The Dreams

Chapter Nine

She slept for nine hours. Nine. She had not slept less than eight hours a night all week. She started keeping track as soon as she consistently found herself waking up utterly exhausted, thinking that she might be overextending herself with her current study schedule. She made sure she got at least eight hours of sleep a night now, and her energy levels remained consistently low.

Every day she woke up exhausted. The dark circles around her eyes grew worse every day. She was worried in part because she knew this was not healthy and partly because other people might start to notice something was wrong with her. That sort of attention and concern was the last thing she wanted or needed.

Her schedule allowed her about five whole minutes to worry each day. Unfortunately, that did not leave her enough time to do much more than see that she looked as exhausted as she felt. Worrying only made her feel worse so to a degree she was glad she was busy.

Something was wrong. She probably needed to see a doctor. That would take up even more time she did not have.

It might just be a cold. She resolved to take the time to get some cold medicine from the store before bed time tonight. That might end up taking as much time as seeing a doctor, but she did not think she could find the energy to make the effort to even make the call to get an appointment.

She wanted to believe she was exhausted from the start of a cold, but aside from having absolutely no energy regardless of how long she slept she did not have any of the symptoms she wold normally expect from a cold. Her nose was not stuffy. She did not have aches and pains she would normally associate with the start of an illness.

If this did not turn out to be a cold she was very concerned it might end up being the most dreaded of all teenage diseases: mono. Then she would not have much of a choice about going to see a doctor, but for now she wanted to avoid wasting her time by taking any extreme measures. A cold or some sort of long term exhaustion from her course load seemed likely rather than something more serious.

Unless her memory had started to fail her too she knew she could buy some over the counter cold medicine at the campus book store. They had a small pharmacy section that carried most items a typical college student might need to stock up on to take care of minor health concerns — adhesive bandages, Tylenol, and cold and allergy medicine. She could stop by the store and buy some without going too far out of her way today.

That fit into her schedule much better than the daunting hassle of getting an appointment penciled in with a doctor and then possibly having to get a ride from a friend to a pharmacy if the doctor decided she needed some sort of prescription. She had a feeling any doctor she spoke to would try to give her some sort of sleep aid since it was universally known that tired people need more sleep.

In her experience doctors had the same problem with selective hearing that plagued most adults more than a few years older than her. For some reason being young meant only half the words she said were worth hearing. She could imagine how it would play out: she would explain just how much sleep she had been getting lately and without even discussing other possible causes she would be handed a prescription for some sleep aid or another. Sleep aids were trendy after all. No one got enough sleep. Especially not college students with their wild parties four nights a week and what not. Never mind if the particular college student sitting on the examination table might be in bed every night by eleven or that the most wild thing she had done recently was kiss her boyfriend during a study date.

She knew her disdain for doctors might end up getting her in trouble or make her more sick than she might become otherwise, but she just could not see herself going to see one for just being tired for a while. Spending money to be told something that would do her no good would just be a waste.