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I can hear him in my head. It’s on repeat and my skin heats, my heart skipping a beat while beads of sweat fall down my temple. They mix with my tears, this uncontrollable sob that escapes my chest, and I curl into myself.
It takes me a while to calm down, to breathe normally, and when I do, I don’t hesitate to grab my phone and ring my therapist’s office.
They have an opening for two today.
I take it.
Something has to give.
“The doctor will see you now, Miss Moore,” the mid-thirties nurse standing at the door leading to his office calls out to the practically empty waiting room later that afternoon. It’s just me and a man. Older. Jittery. And who I’ve avoided making eye contact with each time he looks my way.
I’ve been here a few times over the last twelve months to treat my insomnia at the suggestion of my primary physician. There have been small windows of times I’ve refused to go to sleep in order to avoid entering that dream and felt ill. That is, until my doctor told me how damaging it is to the body—promised that the prescribed anti-anxiety medication to help me sleep/relax would limit my recollection of each episode.
How there was a chance, minimal but there, that a deep-enough relaxed state of sleep would leave me without dreams.
Bullshit. All of it.
I do dream. Vividly.
And yet, here I am, nodding while walking toward her. She’s smiling, so happy and carefree, and at the moment I’m hating her for it. “Thank you.”
“Of course. Right this way, Miss Moore.” We don’t talk after, and once near to the open door where my doctor waits, she pauses and waves me forward. “Go right ahead. I’ll see you on the way out.”
“Right.” Another fake smile and hers widens, nodding at me as if I’d sent her blessings of health and more money than she could spend in ten lifetimes. The interaction lasts less than ten seconds at most and then she’s gone, speed walking back toward the front while I’m hating every moment of being here. “Come on, Gabriella. Get it together.”
Not the best pep talk, but I turn and walk into Dr. Silva’s office, while the man himself is behind his desk. He’s leaning back with his dark brown eyes on the door, and the light dusting of silver hair that adorned his temples has spread in the last year. With each visit, it has become a little more prominent until encompassing his entire head.
“Nice to see you, Miss Moore. Please take a seat.”
“Glad to be here?”
My psychiatrist laughs at my question and nods, already writing something down in his ever-present notepad. “And how have you been since your last appointment...” his eyes shift to his laptop screen where he squints “...four months ago? It also says here you owe me lab work and a progress report on those dreams and their frequency, if any have occurred.”
“I’ve been busy and just signed the contract for my next show.”
“Congratulations.” The painting to his right is mine, a commissioned piece of his favorite place in the world: a lighthouse in North Carolina. “That’s great news, and we’ll get back to that; I’d love to attend.”
“Once I have the dates, I’ll let you know.”
“Perfect.” Then silence. A long and awkward one, until I cough and he raises a bushy brow. “Answer the question, Gabriella. Are you still having that one recurring dream?”
“I am.”
“How often?”
“Enough that I am here questioning my sanity.”
“How so? Please explain.” Dr. Silva pushes his glasses up a bit, his face so neutral. Not so much as a twitch or smile, fake or not. “Have you been taking your meds as prescribed?”
“I have.” A lie, and he nods as if he knows I’m lying. “One tablet every night an hour before bedtime, and yet, the dreams are getting worse. I’ve gone from wandering through a strange room and empty halls to being sliced open and bleeding out. This isn’t normal, doctor. I really think I’m suffering from night terrors.”
“Let’s go back a bit, Gabriella,” he says, hand gliding across the page of his notebook, the ink filling up line after line. “When you started seeing me, these dreams had a twice-a-week frequency with sometimes bouts of self-induced insomnia in between. No?”
“Yes.”
“Six months ago, they had become a three to four per week occurrence. No?”
“Yes.”
