It was a Saturday morning in Marseille when Julia, an Argentinian nurse who had been living in France for three years with her husband, Mark Collins, noticed something strange. As he was getting dressed to go for a run, she saw, just below his right shoulder blade, a row of small red dots, almost perfectly aligned. At first, she thought they were insect bites—perhaps fleas or mites—but when she got closer, she noticed that each mark had a slight bump, as if it were hiding something inside.

“Mark, don’t move,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, turning his head.
“You have something on your back… I don’t know, they look like eggs.”

He let out a nervous laugh, but when he saw Julia’s pale face, he glanced at himself in the bathroom mirror. The marks were disturbing, almost symmetrical. He tried to touch them, but when he did, he felt a sharp pain. Within minutes, Julia grabbed the car keys. “We’re going to the hospital right now,” she said, refusing to discuss it.

In the emergency room, a doctor on duty, Dr. Lefèvre, examined Mark’s back with a flashlight. It only took a few seconds. Then she looked up at Julia with a gesture that froze her to the spot.

“Madam, call the police,” she ordered in a dry voice.
Julia thought she’d misheard.
“The police? Why?
” “Do as I say. This isn’t a rash or an infection.” The doctor lowered her voice. “These aren’t eggs… they’re micro-injection marks. Someone has been deliberately pricking you.”

Julia felt the air drain from her lungs. She looked at her husband, who seemed just as confused as she was, and tried to remember each night, every moment he was asleep and she wasn’t. When could those injections have happened? Who could have had access to him?

The doctor left the room while asking a nurse not to let them leave. Within minutes, two police officers entered the cubicle. One of them, a robust man in his fifties, took photos of the marks and asked,
“Have you been to any hotel, clinic, or other place where someone else might touch your back?”

Mark shook his head, visibly frightened. Julia couldn’t stop staring at those thirty marks, lined up like dots in a secret code on the skin of the man she loved.

That same night, the police took Mark for toxicology and blood tests. Inspector Dupont, in charge of the case, explained that the marks appeared to have been caused by a fine-needle syringe, commonly used for microdosing. “But thirty times… that’s not accidental,” he said while reviewing the photos.

Julia could barely speak. In the small hospital waiting room, she watched as Mark, now on a gurney, tried to joke to reassure her. “Maybe I’m part of an alien experiment,” he said. She didn’t smile.

The following day, tests revealed traces of ketamine and midazolam , two powerful sedatives, in concentrations too low to cause complete unconsciousness, but enough to produce a groggy feeling. According to the medical examiner, the microinjections had been administered for at least a month, at regular intervals.

Julia shuddered. She remembered the times Mark would wake up confused in the middle of the night, or when he said he felt “dizzy for no reason.” They’d thought it was stress or lack of sleep. Now it all made sense.

Inspector Dupont asked them for a list of people who had access to the house: neighbors, maintenance workers, close friends. Julia mentioned Élodie , Mark’s coworker at the engineering firm, who had helped him with a night project the last few weeks. Dupont raised an eyebrow. “She has access to his apartment?”
Julia hesitated for a moment. “Sometimes… when he forgets his laptop, she drops it off.”

The officers placed hidden cameras in the bedroom and checked the locks: there were no signs of forced entry. However, they found traces of an oily substance on the mattress cover, consistent with the lubricants used in disposable syringes. It was clear: someone was entering the apartment without leaving a trace.

A week later, the recordings revealed the truth. At 3:00 a.m., Élodie appeared on video. She was wearing gloves and a surgical mask. She leaned over the bed and, with chilling precision, administered an injection into Mark’s back. Then, she carefully erased any traces and left.

Julia burst into tears. She couldn’t understand why someone so kind and friendly would do something like that. When the police arrested Élodie, she didn’t deny what had happened. “I just wanted him to stay with me,” she said during questioning, her voice subdued. “If he couldn’t love me while I was awake, at least I could have him asleep, close to me.”

The phrase left everyone speechless.

Mark was discharged from the hospital two days after his arrest. Physically he was fine, but the psychological trauma was profound. He couldn’t sleep without startling, and every little noise in the apartment made him jump up. Julia tried to support him, but she was also burdened by her own fear and anger.

The subsequent investigation revealed that Élodie had copied the apartment keys months earlier, during a casual visit. She had prepared a minimal sedative mixture so as not to wake Mark and leave no visible traces. Each dose was calibrated to avoid causing permanent damage, demonstrating meticulous planning. In her apartment, the police found a notebook with entries: dates, doses, and descriptions of the dreams she imagined he would have.

During the trial, Élodie was found guilty of aggravated assault and invasion of privacy . She attempted to justify her actions by claiming a “confusing emotional relationship” and “unrequited obsession,” but the court showed no mercy. She was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Julia attended all the hearings. Not out of hatred, but to understand. When Élodie finally declared through tears, “I just wanted someone not to leave me,” Julia understood that this woman was not a monster, but a mind broken by loneliness and idealization.

Even so, nothing could erase the feeling of invisible violation that had lingered in their home. Mark decided to quit his job and move with Julia to Barcelona. There they began a new life. It took months for them to sleep soundly, to laugh together again, to stop checking locks every night.

A year later, Julia wrote an article for a medical journal about the case, titled “The Invisible Line Between Love and Obsession .” She didn’t mention names, but her account served as a warning: violence doesn’t always leave visible wounds. Sometimes, it hides beneath the skin, in thirty small marks that tell a story of control, fear, and survival.

And every time Julia remembered that day in the emergency room, she could still hear Dr. Lefèvre’s firm voice saying,
“Call the police.”

Because sometimes, a phrase like that doesn’t mark the beginning of a tragedy, but rather the opportunity to escape from it.