When I Can't Sleep, I Look at my Phone (Part 3)

Part 1

Part 2

“What seems to be the problem?”

“No sleep.”

“Sorry?”

I shook my head and swung my legs slowly over the edge of the examination table. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping.”

The doctor sighed and nodded his head slowly. “Well tell me more about it. Are you only sleeping in small bursts? Are you getting any sleep at all?”

I stared at the floor for a moment, replaying the last few nights in my head. I saw my dream self looking at myself. I saw that black cloud thing hovering over my girlfriend and slapping her stomach. I saw Pablo staring at the wall like the little freak that he is. I remembered having the conversation about it all (minus the belly slapping monster thingy) with Sam and her suggestion that I talk to a doctor about it. I wasn’t 100% sure how to answer his question without sounding like a crazy person. “I’m getting assisted sleep, I guess. Sometimes I’ll go for a few nights without being able to sleep, but I’ll take some sleeping medication of some sort and I’ll sleep just fine.”

“I see,” the doctor responded. He set his chart down and leaned back in his chair for a more relaxed conversation. “Can you sleep at all without the medication?”

“A little. Or I guess I do, but it’s not very consistent. I take naps that feel like they’ve only lasted a few minutes but in reality I’m out for several hours.” I pondered momentarily deciding how to word my next statement. “I’ve been having bad dreams.”

“Bad how?”

“Just…” I sighed and shook my head. “Bad. Look, it’s not really going to matter what the dreams are specifically about, is it? Let’s just say they’re nightmares, and I keep having them.”

“You’d be surprised what you can learn about yourself from the dreams you have,” the doctor offered.

“No kidding…You’re not going to tell me that my dreams are really signs that I’m going to come in to great fortune, or that a long lost relative is trying to communicate from the beyond or some crap like that, are you?”

The doctor smiled. “No, none of that. What I mean is that sometimes dreams manifest themselves based on what’s happening in real life. For example, you would be surprised how many people tell me they have vivid and painful dreams about their teeth either grinding in to nothing or being ripped right out of their mouths. It’s a common occurrence for people suffering from high levels of anxiety in their day to day lives.” He laughed to himself and grabbed the chart. “Does it mean they have haunted teeth? No. In actually, their time spent awake is haunting their dreams. So to speak.”

“That makes sense…” I unintentionally licked my own teeth, hearing what he said. My mind thought back to those dark, yellow eyes I had seen before. “Well they aren’t teeth dreams. They aren’t painful at all. They’re just unpleasant, really. But I couldn’t tell you if I can’t sleep because of these dreams or if I just can’t sleep in general.”

"Have you spoken with a therapist or some sort of psychologist?" He must have noticed the unamused face I made at the suggestion because he shrugged shortly after asking the question. "It helps some people. May it would help you?"

I rubbed my forehead with my palm, trying my best not to sound rude about the question. "I just don't find them very helpful, is all. I went to see a psychiatrist when I was younger about an issue I was having. I couldn't help but shake the feeling that the doctor didn't actually care about how I felt. They were just paid to care. It never felt very sincere, I suppose."

"Fair enough," the doctor answered. "Like I said, it helps some people. Not all people. Have you had problems sleeping before?”

“I used to work overnight shifts, so I had issues with switching to a normal sleeping schedule. My new job kept bouncing me around between first and second shift while my supervisor gauged my strength in the two areas. But I never had bad dreams because of them. Not like I’ve been having recently, I mean. Usually when I can’t sleep, I look at my phone.”

The doctor nodded once more. “You know what? I do the same thing. Sometimes you can’t fall asleep and you get frustrated so you look at your phone until you get tired. I get it. You read stupid stories about a duck and a snake being best friends or some silly trash. I think a lot of people can relate with you on that one. So,” he slapped his knees and rose to his feet. “I’m going to send a nurse in here to take some blood work for testing. Just to make sure there’s nothing serious going on behind the scenes. Until we get the results back, I’m going to prescribe you some sleeping medication. I’ll make sure to keep you away from the ones that are habit forming or have a bad dream side effect. Sounds like you’re having enough of those on your own. But to me, it just sounds like you need a better regulated sleep cycle. Once you have that, things should fall back in to place for you. All I can say for now is to give it time.”

I breathed deep. Just a few more nights and hopefully this would be over. I thanked the doctor and watched him leave. I pulled my phone from my pocket. One missed text from Sam. A picture message. I turned on my mobile data and started to download it. As the phone was downloading the message, the door opened back up and a nurse walked in. I set my phone down beside me.

She smiled and said hello, which I returned. She set down her vials and paperwork before grabbing a few fresh latex gloves and turning back to me. She smiled again and grabbed the blood pressure cuff. “I know they took your vitals when you were admitted, but we’re just going to check them again before I draw some blood, okay?” I nodded and she strapped the cuff around my bicep. She placed the end of her stethoscope below the cuff and started pumping air in to the attachment around my arm. She squeezed five times before she started laughing uncontrollably.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, with an understandable panic in my voice.

