks after I retired.

It was around 2 AM. Dan had gotten out of bed and gone down the hall to the kitchen.

I thought he was getting water.

He came back to bed about ten minutes later. He did not say anything. He got under the covers. He went back to sleep.

I lay in the dark and tried to figure out what had been ten minutes.

I got up myself. I went down the hall. I went into the kitchen.

The light over the stove was on the dim setting. The box of butter cookies I had been keeping on top of the refrigerator for Theo and Lucy when they came over was on the kitchen counter.

The box was open.

A few crumbs were on the counter.

I closed the box. I put it back on top of the refrigerator.

I went back to bed.

I did not say anything to Dan.

The next night, the floorboard creaked again at 2:14 AM.

Dan was gone for another ten minutes.

I lay in bed in the dark and listened.

When he came back I waited until his breathing was even.

Then I got out of bed and went down the hall.

I stopped before the kitchen doorway.

I stood in the hallway in the dark and looked into the kitchen.

The light over the stove was on the dim setting.

My husband was at the kitchen counter in his pajamas.

He had the box of butter cookies open.

He was eating cookies standing at the counter in the dark.

I watched him for about a minute.

I went back to bed.

I did not say anything.

I watched him eat butter cookies in the dark at the kitchen counter at 2 AM most weeknights for three years.

Not every night.

Three or four nights a week.

Sometimes the cookies. Sometimes a small piece of leftover bread with butter on it. Sometimes a slice of cheese.

Always at the kitchen counter. Always in the pajamas. Always standing. Always with the light on the dim setting over the stove.

Always for about ten minutes.

Always alone in the dark.

I was usually awake when he got out of bed. I was usually awake when he came back to bed. I never said anything.

I was a retired cardiac step-down nurse and I had been watching my husband eat butter cookies in the dark at 2 AM for three years and I had not said a single word about it.

I want to tell you what else was happening over those three years.

Dan's cholesterol had been creeping up since he retired.

He had been going to Dr. Ferrante every six months. Dr. Ferrante had been telling him at each of the last two visits that they were going to need to seriously talk about a medication if the next set of numbers came back like the last set.

Dr. Ferrante had been telling Dan with care. The way good doctors tell their patients these things. Not as an ultimatum. As a fact about where they were.

Dan had been buying time.

Dan had been telling Dr. Ferrante he wanted to keep working on the lifestyle layer.

Dr. Ferrante had been giving him one more cycle.

Two cycles in a row.

I had been at the appointments with Dan. I had been the wife in the chair next to the exam table.

I had been the retired cardiac nurse who knew exactly what Dr. Ferrante had been saying and exactly what he had been not saying out loud.

Dan had been putting on weight around his middle. Maybe twenty pounds over three years.

He had been carrying himself a little differently. His shoulders had been rolling forward. His head had been a little down.

He had been sleeping less. He had been getting up at 2 AM for the cookies.

He had been waking up tired.

I had been the wife next to him every morning at the breakfast table watching him pour himself coffee and butter his toast and pretend not to know that I had been watching him from the hallway in the dark the night before.

I had been the wife who had walked other wives to the elevator for twenty-eight years.

I had been frozen.

I went into our small independent drugstore on a Tuesday afternoon last October.

I had been going to that drugstore for about thirty-one years.

Linda has been the pharmacist there for thirty-one years.

I had been filling my own prescriptions with Linda since our daughter was a baby.

She had been the pharmacist who filled Dan's antibiotics for a couple of bad sinus infections over the years. She knew our daughter's name.

She knew that Theo and Lucy were in the family album behind her counter in a photo I had brought her last Christmas.

I went in for my own thyroid medication that Tuesday.

Linda was behind the counter. She had my prescription ready. She slid it across the counter.

She looked at my face.

She said: "M.K. Can I ask you something? Are you sleeping? You look tired."

I said: "Linda. I am sleeping fine. I just have a lot on my mind."

Linda said: "Honey. Walk with me to the back."

She came around the counter.

She walked back to the corner of the store where there is a small reading bench between the magazine rack and the photo printing kiosk.

She sat down on the bench. She patted the seat next to her.

I sat down.

She said: "M.K. I have known you for thirty-one years. Something is wrong with Dan. Will you tell me?"

I did not say anything for a long moment.

I had not been picking up any prescription for Dan. He had not been on anything.

Linda did not know about the cholesterol numbers. She did not know about the medication conversations.

I did not know how she knew anything.

I said: "Linda. How did you know?"

She said: "Honey. I have been watching you across that counter for thirty-one years. Your face has been different for about a year. I have been waiting for you to be ready to tell me. I am going to be ready when you are."

I started crying on the reading bench.

I told her.

I told her about the cookies. I told her about the floorboard. I told her about the three years of standing in the hallway in the dark and not saying anything.

I told her about the cholesterol creeping up. I told her about Dr. Ferrante and the two cycles.

I told her about being a retired cardiac step-down nurse who had walked too many wives to the elevator and who had been frozen for three years in her own house.

Linda listened.

She did not say anything for a long time.

Then she said: "M.K. I want to tell you about Frank. Will you let me?"

Linda is sixty-four.

Her husband Frank is sixty-seven. He is a retired postal carrier.

Linda told me that for years Frank had been a 2 AM kitchen visitor.

She said it like that. She used the same phrase. The 2 AM kitchen.

She told me Frank had been eating crackers and cheese in the dark at their kitchen counter. He had been doing it for years. She had known about it the whole time.

She told me Frank had been carrying twenty extra pounds around his middle for the last decade.

She told me Frank's cholesterol had been creeping up for years.

She told me she had been doing what I had been doing.

She had been watching.

She had been frozen.

She told me, sitting on that reading bench, what she thought the 2 AM kitchen actually was.

She said: "M.K. The kitchen at 2 AM is a place. It is a place men in their sixties go when they cannot sleep because something underneath the sleep is heavier than they have been willing to name. It is not really about the cookies. It is not really about being hungry. It is about a low-grade dread about a body that has been quietly carrying its own diagnosis around without saying the diagnosis out loud."

