I Am Sick (A Narcoleptic's Nightmare)

I Am Sick (A Narcoleptic's Nightmare)

There is nobody here but I, this place a curious refuge for people like me who wonder but don't know and can't fathom the depths of their own illness—the lost and the castoff of medical urchins who modern methods cannot address. I am one such individual. I am sick—but nobody knows what with, or how. I fall asleep—I dream and my nightmares are varied but vivid, and I am lost to the cycle of them. That is why I'm here, why I've consigned myself to the unlicensed hands here because I have run out of options now, adrift and without hope or alternative—or hope as an alternative.

I am a narcoleptic, but I am more than that—I'm afraid of the more, but nobody else understands.

'Please fill out this form, and when you are done return it and somebody will be with you shortly,' is what I am told. The young woman seems pleasant enough, presents herself as one who cares—and that is good enough. I take the form and return to my seat, all along in this quiet place with my thoughts only to occupy my mind, my fears and the sense that something inside me is broken, and that my narcolepsy is somehow tied to it.

It isn't just the narcolepsy, but something more.

I go through the form as diligently as I can, waiting. I read through the various questions, marking them all as much in my favor as I can without lying outright. Am I addicted to anything?—it asks me. No, but there are some things I cannot live without. I finish all of their questions and go to return the form to the woman behind the desk.

The world goes black.

I am sick. At least that is what I am told, and I believe it. I believe it because my world no longer makes sense, the color is gone from it or faded at best, and I view it through a bubble now that distorts the shape of it. I can't remember the true shape now. I believe the distorted shape is the true shape because that's the only shape I know anymore, the fish-eye shape. Everything moves slowly now for me, my focus is narrowed and only the center image is sharp but moves like the afterimage of slowed down film reel—the shapes stretching, like in that movie Donnie Darko when they talk about 'God's path'. That's how it is now, the world—the people now and everything else that I see. I don't know if they're moving slowly or I am, but the sync is lost. We are out of time. I am, at least. It's probably better if it's just me. Better for everyone else, I mean.

That's why I'm here now, in this place, this waiting room—because I'm sick. They're expecting me, but I think they aren't because I don't think they know what I am, what I've become. How can they, if I don't? But here I am, a listless man of my age (what age is it, again?), like some psych-ward refugee waiting for something that he can't remember—just a soulless shape, clay-like and indolent, insensible. I think I have hair, but I can't remember. Did I shave it again?

A little boy is playing with that construct of wood and plastic, the shapes pushing in loops from one side to the other—five of them, five loops and spiraling or twisting, blue and red and yellow, pushing the shapes from one side to the other like it's some great mathematical achievement, his mother looking not really at him but pretending to—on her phone, where her real life expands in likes and hearts while her real heart forgets what it is supposed to like or even love, loving herself the most despite that thing that came from herself and the shapes and the joy it shows—real joy—at getting all those shapes from one side to the other. The little Pythagoras. I want to ruffle (rustle?) his hair, tell him what an Archimedes he is—feeling pretty good about myself because I get the reference, cool because he doesn't—but then I remember I don't know whether or not I have hair anymore and forget about the boy and everything, sitting in my little chair and turning the pages of my magazine (which is it, this time—Time, Sports Illustrated, Home and Garden?—it doesn't matter, they're all the same to me, because I'm sick).