Bernhard collapses and is hospitalized after reading the emails

Bernhard collapses after reading the printed correspondence between his wife, Emmi Rothner, and Leo Leike, turning a concealed marital crisis into a hospital emergency. In his later account to Leo, the collapse is both the immediate consequence of a night spent reading the emails and the moment that forces him to reveal how deeply the correspondence has unsettled his family life.

Discovery and escalation

Bernhard says that Emmi had become absentminded and distant, spending long periods in her room looking at the computer screen and absorbed in what he calls her other world. He noticed that her smiles no longer seemed meant for him and that she had to work to hide her distraction from the children. At first, he tried to tolerate the change: there was no visible person intruding on the marriage, and neither spouse had previously been jealous. The discovery of the correspondence gave his unease a specific object.

He searched Emmi’s room and found a secret drawer containing a thick folder of her emails with Leo, printed page by page. He copied the documents, then tried for several weeks to put them out of mind. The strain continued through a family holiday in Portugal: the younger child was ill, the older child fell in love with a sports instructor, and Bernhard and Emmi barely spoke for two weeks while each tried to maintain the appearance that everything was normal.

The collapse

On a hiking trip, Bernhard took the folder with him and read the emails through in one night. He describes the reading as an act of self-destructive, masochistic impulse and says that, after finishing, he could not get out of bed. His daughter called the emergency services, and he was taken to hospital. He later tells Leo that Emmi picked him up the day before he wrote, making the correspondence itself the focus of his explanation for the crisis.

The following morning, Emmi independently reports that Bernhard is in hospital. She says the doctors suspect some kind of heatstroke and that she must drive to South Tirol to fetch the children. Her message also records the couple’s unsettled situation from her side: she says she needs Leo very badly, but needs her family too. Her account does not identify the hospital episode as the result of his reading; Bernhard’s subsequent letter supplies that explanation.

Bernhard’s appeal to Leo

After describing the discovery and hospitalization, Bernhard asks Leo to meet Emmi. He frames the emails as an intense attachment that has drawn her away from ordinary family life and argues that an actual meeting might bring the relationship to a conclusion. His request is a plea to end the correspondence’s hold over his wife and restore her presence to their household, not simply a report of his collapse.

Bernhard’s disclosure changes the meaning of the secret folder: what had been a private correspondence between Emmi and Leo has become a crisis witnessed by the whole family, with their daughter calling for emergency help and the children’s circumstances forming part of the strained holiday. The episode also gives Leo a direct account of the damage Bernhard believes the emails have caused, and places the request for a meeting in the aftermath of Bernhard’s hospital stay.