She said: "I figured that out about Frank about four years ago. I did not know what to do about it for another year."

She told me what she had done.

She had finally sat Frank down at their breakfast table on a Sunday morning four years ago. She had told him she had been watching the 2 AM kitchen for years. She had told him she could not watch it anymore.

She had asked him to go back to his doctor and have the medication conversation he had been postponing for two years.

Frank had agreed.

He had gone on a low-dose cholesterol medication that his doctor had been recommending for two years.

Linda told me that around the same time, she had started reading about beetroot for cardiovascular wellness.

She had landed on a small company called Rosabella.

She told me they cold-pressed their beetroot at low temperatures. The active compound — the betalains, the deep red pigment in the root — had been studied for decades for cardiovascular wellness.

It supported the body's natural antioxidant balance, supported healthy circulation, and supported healthy cholesterol levels already within the normal range.

The pigment was delicate. Sensitive to heat. Most processing methods damaged it. Cold-pressing at low temperatures preserved it.

The capsules were a deep, dark crimson when you opened the bottle. That color was the pigment, intact.

She told me she had brought the bottle to Frank's doctor before he had started.

His doctor had said it was a sensible thing to add to the medication. Add it to what he was already doing. Don't change anything else. The supplement is in the additive layer.

The medication is in the primary layer. They are different things.

Frank had been on both for four years.

Linda told me, quietly, that the 2 AM kitchen visits had stopped about four months into the combination.

Frank had been sleeping through the night.

She did not claim the supplement had done that.

She did not claim the medication had done that either.

She told me she had watched the combination of the medication doing what it was supposed to do at the cholesterol level, the supplement doing what it does at the wellness layer, and Frank no longer carrying the low-grade dread about his body that he had been carrying for years, all happen together.

She said: "M.K. I am one wife at a drugstore reading bench. I am one story. I am not telling you what is going to happen for Dan. I am telling you what happened for Frank."

She said: "Have Dan talk to Dr. Ferrante. Have the medication conversation. Take it seriously. Then if Dr. Ferrante agrees, add the supplement around the medication. Do not subtract anything."

She tore a small piece of paper from a pad she had in her cardigan pocket and wrote the name down for me. She wrote her cell number underneath.

She handed it to me.

She said: "M.K. Will you come back here and sit on this bench with me again when something has changed? I want to know."

I said: "Linda. I will."

I walked out of the drugstore with the piece of paper in my purse.

I sat in my car in the parking lot for twenty minutes before I drove home.

I did not sleep that night.

I lay in the dark next to Dan.

The floorboard creaked at 2:14 AM.

Dan got out of bed. He went down the hall.

I got out of bed.

I went down the hall after him.

I stopped before the kitchen doorway.

I stood in the hallway in the dark and looked into the kitchen.

The light over the stove was on the dim setting.

My husband was at the kitchen counter in his pajamas.

He had the box of butter cookies open.

He had one in his hand.

I had stood in the hallway and watched him do this for three years.

I had walked too many wives to the elevator for twenty-eight years.

I walked down the hall and into the kitchen.

Dan turned and saw me.

He set the cookie down on the counter.

He did not say anything.

I did not say anything for a long moment.

Then I said: "Dan. I have been watching you do this for three years. I have not been saying anything. I am sorry."

He looked at me.

He looked at the cookie on the counter.

He looked back at me.

He said: "Mary Kate. I have known you have been watching. I have not been saying anything either."

I started crying in the kitchen at 2 AM.

He came over and put his arms around me.

He said: "Mary Kate. I have been ashamed."

I said: "Dan. I have been frozen. I have been ashamed too."

We stood in the kitchen at 2 AM holding each other for I do not know how long.

Then I said: "Dan. I want to sit at the kitchen table with you tomorrow morning. Will you?"

He said: "Yes, Mary Kate."

We went back to bed.

We did not sleep.

We lay in the dark facing each other and held hands until the alarm went off at six.

We sat at the kitchen table the next morning.

I told him everything. The three years of watching. Linda at the bench. Frank. The reading bench. The medication and the supplement.

I told him I had been a cardiac nurse for twenty-eight years and I had been frozen because I knew too much.

He listened.

When I was done, he was quiet for a long time.

Then he said: "Mary Kate. I have not been telling you something. I have known the cholesterol numbers have been bad. I have known Dr. Ferrante has been waiting for me to be ready. I have not been ready."

He said: "I am ready now."

I said: "Dan. Will you call Dr. Ferrante on Monday?"

He said: "I will. Will you come with me to the appointment?"

I said: "Yes, Dan."

We went to Dr. Ferrante the following Thursday.

I had been Dan's wife at his appointments for thirty-five years. I had been the retired cardiac nurse in the chair next to the exam table for two of those years.

I had never been the wife at the medication conversation.

Dr. Ferrante is a careful man. About my age. He had been Dan's doctor for fifteen years.

He took Dan's pressure. He took a fresh blood draw — he had said on the phone he wanted to run a new panel before the conversation.

He sat down with us in his office while we waited for the lab.

He said: "Dan. I am glad you came in with Mary Kate today. I have been waiting for this conversation. I want to lay it out the way I have been wanting to lay it out for two visits."

He laid it out.

The cholesterol numbers had been creeping up. The lifestyle layer had been doing what the lifestyle layer could do. The numbers were now in the range where a low-dose medication was the right move.

He told us about the medication. He told us what it could do and what it could not do. He told us about the studies. He told us how he would monitor.

He told us he wanted to start Dan that week.

He told us he wanted to do a six-week check-in.

He told us, in the same conversation, that he wanted to be clear about something.

He said: "Dan. Mary Kate. The medication is going to do one job. It is going to move the cholesterol number. It is the primary thing. There are other layers a body in its sixties is asking for support in too. I am happy to talk about adding something in the additive layer on top of the medication if either of you have been reading."