“No, no,” she managed to get out between gasps while pointing next to me. I looked down and saw the picture had loaded on my phone. I picked it up to look. It was a picture of Pablo mid-meow, standing with his front paws over my mouth while I slept. “I’m sorry,” she said between her dying laughs. “That’s just too funny.”

I laughed to myself and put the phone back in to my pocket. “Yeah, that’s pretty funny.” I wasn’t sure what else to say, so I smiled awkwardly and she went through with her tests in silence. My vitals were normal so she drew whatever blood samples she needed and left the room. After a few minutes, she returned with paperwork for me and said I was free to go.

I drove home, stopping to grab my doctor-approved sleeping medication on the way. Silver and Pablo began serenading me as I walked through the door. I guess I had beat Sam back, and this was the song of the hungry cat. I separated the two felines and fed both of them. I plopped down on to the couch and took out my bottle of pills to read the side of it. Take one before bedtime. Easy. I opened the bottle to find the pills were enormous. Less than easy. Oh well.

The door opened as I put the lid back on the bottle, and Sam entered with a sigh. “What a day.” She tossed her bag on the couch next to me. Something inside of it hit my funny bone and made me drop the bottle of pills with that not-so-funny tingling sensation. Thankfully the cap had been secured, because Silver made a mad dash for what he must have assumed was a new toy. He smacked it back and forth, across the living room and in to the kitchen. I crawled after him, trying to get it back while Sam laughed and laughed at the door. I scooped the cat up in one arm and grabbed the pills with the other. I pointed the bottle at his face with a stern “NO!” He responded by throwing a fat paw at it and knocking it out of my still tingling hand once more.

The rest of that day went by relatively peacefully. It was the night time I was worried about. Sam was able to pass out with little to no effort, while I read the instructions on the bottle again, expecting some new phrase to appear that wasn’t there before. Just take one before bed. So I did just that. I brushed my teeth and washed my face. I made sure the cats were out of the room, and I lied down for bed.

Once again I found myself standing in the bedroom, watching myself sleep. Everything seemed much darker than it had in previous dreams. It was almost impossible to see myself in the bed. I took a step forward, and I could see clearly, as if a mist had been lifted. I turned around to look at the lamp, but all I could see was darkness. Above the darkness was a set of yellow eyes looking back at me. I stumbled back and sat on the edge of the bed. I shook my head, trying not think that it was only seconds ago inside of whatever that thing was. “This isn’t real,” I assured myself.

“This isn’t real,” a voice mocked back at me. It was a voice darker than the room itself. Darker than the thing that was there before me. “This isn’t reeeeeeeeal.” It had sighed from within it’s mouthless form.

I glared at this nightmare before me and stood up. The eyes hovered taller than me, but I wasn’t going to face this thing sitting down. “Whatever you are, you’re not really here.” I almost believed myself.

“Whatever you are…” the voice trailed off its repetition of my words, with eyes growing larger and shrinking smaller as the words came out. It was almost like it was trying to mimic someone’s face as they spoke. “You’re not really here.”

My hand trembled, so I made a fist to attempt to stop it. This was just a dream. Nothing more. I’m not time travelling. I’m not having an out of body experience. Ghosts and aliens and other dimensional whatever the fucks aren’t real. I might be a little crazy, but I’m just dreaming. “This is just a dream,” I told the darkness. I swatted at the dark creature with my balled up fist and it had moved right through it. It didn’t dissipate or split in two. It was just like waving a hand down a dark hallway, touching nothing. “You can’t hurt me. This isn’t really happening.”

“Yes I can!” It answered quickly. A dark pillar shot out towards me from somewhere within the creature. It pierced directly through my stomach, and another pillar shot out, going straight towards my face.

I woke up with a great pain in my abdomen and in my head. I groaned and rolled to my side, using a hand to rub both areas. I rolled up to my knees and scrunched my body down on top of them. It felt like something inside of me was eating me, and someone was inside my brain with a sledgehammer. I pressed my face firmly in to the blankets and let out a muffled scream. And just as soon as it had come, the pain had faded. I breathed heavily and pushed myself up.

The room was lit very well. The curtains had been pulled back. The girlfriend was gone. The cats stood by the doorway, staring at me with their tails swiping the carpet. I rolled myself out of the bed and stood upright slowly, expecting a pain in hiding to creep. Nothing. I looked towards the cats and noticed Sam standing behind them, with an expression of both bewilderment and mild frustration. “We need to talk, don’t we?”

I'm running out of time again. I wish I could write somewhere besides work, but in the meantime, I'm trying to write what I can when I get a free moment. I suppose I can leave you all with a bonus picture of Pablo and Silver until next time.

Part 4 is here.

The finale