Melatonin Dreams – Stafford Challenge Day 2

It’s always a coin toss. Do I want to get some sleep even with disturbing dreams, or do I want to wake up at 2 a.m. and try to suffer through the day?

I chose the sleep with dreams last night. Ten milligrams brings nightmares, but a five milligram dream is not all that terrible – usually.

In my 5 mg dream, I had been on a cruise ship with my husband’s side of the family, and we’d just returned home when some of us fell ill. And by family, I mean all of the Thursday night dinner crowd: Briar, his dad, his brother and sister-in-law, his son, and me. When two of them tested positive for the flu, some guys in white coats showed up at our door and put us in a van and took us to a medical testing lab to see if we had it, too.

We did. 

They took us into a hall, where everyone was lying on the floor waiting on a bed. All the cruise baggage was still there, and each person was lying next to the luggage they brought. I took a picture of this, because I wanted proof they were making us get on the floor.

One by one, each person was taken down the hall when a bed became available.

I pointed to the copy machine I’d brought. Our office really did get a new one recently, and we’d all had to attend the 15-minute training on how the new one works and what not to do to break it. So it seemed logical that I’d taken the new copy machine on the cruise and now had it with me, rolling it around everywhere, even here in the medical facility.

The doctor came to tell me I’d tested positive and that I was being admitted to the hospital, and he had a little laptop that had my entire history on it. ”Well, if I’d seen that you’d taken pain pills when you had your children, I’d have never prescribed them for you. You’re probably only here for the prescription pain meds,” he accused.

This sent me into a fiery rage, and I unleashed on him. I screamed and caused a scene, right next to my copy machine I was pulling around.

“You %@$&@%^,” I yelled, pointing my finger an inch from his nose, making sure everyone in the building could hear me. “Yeah, you in your professional lab coat. I am not here by choice. Your people came and got me and accused me of being sick, and now you’re falsifying documents to say that I am and you’re forcing me into the hospital against my will when I have to go to work tomorrow. I am NOT taking your medicine.” 

I find myself so satisfyingly bold in dreams, yet never enough like this in real life. 

With that, he motioned to a nurse to come start an IV on me, and I started kicking and flailing my arms. 

“What exactly do you do?” he asked.

“I make sure people can read so they have sense. Something you skipped in school. You have no sense. You did not ever get the help you need, and all these people in this facility think you’re a real doctor, but you’re not. You’re here to try to trick us, and you’re sending us to another planet.” 

Everyone was staring at me, dumbfounded, and my family was all in a deep sleep, too deep to care. They’d already gotten their IV medicine and were being taken away, one by one.

I moved over behind my copy machine, but suddenly it sprang a handle and wheels and started looking more like a wagon, and one of the male nurses pulled it off to the side where I couldn’t get behind it. I was scared my school was going to charge me for it, and I threatened to sue the nurse for damaging this high dollar equipment.

The nurse didn’t care. No one cared.

They put me on a bed and wheeled me to a chamber.

They made us all get into hyperbaric pods so they could monitor us to be sure we were sleeping the fevers off. The chambers slept 4, with beds all around the edges of a capsule shape. Two kids’ beds were at both short ends, and regular twins were on the edges. You had to step up into the chamber on a little step that dropped down, and it looked a lot like a cross between an Airstream camper and a silver space ship. There were even lights on the thing.

They tried to put me in one with an old lady and a young child, and I saw them asleep and started screaming to wake them up. I screamed in the child’s ear, directly in the ear, thinking the child would cry, but she didn’t. 

The door sealed shut like on an airplane, and an engine started revving, and I was beside myself with fear, knowing I was headed to Mars and that no one on this ship knew how to fly it. 

I woke up in a sweat at 5 a.m., more ready than ever to go to work.

I didn’t have a copy machine to lug back to the office, and I was not headed to Mars.

I’m cutting back to 2.5 milligrams of Melatonin tonight. I’ll cut the gummy in half and see if I can get to a more manageable and more normal nightmare.