I told him about Linda at the reading bench. I told him about the Rosabella. I asked him whether he would be comfortable with Dan adding it to the medication.

Dr. Ferrante said: "I have been hearing about beetroot for cardiovascular wellness for a few years from a handful of my patients. The research is decent. It is sensible. It does not replace the medication. It supports the layer around it."

He told us he was comfortable with Dan adding it.

He told us to start the medication first. He told us to add the supplement a couple of days later when the medication had been started.

Dan picked up the medication at the pharmacy on the way home. Linda was behind the counter. She did not say anything. She filled the prescription. She smiled at us when she handed it across the counter.

I ordered two bottles of Rosabella from the website that night. Two because I had been planning to start it myself too.

The bottles arrived three days later.

Dan started the medication on a Friday.

We both started the Rosabella the following Monday.

Two capsules each with a glass of water in the morning.

He did not change anything else. I did not change anything else.

I want to tell you what happened over the next twelve weeks.

I am not going to make a claim about what caused what.

I am going to tell you what happened in the order it happened.

The first thing was the cookies.

About six nights after Dan started the medication and four nights after he started the supplement, the floorboard did not creak.

I lay in bed at 2:14 AM and listened.

It did not creak.

I waited.

It did not creak the next night either.

The third night the floorboard creaked at 2:08 AM. Dan got out of bed. He went down the hall.

I got up and stood in the doorway of the bedroom.

I could see the kitchen from there.

Dan went into the kitchen. He did not turn on the light over the stove.

He went to the kitchen sink. He poured himself a glass of water. He drank the water at the sink in the dark.

He set the glass on the counter.

He went back down the hall and got back into bed.

He had not opened the box of butter cookies.

The kitchen had been a kitchen at 2 AM. Not a place.

I lay in bed in the dark next to my husband and listened to him fall back asleep within fifteen minutes.

The next four nights, the floorboard did not creak.

By the end of the second week, the floorboard had creaked once. Dan had gone for water. He had come back to bed in five minutes.

By the end of the fourth week, the floorboard had not creaked in over ten nights.

The kitchen at 2 AM stopped being a place.

I want to be clear about something.

I am not telling you the supplement did that. I am not telling you the medication did that. I am not telling you the kitchen-table conversation did that.

I am telling you what happened in the order it happened.

The kitchen at 2 AM had been a place for three years.

By the start of week five, it was a kitchen at 2 AM.

That is what I saw.

About six weeks in, Dan started losing some of the weight around his middle.

He had not been trying to lose weight. He had not changed what he was eating.

He had been walking the dog with me in the evenings again — that had been about three weeks in — but he had been doing the standard half-mile loop, not anything more.

He had just stopped putting it on. And then he had started taking some of it off.

He did not say anything about it for a while.

He came down to breakfast on a Saturday morning at the start of week eight wearing a pair of jeans I had not seen him wear in two years.

He sat down at the kitchen table.

I poured him coffee.

He said: "Mary Kate. The jeans fit."

I said: "Dan. I noticed."

He smiled at me across the table.

He drank his coffee.

We did not say anything else about it.

I did not want to draw attention to it in case drawing attention to it broke something.

Around week ten, Dan started playing with our grandson Theo again.

Theo had been waiting for it. Five-year-olds notice these things.

Theo had been asking Dan to play catch in the backyard. Dan had been begging off for over a year. He had been telling Theo Grandpa was a little tired today.

Theo had been accepting it the way five-year-olds accept things, without understanding what they were accepting.

The Saturday morning at the start of week ten, Dan went out into the backyard with the foam baseball and the foam glove and Theo.

He played catch with him for almost an hour.

He came inside with grass on his knees.

Theo came inside behind him.

Theo said to me: "Grandma. Grandpa is back."

I said: "Honey. He is."

Theo said: "Where was he?"

I said: "Honey. I do not know. But I am glad he is back."

Theo nodded.

He went out to the backyard with Lucy to look at something.

I stood in the kitchen and tried to keep my face still.

I did not entirely succeed.

Dan was at the kitchen sink rinsing the foam baseball.

He pretended he had not seen my face.

Dan went back to Dr. Ferrante at the twelve-week mark.

Dr. Ferrante ran the bloodwork. Took his blood pressure. Listened to him describe the last twelve weeks.

He sat back in his chair.

He said: "Dan. The cholesterol is in a much better place. The medication is doing what we wanted it to do. The fact that you also added the supplement and that you have been walking and that you have been losing some weight is supporting everything around it. I am pleased."

He told Dan to keep doing everything he was doing.

He told us to come back at six months.

I sat in the chair next to the exam table and tried not to make a fool of myself in Dr. Ferrante's office.

He did not pretend not to notice.

He looked at me.

He said: "Mary Kate. You walked a lot of wives out to the elevator on your unit for a lot of years. I am glad you are not walking yourself out tonight."

I said: "Dr. Ferrante. So am I."

We drove home.

Dan held my hand on the console the whole drive.

I want to be careful here.

I am not the doctor in this story. Dr. Ferrante is.

I am a retired cardiac step-down nurse who had been frozen in her own house for three years.

I do not know for certain what fraction of what changed was the medication, what fraction was the supplement, what fraction was that Dan and I started talking honestly about a kitchen at 2 AM that had been a place for three years.

I know what we added.

I know what I stopped pretending about.

I know what the cookies stopped being.

I know what my grandson said to me on a Saturday morning in week ten.

I also know we are sixty and sixty-two, and there will come a day when no medication and no supplement and no honest 2 AM conversation will hold back the slow turning of the years.

I am not pretending otherwise.

I also know — and I want to say this very clearly — that the medication Dr. Ferrante prescribed is doing the work the medication was supposed to do at the cholesterol level.

The supplement is supporting the layer around it. They are different things.

Neither one of them would have done what they have done together if I had kept watching the cookies from the hallway and not saying anything.

What I am telling you is what we did. What I stopped doing. What I noticed. What our doctor said about it.

