Time to wake

I went to the doctor yesterday and got a refill for the medication I take for insomnia. I'm always reluctant to take anything, but after long periods of sleepless nights, I'll relent. My doctor is a friendly man, we talk about photography and he asks my advice about technical thing. We are on a first name basis and when he calls me, that's all he uses. He'd asked me which of the two things we'd tried last year had worked the best and I told him so he refilled my prescription and I was on my way.

I went home and planned on spending the day being productive, getting everything that I needed done before laying down into bed with a movie. I took half the dose prescribed and slowly I started to find sleep.

I was woken with the realization that I hadn't shut off my phone. It rang and I missed it. It rang again and I reached for it. It was one of the few people that I'd answer the phone for at that point and I knew something must be wrong.

"I don't know where I am" she said after I said hello.

She went on to explain that someone had slipped something into her drink and that she didn't know where she was and couldn't drive. She told me she needed my help.

I dressed quickly, still a little uneven from the pills I'd taken to sleep, working against their purpose of putting me back down. I walked slowly down the stairs, my equilibrium slowly returning to me as I hit the humid night and moved along the concrete as quickly as I could.

"The long light" was the only landmark she gave me but I was certain I knew what that meant. I wandered to Toulouse, which has the light I've often complained about, and found her truck there, sitting still in the night. I peered through the glass as she was draped over the seat.

She was surprised to see me. Whatever she'd been slipped was making it really hard for her to pull it together. I got her into the passenger seat and pulled her car off the street and into the parking garage on the next block.

I got her out and started walking her toward my apartment, telling her that she could call her boyfriend and tell him to come there and get her. She was confused as to where we were going or how we'd gotten that far and I had to stop more than once along the way to tell her what was happening and get us off the streets, which aren't always a safe place at night.

We got about a block from my house when a police office friend of mine who owns a bar up the road stopped and asked if everything was ok. I told it was and that we were meeting her ride. He asked where her ride was and when it would be there and it pulled up just then.

I'd been fighting back the effect of the sleep meds, pushing myself into overdrive in order to make sure she was safe and I felt surreal as I loaded her into her boyfriends car, who barely looked at me when i did. I handed him the valet ticket and struggled to give the street names where it was located through the descending cloud. I closed the door and he left quickly, followed by the police offices truck and I walked the last block home by myself.

I walk quickly, and this was no exception. My mind wandered and I looked around constantly to be certain I hadn't overlooked anyone following me in the darkness down a street that can often be dangerous. I picked out the door key before I hit the steps and turned to make sure no one followed me into the stairwell before slipping it into the lock. I closed the door behind me when I was safely inside and made sure it was locked.

I pulled off my shirt and climbed the uneven stairs, breathing a little heavily as I approached the top. I took off my shoes at the top of the stairs, not bothering to line them up as I normally would. I felt the cool air radiating from my office and so I went there first, it being the coldest room in the house. I finished getting undressed, pulled on a pair of shorts and got into bed, just the way I'd been before I got the phone call. The sleep medication made me doubt for a moment that I'd ever let the bed, made me think that the entire thing had been a dream. I reached for my phone to see if it had been but I'd left it in my office and instead I gave into sleep.