Discombobulate

Chapter Nineteen

Denise had curled up on the couch with her green notebook. Dupe was on the other end sleeping. She rapidly clicked the end of the pen while staring at a blank notebook page. Sheriff Winston left almost three hours ago. 

She had been trying to keep her mind off the earlier incident. Someone purposefully hit her with their truck. Someone wanted to cause her harm. The doctor's words repeated in her head nonstop.  

"You're perfectly fine. It's a miracle considering your head could have been squashed like a grape." 

She could have been killed. Her head could have been pulverized. What would have happened if she died? Would the people, believing she was a murderer, be happy? Would they think justice was served? It made her head spin.

Before going to Opal's and being hit by a car, she was letting her new story idea simmer. Earlier, someone from an internet company came over and hooked up her internet. Now, she could expand her idea with research.

She reached over and grabbed her black Acer laptop. A few clicks later, she was at Yahoo's search bar. Her fingers danced over the keys before she pressed the enter key. 

The effects of sleep deprivation.

She clicked on the first website that grabbed her attention. Her eyes moved from side to side as she scanned the article. Most of it, she already knew. She went back and clicked on another website. Link after link, she learned a little more about sleep deprivation. 

Sleep Deprivation Psychosis: The Horrors of Little Sleep.

"Can cause hallucinations, delusions, and dampened emotional responses?" Denise muttered to herself. "I doubt that's true." 

One time, Denise spent a little over twenty-four hours awake. She was writing a story and cutting it close to Martin's deadline. She emailed a draft to him and immediately fell asleep after. She had been left exhausted, but there were no hallucinations or delusions involved. She could think clearly as long as she kept sipping her coffee.

Those six cups of caffeine kept her brain going. It was the only thing that helped her make her ex-book agent's strict deadline. Those hours spent awake had screwed up her sleeping schedule. It took her a week before she fixed it.

She typed in another question and hit enter. She gasped at the result. Her jaw hung while she read the article.

A man named Randy Gardner set a record by staying awake for eleven days and forty-five minutes. He was only seventeen at the time.

If she stayed up eleven days, she'd be staying awake until the first week of November. Ellen planned on calling her on Friday. She wouldn't have enough time to stay awake for eleven days.

However, she could try to stay up for as long as possible and write. She'd have a first-hand experience with sleep deprivation. It'd be a glimpse of what a character in her story would go through.

Without warning, she closed her laptop. She put it beside her and headed towards the sliding door. Her fingers slid into the back pocket of her jeans. The familiar shape of the box of cigarettes comforted her.

She hadn't had a cigarette for a while. Andy had been right, she should stop smoking before she's addicted. Something inside her begged for nicotine. 

She had been trying to smoke less over the past few days. New things had come out about her family's case. The pressure of the spotlight on her had been decreasing. Hopefully, she'd be completely out of the woods soon. 

She longed for the day when she wouldn't have to see a photo of herself in an online news article. The Brimington Newspaper wanted to interview her when the murders first happened. After she memorized their phone number, she wouldn't pick up the phone.