That is all.

If you are a wife who has been listening to the floorboard outside her bedroom door creak at 2 AM for years and you have been watching your husband eat butter cookies or crackers or cheese standing at the kitchen counter in the dark, and you have been pretending you have not been watching, here is what I would say.

Stop.

Tell him you have been watching.

Take him to his doctor.

Have the medication conversation. Have it honestly. Do not run from it.

If his doctor recommends a medication, let him take the medication.

Then, if his doctor agrees it is a sensible thing to add, add the supplement in the additive layer. Around the medication. Not instead of it.

Do not subtract anything. Do not change anything else.

Give it a few weeks before you decide anything.

Bodies are different. Some men notice something within the first few weeks.

For Dan, the first thing I noticed was the floorboard not creaking about six days after he started the medication and four days after he added the supplement.

That is the whole story.

P.S. Linda called me about two months after Dan started everything.

She said: "M.K. There is a woman who comes in here on Tuesday mornings to pick up her thyroid medication. Her name is Sandra. Her husband has been a 2 AM eater for about a year. She does not know I have noticed. I have not known how to bring it up with her. Would you be willing to come in on the Tuesday morning she usually comes? Just be at the reading bench. I will introduce you."

I came in the next Tuesday.

Sandra was in the magazine aisle. Linda waved me back. The three of us sat on the bench.

Sandra was sixty-one. Her husband was sixty-three.

Linda introduced us. She said: "Sandra. M.K. is a retired cardiac nurse. She wanted to talk to you about something. Will you let her?"

Sandra said: "Yes."

I told her.

She listened to the whole thing.

When I was done, she said: "M.K. I have been watching my husband at the kitchen counter at 2:30 in the morning for over a year. I have not said anything. I have been a fourth-grade teacher for thirty years. I do not know how I let it go this long."

I said: "Sandra. I am a retired cardiac nurse. I let it go for three years."

She started crying on the bench.

Linda put one hand on her shoulder and one hand on mine.

We sat on the bench for almost an hour.

Sandra called her husband's doctor the next morning.

Her husband saw his doctor that Friday. His doctor had been wanting to have the medication conversation for a year and a half. They had it that day. He started the medication that weekend.

Sandra called me three weeks later.

She said: "M.K. The floorboard."

I said: "Sandra. I know."

That is how this works.

A pharmacist watches your face across a counter for thirty-one years.

She asks you a question on a reading bench.

You tell her something you have been carrying for three years.

She tells you about her own husband.

You go home and you do not stand in the hallway anymore.

A year later you sit on the same bench with the next woman whose husband has been a 2 AM kitchen visitor.

P.P.S. Here is what I would tell you to do if you are thinking about trying the supplement.

Check with your doctor or pharmacist first. That is the most important step. Especially if he is already on a medication or about to start one. Tell the doctor everything.

Then take two capsules with a glass of water in the morning.

Do not change anything else. Just add this. The supplement does not replace any medication a doctor has prescribed.

Give it a few weeks before you decide anything.

Some men notice something within the first few weeks — a little more steadiness through the day, a little more presence at the dinner table, a little more sleep through the night.

Others take longer.

Be patient with the body.

P.P.P.S. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee.

If you are not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. No questions asked.

That is a sensible policy for a supplement. It gives you time to actually see whether it helps.

P.P.P.P.S. Rosabella is a small operation.

They harvest and bottle on their own schedule. I keep an extra bottle in the house just in case.

I started taking the supplement myself the same day Dan did.

I am sixty. I am a retired cardiac step-down nurse. I had been carrying my own version of what Dan had been carrying.

I had been walking around for three years with a low-grade dread of my own — about my husband, about the wives I had walked to the elevator, about the future I was afraid I had been silently signing us up for.

The low-grade dread has been quieter since the Tuesday at the reading bench.

I do not know if that is the supplement. I do not know if it is the doctor visit. I do not know if it is the kitchen at 2 AM not being a place anymore. I do not know if it is having told Linda.

I know all four of those things happened.

The box of butter cookies is still on top of the refrigerator.

Theo and Lucy come over on Saturdays and Lucy asks me for a cookie.

I get the box down. I give her one. I give Theo one. I give Dan one. I have one myself.

We eat them at the kitchen table together at three in the afternoon.

That is what the kitchen is for now.

That is what I want to tell you about.

The supplement is one thing.

The medication is another thing.

The kitchen at three in the afternoon with all four of you at the table eating a butter cookie is a third thing.

It is the thing I had been afraid I had been losing.

It is the thing that has come back.

https://track.tryrosabella.com/cdc16426-3e48-40a7-9fad-21098084f6cf

Individual experiences vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

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My Husband Has Been Sneaking the Butter Cookies Off the Top of the Refrigerator at 2 AM for Three Years. I Knew About It the Whole Time.

I Did Not Say Anything Until the Pharmacist at Our Drugstore Asked Me a Question I Could Not Answer.

I am writing this because Linda called me last Sunday morning and asked me if I had ever written the story down.

She said the woman who had been at the reading bench with us in the fall — the one whose husband had been a 2 AM eater for about a year — wanted to send it to her sister in Connecticut.

I told Linda I would write it.

I am writing it now.

For Sandra's sister.

For Sandra.

For Linda.

For Dan.

For me.

For the next wife who has been listening to the floorboard outside her bedroom door creak at 2 AM and has been pretending she has not been listening.

I am Mary Kate.

Most people in my life call me M.K. My husband calls me Mary Kate.

I am sixty years old.

I retired two years ago after twenty-eight years as a nurse on the cardiac step-down unit at our regional hospital.

I am married to my husband Daniel for thirty-five years. Most people call him Dan. He is sixty-two. He retired three years ago after twenty-eight years as a police officer in our town.

We have one grown daughter. Two grandchildren — a five-year-old grandson named Theo and a three-year-old granddaughter named Lucy.

I want to tell you about the kitchen at 2 AM.

