Bad News (Coprolalia Part Three)

Chapter Twenty Six

Claire tapped her fingers on Ben's chest as she listened to him breathing.

"So it's just like..."

"Like my head is a plug and the pillow is an outlet and they're not compatible?"

He smiled. "Yeah."

"Wow." Claire sighed. "And you've been living with that for twelve years." She turned her head so that she was looking at his face instead of down his neck.

"So all those days when you seemed exhausted..."

"It was because I hadn't slept in a day, or two days, sometimes three."

Claire sat up and moved so that she was sitting next to him, her head resting against the same pillow as she looked into his very green eyes. "Must have sucked."

"Yeah." He touched her hand. "It was the worst at medical school, being alone in that dorm. But it's been getting better over the past few months. It's the easiest to deal with when you're here."

She laughed. "I bet you say that to all the girls." She joked.

He laughed. "Only you, Claire." He whispered.

She smiled again and kissed his cheek. "What all have you tried to get it better?"

"Well, my mom made me try ASMR and Hypnotherapy, but neither of those did anything." He shrugged. "I've been told to go to bed early and go to bed late, to exercise right before bed and to exercise x amount of hours before, to stay hydrated, to not eat." He sighed again. "There were a few different types of sleeping pills that worked that could knock out an elephant, but those made me too groggy during the day to function, so I only took those for a few weeks. So now I just take the ones that keep away nightmares."

"I have nightmares too." She admitted. "But you said before that it was everything for you, right?"

Ben nodded. "Every single person who I've seen suffer or die and all of the shit that's happened to me or us, yes."

Claire nodded. "For me it's mostly two. Some others make guest appearances, but it's almost always... without fail almost every night I either watch my mother bleed out to death, or I wake up in a hospital bed being told that I lost Abigal."

He wrapped an arm around. "It's all going to be okay, Claire."

She smiled. "We will fix my nightmare problem after we fix yours." She whispered.

"M'kay."

Claire giggled and kissed him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Kira lay in her hospital bed, staring at the ceiling.