In Case of Heartbreak

07 | support

C H A P T E R 7 | K A T I E

The pressure of his lips on mine was driving me wild. My eyes were closed, and as strong hands came up to cup my cheeks, I felt his tongue delve deeper into my mouth, adding fuel to the blazing fire that ran through my veins.

He was evading all of my senses. I could feel his hair as I gripped the strands gently between my fingers, smell his woodsy cologne that lingered on his skin, and hear the quiet moan that escaped him as he pulled me impossibly close. A gentle nip to my bottom lip caused a quiet whimper to escape me, causing his lips to move feverishly on top of mine.

It was thrilling, it was beautiful, and it was –

A dream.

I was startled awake, and pulled from my fantasy, as my alarm sprang to life. With wide eyes I quickly racked my brain around my surroundings, realizing that I'd fallen asleep in the early hours of the morning at my desk. Papers were crumpled slightly from where my head had been resting, a half empty mug of coffee sat near the edge of my desk, and one of my notes had a particularly large spot of drool that caused me to cringe as I stood up. Stretching my back muscles as I strode across the room to stop the incessant beeping, a yawn escaped my lips, and for the first time in weeks, the thought of insomnia popped into the back of my mind.

In my teenage years I'd been very focused on studying, and while I kept up a decent social life, there were times – during exams and while working on projects – when my sleep patterns began to suffer. I hadn't thought much about it at the time, as it was periodic, and I'd usually be able to get through the days with a few cups of coffee.

However, everything went downhill when I collapsed on campus right after my last exam during my first semester at Duke.

My study habits had worsened, and with my mom being diagnosed just months earlier, I'd more or less stopped sleeping. After being taken to the hospital, several blood tests and physical check-ups had given the doctors all the evidence they needed to diagnose me with chronic insomnia. The cause – a mild case of depression, as well as the constant stress I placed on myself.

The year that followed was a hard one. I'd been put on a small dosage of medication to help with my depression, Theo had accepted a job across the world, and my mom's health had slowly begun to deteriorate. My social life suffered, though Stella was fully supportive, and I managed to push through and succeed in school, my job, and helping out my family anyway that I could.

Slowly, the insomnia began to fade, though it was still a reoccurrence during extremely stressful points of my life. At times, I would find myself sleeping through the night, or waking up once during the week, but at other times, I could go weeks with only one to two hours of sleep per night.

I tried my best to keep a sleeping schedule, though with my new position at the hospital, and my final year at Duke starting up, I'd just not been able to stick to it over the past couple of weeks – and the effects of doing so were beginning to catch up to me.

Taking a deep breath, and a minute to collect my thoughts, I realized that following my afternoon shift the day before, I'd been so concentrated on getting my assignments done, that I'd stayed up until three in the morning.

Shaking my limbs out, I headed into the bathroom, hoping that a stream of warm water would sufficiently wake me up and give me enough energy to get through the day.

Though with the thoughts of insomnia ebbing out of my brain, flashbacks from my dream began to race through my mind once more.

Closing my eyes, the brief moment between Dean and I on Saturday replayed. I didn't know what had come over me, but as I leant in to kiss his cheeks, I certainly hadn't meant to meet his lips. But while it was an embarrassing accident, I didn't regret it. The soft touch of Dean's lips against mine had sent a small spark of electricity through my veins, and our conversation had given me hope that, while he needed to heal, he wouldn't hold my avoidance of him during his stay in the hospital against me.