Because the kitchen at 2 AM is what I had been carrying alone for three years before Linda the pharmacist asked me a question last fall that I could not answer.

I want to back up first and tell you who I was for the twenty-eight years before I retired.

I was a cardiac step-down nurse.

That means I worked on the unit where patients went after they had had a heart attack or a cardiac procedure and after they had cleared the ICU.

They came to us when they were stable enough to be off the most intensive monitoring but still sick enough that they could not go home.

I cared for those patients for twelve-hour shifts, three days a week, for twenty-eight years.

I watched a lot of men who looked like my husband come onto my unit.

I watched a lot of men who had been doing the work for years — the walking, the diet, the conversations with their doctors — and whose numbers had been creeping up despite everything.

I watched the men who had been buying time. I watched what happened to the men who had bought too much time.

I watched the wives in the chairs next to those beds.

I knew their faces.

For twenty-eight years, I had been the nurse who held those wives' hands at the end of the visiting hours and walked them out to the elevator and told them their husbands were stable and that they would call them if anything changed overnight.

I had walked a lot of wives out to that elevator.

I had seen the look on their faces when the elevator doors closed.

I retired two years ago. I had been retired for two months when I noticed the floorboard.

The floorboard is in the hallway between our bedroom and the kitchen.

It is the third board from our bedroom door. It creaks when something heavier than a cat steps on it.

The first night I heard it was about three weeks after I retired.

It was around 2 AM. Dan had gotten out of bed and gone down the hall to the kitchen.

I thought he was getting water.

He came back to bed about ten minutes later. He did not say anything. He got under the covers. He went back to sleep.

I lay in the dark and tried to figure out what had been ten minutes.

I got up myself. I went down the hall. I went into the kitchen.

The light over the stove was on the dim setting. The box of butter cookies I had been keeping on top of the refrigerator for Theo and Lucy when they came over was on the kitchen counter.

The box was open.

A few crumbs were on the counter.

I closed the box. I put it back on top of the refrigerator.

I went back to bed.

I did not say anything to Dan.

The next night, the floorboard creaked again at 2:14 AM.

Dan was gone for another ten minutes.

I lay in bed in the dark and listened.

When he came back I waited until his breathing was even.

Then I got out of bed and went down the hall.

I stopped before the kitchen doorway.

I stood in the hallway in the dark and looked into the kitchen.

The light over the stove was on the dim setting.

My husband was at the kitchen counter in his pajamas.

He had the box of butter cookies open.

He was eating cookies standing at the counter in the dark.

I watched him for about a minute.

I went back to bed.

I did not say anything.

I watched him eat butter cookies in the dark at the kitchen counter at 2 AM most weeknights for three years.

Not every night.

Three or four nights a week.

Sometimes the cookies. Sometimes a small piece of leftover bread with butter on it. Sometimes a slice of cheese.

Always at the kitchen counter. Always in the pajamas. Always standing. Always with the light on the dim setting over the stove.

Always for about ten minutes.

Always alone in the dark.

I was usually awake when he got out of bed. I was usually awake when he came back to bed. I never said anything.

I was a retired cardiac step-down nurse and I had been watching my husband eat butter cookies in the dark at 2 AM for three years and I had not said a single word about it.

I want to tell you what else was happening over those three years.

Dan's cholesterol had been creeping up since he retired.

He had been going to Dr. Ferrante every six months. Dr. Ferrante had been telling him at each of the last two visits that they were going to need to seriously talk about a medication if the next set of numbers came back like the last set.

Dr. Ferrante had been telling Dan with care. The way good doctors tell their patients these things. Not as an ultimatum. As a fact about where they were.

Dan had been buying time.

Dan had been telling Dr. Ferrante he wanted to keep working on the lifestyle layer.

Dr. Ferrante had been giving him one more cycle.

Two cycles in a row.

I had been at the appointments with Dan. I had been the wife in the chair next to the exam table.

I had been the retired cardiac nurse who knew exactly what Dr. Ferrante had been saying and exactly what he had been not saying out loud.

Dan had been putting on weight around his middle. Maybe twenty pounds over three years.

He had been carrying himself a little differently. His shoulders had been rolling forward. His head had been a little down.

He had been sleeping less. He had been getting up at 2 AM for the cookies.

He had been waking up tired.

I had been the wife next to him every morning at the breakfast table watching him pour himself coffee and butter his toast and pretend not to know that I had been watching him from the hallway in the dark the night before.

I had been the wife who had walked other wives to the elevator for twenty-eight years.

I had been frozen.

I went into our small independent drugstore on a Tuesday afternoon last October.

I had been going to that drugstore for about thirty-one years.

Linda has been the pharmacist there for thirty-one years.

I had been filling my own prescriptions with Linda since our daughter was a baby.

She had been the pharmacist who filled Dan's antibiotics for a couple of bad sinus infections over the years. She knew our daughter's name.

She knew that Theo and Lucy were in the family album behind her counter in a photo I had brought her last Christmas.

I went in for my own thyroid medication that Tuesday.

Linda was behind the counter. She had my prescription ready. She slid it across the counter.

She looked at my face.

She said: "M.K. Can I ask you something? Are you sleeping? You look tired."

I said: "Linda. I am sleeping fine. I just have a lot on my mind."

Linda said: "Honey. Walk with me to the back."

She came around the counter.

She walked back to the corner of the store where there is a small reading bench between the magazine rack and the photo printing kiosk.

She sat down on the bench. She patted the seat next to her.

I sat down.

She said: "M.K. I have known you for thirty-one years. Something is wrong with Dan. Will you tell me?"

I did not say anything for a long moment.

I had not been picking up any prescription for Dan. He had not been on anything.

Linda did not know about the cholesterol numbers. She did not know about the medication conversations.

I did not know how she knew anything.

I said: "Linda. How did you know?"

She said: "Honey. I have been watching you across that counter for thirty-one years. Your face has been different for about a year. I have been waiting for you to be ready to tell me. I am going to be ready when you are."

I started crying on the reading bench.

