I was in my office Friday night, writing late as I often do when I thought I heard a voice yelling, “Jon, help me, help..!”

I wondered if a video was playing. I couldn’t imagine…

I thought I was dreaming, my mind was slow to react for a few seconds, and then I ran as fast as I could, around the dining room table and towards the bathroom, whose door was closed.

The voice was faint but desperate; it was clearly Maria calling for me.

When I opened the door, I heard her saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I’m so sorry.” And I saw a jarring scene, and I was a police reporter in big cities like Philadelphia and Washington.

Maria was lying on the floor, her head in a pool of blood, blood all over her face. I can only say that it was so much like the many violent scenes I had witnessed as a reporter that it was my first thought.

It just came into my mind, it was so shocking and inexplicable.

Maria looked to me to be dying, it looked just like that, and I felt a jolt of fear running through my heart.

It only took me a macro-second to dismiss that thought.

The dogs had not barked; there was no one else in the house, I had to reconstruct the scene. Maria’s face was covered in blood, and she was unable to move, to sit or stand up.

I had never seen Maria so helpless or vulnerable. She was struggling to sit up and couldn’t.

I could not imagine what had happened.

My first thought was to call for an ambulance, but there was a howling snowstorm outside, and I knew it would take a long time for an ambulance to come, even longer to get to a hospital.

I soaked a paper towel in warm water and knelt and wiped the blood off of her face and took a deep breath. First, I had to get the dogs in their crates; they were anxious and trying to get into the bathroom. Once I saw that the blood had come from her lip, and nowhere else on her body, I knew it would be all right.

The details are not necessary.

I knew it was essential for Maria to be clean before she could be well.

Maria was apologizing to for being sick, and I quickly tried to figure out what had happened – sometimes it helps to have been a police reporter – there was blood on the sink and then in a pool on the floor.

This, I knew, was Maria’s worst nightmare, to be seen in this way. But I was putting it together.

She must have been sitting on the toilet, then fainted, fallen against the bathroom sink, and then onto the floor, thus the pool of blood there. She was dizzy, perhaps in shock.

It seemed to me she had suffered from an extreme case of food poisoning; she had been sick before falling or fainting, that was clear.

The bathroom was a mess, and I knew nothing would be more humiliating or upsetting to Maria than to be so helpless and exposed and vulnerable, even to me.

I told her to stop apologizing, please, (she didn’t) and drew a bath for her. I asked her to breathe deeply and listen to me.

“You are okay,” I said. “You will be fine.” I know that deep breathing settles panic and focuses the mind. I kept repeating it, it was our mantra.

I knew that getting clean would be so important to her.

I got a bunch of rags and sprays and helped her into the bathtub. I got rid of all the blood.

She was still weak and dizzy but was slowly getting better. I decided against calling 911; my gut told me we just had to clean up and wait. I needed her to be lying down on the living room sofa. It took a long while to get there.

If you know Maria, then you know there is little in the world that would be more upsetting to her than to be in that position in front of any other human being.

She is exquisitely sensitive and vulnerable.

I knew that in situations like that, the victim needs the people around him or her to be calm. If I got upset, she would look at me and get even more frightened.  She needed to believe me, so I had to mean it.

By then, I did believe she would be okay, so I made sure to be calm and almost casual, and to keep repeating it was okay, she would be okay. And I got to work.

In 15 minutes or so, the bathroom was cleaned up; she was clean, all traces gone (she has a fat lip, she fell on her mouth, and her teeth cut her lip). It took about an hour for her to settle down, and I sat with her for several hours until I was sure she was all right.

She had settled into a deep sleep; I kept checking on her through the night.

I tried to tell her that there was no point where I was disgusted or revolted by anything I saw, that our love for one another had passed yet another landmark test.

And that is the truth. Showing vulnerability is the foundation of love, and when I had my heart failure, she saw mine (and after open-heart surgery as well) and Friday night, I saw hers.

In fact, we have seen deeply into one another’s souls many times.

The only thing that happened was that our trust in one another deepened, and our genuine love reaffirmed. All weekend, we looked at one another and smiled, touched each other, talked about how much we meant to each other. It was lovely in a profound and curious way.

I write about this because Maria quite bravely wrote about it on her blog tonight, and that took a lot of strength and courage.

Maria is not a person to give over her wariness or trust or vulnerability entirely to anyone, even me. I believe she learned a lot about what love means to me Friday night, and so did I.

There were a couple of minutes when I thought I might lose her, that that was a deep kind of feeling that was new to me and hasn’t quite gone away. There was nothing unsettling about anything I saw that compared to the idea I might have lost her.

At first, I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.  And when you are a police reporter in cities like Philadelphia, a lot of images stick in your head for good. I saw a lot of people lying in pools of blood. None of them got up.

I’m glad I trusted my gut and grateful for the opportunity to care for someone I love so deeply.

What is love about, if not that? Maria is not capable of being disgusting or revolting; I hope she’s learned that also. Love and vulnerability are siblings; one comes with the other.

Good for her. Friday shook me up and left me exhausted and grateful.

Maria has been resting this weekend, recovering slowly but surely. Even though I cleaned up the bathroom, again and again, she spent hours mopping and spraying and scouring the floor and the bathroom, washing the tub, the clothes, the sink again and again.

I told her tonight that she had no reason to feel any shame.

I loved looking at her body, even spread across the bathroom floor. She is always beautiful to me; a little blood only adds some color.