The time traveler ' s wife ; Audrey Niffeneggerprologue clare ; it ; s hard being left behind . I wait for Henry , not knowing xhere he is , wordering if he ' s oky . It ' s hard to be the one who stays . I keep myself bysy , Time goes fasts that way . I go to sleep alone , and wake up alone . I take walks . I work until I ' m tired . I watch the wind play with the trash that ' s been under the snow all winter . Everything seems simple until you think about it . Why is love intensified by absence ? Long ago , men went to sea , and women waited for them , standing on the edge of the water , scanning the horizon for the tiny ship . Now I wait for Henry . He vanishes unwillingly , without warning . I wait for him . Each moment that I wait feels like a year , an eternity . Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass . Though each moment I can see infinite moments lined up , waiting . Why has he gone where I cannot follow ? HENRY ; How does it feel ? how does it feel ? Sometimes it feesl as though your attention has wandered for just an instant . Then , with a start , you realize that the book you were holding , the red plaid cotton shirt with white buttons , the favorite black jeans and the maroon socks with an almost - hole in one heel , the living room , the about - to - whistle tea kettle in the kitchen ; all of these have vanished . You are standing , naked as a jaybird , up to your ankles in ice water in a dirth along an unidentified rural route . You wait a mimute to see if maybe you will just snap right bac to your book , your apartment , et cetera . After about five minutes of swearing and shivering and hoping to hell you can just disappear , you start walking in ant direction , which will eventually yield a farmhouse , where you have the option of stealing or explaining . Stealing will sometimes land you in jail , but explaining is more te - dious and time - consuming and involves lying anyway , and also sometimes results in being hauled off to jail , so what the hell . Sometimes you feel as though you have stood up too quickly even if you are lying in bed half asleep . You hear blood rushing in your head , feel vertiginous falling sensations . Your hands and feet are tingling and then they aren ' t there at all . You ' ve mislocated yourself again . It only takes an instant , you have just enough time to try to hold on , to flail around ( possibly damaging yourself or valuable pos - sessions ) and then you are skidding across the forest - green - carpeted hallway of a Motel 6 in Athens , Ohio , at 4 ; 15 a . m . , Monday , August 6 , 1981 , and you hit your head on someone ' s door , causing this person , a Ms , Tina Schulman from Philadelphia , to open this door and start screaming because there ' s naked , carpet - burned man passed out at her feet . You wake up in the County Hospital concussed with a policeman sitting outside your door listening to the Phillies game on a crackly transistor radio . Mercifully , you lapse back into unconsciousness and wake up again hours later in your own bed with your wife leaning over you looking very worried .