I told her.

I told her about the cookies. I told her about the floorboard. I told her about the three years of standing in the hallway in the dark and not saying anything.

I told her about the cholesterol creeping up. I told her about Dr. Ferrante and the two cycles.

I told her about being a retired cardiac step-down nurse who had walked too many wives to the elevator and who had been frozen for three years in her own house.

Linda listened.

She did not say anything for a long time.

Then she said: "M.K. I want to tell you about Frank. Will you let me?"

Linda is sixty-four.

Her husband Frank is sixty-seven. He is a retired postal carrier.

Linda told me that for years Frank had been a 2 AM kitchen visitor.

She said it like that. She used the same phrase. The 2 AM kitchen.

She told me Frank had been eating crackers and cheese in the dark at their kitchen counter. He had been doing it for years. She had known about it the whole time.

She told me Frank had been carrying twenty extra pounds around his middle for the last decade.

She told me Frank's cholesterol had been creeping up for years.

She told me she had been doing what I had been doing.

She had been watching.

She had been frozen.

She told me, sitting on that reading bench, what she thought the 2 AM kitchen actually was.

She said: "M.K. The kitchen at 2 AM is a place. It is a place men in their sixties go when they cannot sleep because something underneath the sleep is heavier than they have been willing to name. It is not really about the cookies. It is not really about being hungry. It is about a low-grade dread about a body that has been quietly carrying its own diagnosis around without saying the diagnosis out loud."

She said: "I figured that out about Frank about four years ago. I did not know what to do about it for another year."

She told me what she had done.

She had finally sat Frank down at their breakfast table on a Sunday morning four years ago. She had told him she had been watching the 2 AM kitchen for years. She had told him she could not watch it anymore.

She had asked him to go back to his doctor and have the medication conversation he had been postponing for two years.

Frank had agreed.

He had gone on a low-dose cholesterol medication that his doctor had been recommending for two years.

Linda told me that around the same time, she had started reading about beetroot for cardiovascular wellness.

She had landed on a small company called Rosabella.

She told me they cold-pressed their beetroot at low temperatures. The active compound — the betalains, the deep red pigment in the root — had been studied for decades for cardiovascular wellness.

It supported the body's natural antioxidant balance, supported healthy circulation, and supported healthy cholesterol levels already within the normal range.

The pigment was delicate. Sensitive to heat. Most processing methods damaged it. Cold-pressing at low temperatures preserved it.

The capsules were a deep, dark crimson when you opened the bottle. That color was the pigment, intact.

She told me she had brought the bottle to Frank's doctor before he had started.

His doctor had said it was a sensible thing to add to the medication. Add it to what he was already doing. Don't change anything else. The supplement is in the additive layer.

The medication is in the primary layer. They are different things.

Frank had been on both for four years.

Linda told me, quietly, that the 2 AM kitchen visits had stopped about four months into the combination.

Frank had been sleeping through the night.

She did not claim the supplement had done that.

She did not claim the medication had done that either.

She told me she had watched the combination of the medication doing what it was supposed to do at the cholesterol level, the supplement doing what it does at the wellness layer, and Frank no longer carrying the low-grade dread about his body that he had been carrying for years, all happen together.

She said: "M.K. I am one wife at a drugstore reading bench. I am one story. I am not telling you what is going to happen for Dan. I am telling you what happened for Frank."

She said: "Have Dan talk to Dr. Ferrante. Have the medication conversation. Take it seriously. Then if Dr. Ferrante agrees, add the supplement around the medication. Do not subtract anything."

She tore a small piece of paper from a pad she had in her cardigan pocket and wrote the name down for me. She wrote her cell number underneath.

She handed it to me.

She said: "M.K. Will you come back here and sit on this bench with me again when something has changed? I want to know."

I said: "Linda. I will."

I walked out of the drugstore with the piece of paper in my purse.

I sat in my car in the parking lot for twenty minutes before I drove home.

I did not sleep that night.

I lay in the dark next to Dan.

The floorboard creaked at 2:14 AM.

Dan got out of bed. He went down the hall.

I got out of bed.

I went down the hall after him.

I stopped before the kitchen doorway.

I stood in the hallway in the dark and looked into the kitchen.

The light over the stove was on the dim setting.

My husband was at the kitchen counter in his pajamas.

He had the box of butter cookies open.

He had one in his hand.

I had stood in the hallway and watched him do this for three years.

I had walked too many wives to the elevator for twenty-eight years.

I walked down the hall and into the kitchen.

Dan turned and saw me.

He set the cookie down on the counter.

He did not say anything.

I did not say anything for a long moment.

Then I said: "Dan. I have been watching you do this for three years. I have not been saying anything. I am sorry."

He looked at me.

He looked at the cookie on the counter.

He looked back at me.

He said: "Mary Kate. I have known you have been watching. I have not been saying anything either."

I started crying in the kitchen at 2 AM.

He came over and put his arms around me.

He said: "Mary Kate. I have been ashamed."

I said: "Dan. I have been frozen. I have been ashamed too."

We stood in the kitchen at 2 AM holding each other for I do not know how long.

Then I said: "Dan. I want to sit at the kitchen table with you tomorrow morning. Will you?"

He said: "Yes, Mary Kate."

We went back to bed.

We did not sleep.

We lay in the dark facing each other and held hands until the alarm went off at six.

We sat at the kitchen table the next morning.

I told him everything. The three years of watching. Linda at the bench. Frank. The reading bench. The medication and the supplement.

I told him I had been a cardiac nurse for twenty-eight years and I had been frozen because I knew too much.

He listened.

When I was done, he was quiet for a long time.

Then he said: "Mary Kate. I have not been telling you something. I have known the cholesterol numbers have been bad. I have known Dr. Ferrante has been waiting for me to be ready. I have not been ready."

He said: "I am ready now."

I said: "Dan. Will you call Dr. Ferrante on Monday?"

He said: "I will. Will you come with me to the appointment?"

I said: "Yes, Dan."

We went to Dr. Ferrante the following Thursday.

I had been Dan's wife at his appointments for thirty-five years. I had been the retired cardiac nurse in the chair next to the exam table for two of those years.

I had never been the wife at the medication conversation.

Dr. Ferrante is a careful man. About my age. He had been Dan's doctor for fifteen years.

He took Dan's pressure. He took a fresh blood draw — he had said on the phone he wanted to run a new panel before the conversation.

He sat down with us in his office while we waited for the lab.

He said: "Dan. I am glad you came in with Mary Kate today. I have been waiting for this conversation. I want to lay it out the way I have been wanting to lay it out for two visits."

He laid it out.

The cholesterol numbers had been creeping up. The lifestyle layer had been doing what the lifestyle layer could do. The numbers were now in the range where a low-dose medication was the right move.

He told us about the medication. He told us what it could do and what it could not do. He told us about the studies. He told us how he would monitor.

He told us he wanted to start Dan that week.

He told us he wanted to do a six-week check-in.

He told us, in the same conversation, that he wanted to be clear about something.

He said: "Dan. Mary Kate. The medication is going to do one job. It is going to move the cholesterol number. It is the primary thing. There are other layers a body in its sixties is asking for support in too. I am happy to talk about adding something in the additive layer on top of the medication if either of you have been reading."

I told him about Linda at the reading bench. I told him about the Rosabella. I asked him whether he would be comfortable with Dan adding it to the medication.

Dr. Ferrante said: "I have been hearing about beetroot for cardiovascular wellness for a few years from a handful of my patients. The research is decent. It is sensible. It does not replace the medication. It supports the layer around it."

He told us he was comfortable with Dan adding it.

He told us to start the medication first. He told us to add the supplement a couple of days later when the medication had been started.

Dan picked up the medication at the pharmacy on the way home. Linda was behind the counter. She did not say anything. She filled the prescription. She smiled at us when she handed it across the counter.

I ordered two bottles of Rosabella from the website that night. Two because I had been planning to start it myself too.

The bottles arrived three days later.

Dan started the medication on a Friday.

We both started the Rosabella the following Monday.

Two capsules each with a glass of water in the morning.

He did not change anything else. I did not change anything else.

I want to tell you what happened over the next twelve weeks.

I am not going to make a claim about what caused what.

I am going to tell you what happened in the order it happened.

The first thing was the cookies.

About six nights after Dan started the medication and four nights after he started the supplement, the floorboard did not creak.

I lay in bed at 2:14 AM and listened.

It did not creak.

I waited.

It did not creak the next night either.

The third night the floorboard creaked at 2:08 AM. Dan got out of bed. He went down the hall.

I got up and stood in the doorway of the bedroom.

I could see the kitchen from there.

Dan went into the kitchen. He did not turn on the light over the stove.

He went to the kitchen sink. He poured himself a glass of water. He drank the water at the sink in the dark.

He set the glass on the counter.

He went back down the hall and got back into bed.

He had not opened the box of butter cookies.

The kitchen had been a kitchen at 2 AM. Not a place.

I lay in bed in the dark next to my husband and listened to him fall back asleep within fifteen minutes.

The next four nights, the floorboard did not creak.

By the end of the second week, the floorboard had creaked once. Dan had gone for water. He had come back to bed in five minutes.

By the end of the fourth week, the floorboard had not creaked in over ten nights.

The kitchen at 2 AM stopped being a place.

I want to be clear about something.

I am not telling you the supplement did that. I am not telling you the medication did that. I am not telling you the kitchen-table conversation did that.

I am telling you what happened in the order it happened.

The kitchen at 2 AM had been a place for three years.

By the start of week five, it was a kitchen at 2 AM.

That is what I saw.

About six weeks in, Dan started losing some of the weight around his middle.

He had not been trying to lose weight. He had not changed what he was eating.

He had been walking the dog with me in the evenings again — that had been about three weeks in — but he had been doing the standard half-mile loop, not anything more.

He had just stopped putting it on. And then he had started taking some of it off.

He did not say anything about it for a while.

He came down to breakfast on a Saturday morning at the start of week eight wearing a pair of jeans I had not seen him wear in two years.

He sat down at the kitchen table.

I poured him coffee.

He said: "Mary Kate. The jeans fit."

I said: "Dan. I noticed."

He smiled at me across the table.

He drank his coffee.

We did not say anything else about it.

I did not want to draw attention to it in case drawing attention to it broke something.

Around week ten, Dan started playing with our grandson Theo again.

Theo had been waiting for it. Five-year-olds notice these things.

Theo had been asking Dan to play catch in the backyard. Dan had been begging off for over a year. He had been telling Theo Grandpa was a little tired today.

Theo had been accepting it the way five-year-olds accept things, without understanding what they were accepting.

The Saturday morning at the start of week ten, Dan went out into the backyard with the foam baseball and the foam glove and Theo.

He played catch with him for almost an hour.

He came inside with grass on his knees.

Theo came inside behind him.

Theo said to me: "Grandma. Grandpa is back."

I said: "Honey. He is."

Theo said: "Where was he?"

I said: "Honey. I do not know. But I am glad he is back."

Theo nodded.

He went out to the backyard with Lucy to look at something.

I stood in the kitchen and tried to keep my face still.

I did not entirely succeed.

Dan was at the kitchen sink rinsing the foam baseball.

He pretended he had not seen my face.

Dan went back to Dr. Ferrante at the twelve-week mark.

Dr. Ferrante ran the bloodwork. Took his blood pressure. Listened to him describe the last twelve weeks.

He sat back in his chair.

He said: "Dan. The cholesterol is in a much better place. The medication is doing what we wanted it to do. The fact that you also added the supplement and that you have been walking and that you have been losing some weight is supporting everything around it. I am pleased."

He told Dan to keep doing everything he was doing.

He told us to come back at six months.

I sat in the chair next to the exam table and tried not to make a fool of myself in Dr. Ferrante's office.

He did not pretend not to notice.

He looked at me.

He said: "Mary Kate. You walked a lot of wives out to the elevator on your unit for a lot of years. I am glad you are not walking yourself out tonight."

I said: "Dr. Ferrante. So am I."

We drove home.

Dan held my hand on the console the whole drive.

I want to be careful here.

I am not the doctor in this story. Dr. Ferrante is.

I am a retired cardiac step-down nurse who had been frozen in her own house for three years.

I do not know for certain what fraction of what changed was the medication, what fraction was the supplement, what fraction was that Dan and I started talking honestly about a kitchen at 2 AM that had been a place for three years.

I know what we added.

I know what I stopped pretending about.

I know what the cookies stopped being.

I know what my grandson said to me on a Saturday morning in week ten.

I also know we are sixty and sixty-two, and there will come a day when no medication and no supplement and no honest 2 AM conversation will hold back the slow turning of the years.

I am not pretending otherwise.

I also know — and I want to say this very clearly — that the medication Dr. Ferrante prescribed is doing the work the medication was supposed to do at the cholesterol level.

The supplement is supporting the layer around it. They are different things.

Neither one of them would have done what they have done together if I had kept watching the cookies from the hallway and not saying anything.

What I am telling you is what we did. What I stopped doing. What I noticed. What our doctor said about it.

That is all.

If you are a wife who has been listening to the floorboard outside her bedroom door creak at 2 AM for years and you have been watching your husband eat butter cookies or crackers or cheese standing at the kitchen counter in the dark, and you have been pretending you have not been watching, here is what I would say.

Stop.

Tell him you have been watching.

Take him to his doctor.

Have the medication conversation. Have it honestly. Do not run from it.

If his doctor recommends a medication, let him take the medication.

Then, if his doctor agrees it is a sensible thing to add, add the supplement in the additive layer. Around the medication. Not instead of it.

Do not subtract anything. Do not change anything else.

Give it a few weeks before you decide anything.

Bodies are different. Some men notice something within the first few weeks.

For Dan, the first thing I noticed was the floorboard not creaking about six days after he started the medication and four days after he added the supplement.

That is the whole story.

P.S. Linda called me about two months after Dan started everything.

She said: "M.K. There is a woman who comes in here on Tuesday mornings to pick up her thyroid medication. Her name is Sandra. Her husband has been a 2 AM eater for about a year. She does not know I have noticed. I have not known how to bring it up with her. Would you be willing to come in on the Tuesday morning she usually comes? Just be at the reading bench. I will introduce you."

I came in the next Tuesday.

Sandra was in the magazine aisle. Linda waved me back. The three of us sat on the bench.

Sandra was sixty-one. Her husband was sixty-three.

Linda introduced us. She said: "Sandra. M.K. is a retired cardiac nurse. She wanted to talk to you about something. Will you let her?"

Sandra said: "Yes."

I told her.

She listened to the whole thing.

When I was done, she said: "M.K. I have been watching my husband at the kitchen counter at 2:30 in the morning for over a year. I have not said anything. I have been a fourth-grade teacher for thirty years. I do not know how I let it go this long."

I said: "Sandra. I am a retired cardiac nurse. I let it go for three years."

She started crying on the bench.

Linda put one hand on her shoulder and one hand on mine.

We sat on the bench for almost an hour.

Sandra called her husband's doctor the next morning.

Her husband saw his doctor that Friday. His doctor had been wanting to have the medication conversation for a year and a half. They had it that day. He started the medication that weekend.

Sandra called me three weeks later.

She said: "M.K. The floorboard."

I said: "Sandra. I know."

That is how this works.

A pharmacist watches your face across a counter for thirty-one years.

She asks you a question on a reading bench.

You tell her something you have been carrying for three years.

She tells you about her own husband.

You go home and you do not stand in the hallway anymore.

A year later you sit on the same bench with the next woman whose husband has been a 2 AM kitchen visitor.

P.P.S. Here is what I would tell you to do if you are thinking about trying the supplement.

Check with your doctor or pharmacist first. That is the most important step. Especially if he is already on a medication or about to start one. Tell the doctor everything.

Then take two capsules with a glass of water in the morning.

Do not change anything else. Just add this. The supplement does not replace any medication a doctor has prescribed.

Give it a few weeks before you decide anything.

Some men notice something within the first few weeks — a little more steadiness through the day, a little more presence at the dinner table, a little more sleep through the night.

Others take longer.

Be patient with the body.

P.P.P.S. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee.

If you are not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. No questions asked.

That is a sensible policy for a supplement. It gives you time to actually see whether it helps.

P.P.P.P.S. Rosabella is a small operation.

They harvest and bottle on their own schedule. I keep an extra bottle in the house just in case.

I started taking the supplement myself the same day Dan did.

I am sixty. I am a retired cardiac step-down nurse. I had been carrying my own version of what Dan had been carrying.

I had been walking around for three years with a low-grade dread of my own — about my husband, about the wives I had walked to the elevator, about the future I was afraid I had been silently signing us up for.

The low-grade dread has been quieter since the Tuesday at the reading bench.

I do not know if that is the supplement. I do not know if it is the doctor visit. I do not know if it is the kitchen at 2 AM not being a place anymore. I do not know if it is having told Linda.

I know all four of those things happened.

The box of butter cookies is still on top of the refrigerator.

Theo and Lucy come over on Saturdays and Lucy asks me for a cookie.

I get the box down. I give her one. I give Theo one. I give Dan one. I have one myself.

We eat them at the kitchen table together at three in the afternoon.

That is what the kitchen is for now.

That is what I want to tell you about.

The supplement is one thing.

The medication is another thing.

The kitchen at three in the afternoon with all four of you at the table eating a butter cookie is a third thing.

It is the thing I had been afraid I had been losing.

It is the thing that has come back.

https://track.tryrosabella.com/8ae97cac-2146-42d6-af75-de0e59d15644

Individual experiences vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.