Tapped (Totaled Book 2) (18 page)

            “I apologize. I know your time is valuable.”

            “It’s quite all right. So tell me what’s been going on,” she urged.

            I told her the CliffsNotes version of my “issues,” explaining that I experienced a very traumatic event in my life less than a year ago and have been plagued with awful nightmares ever since. When she probed further, I let loose.

            “I wasn’t feeling well-rested when I woke up every morning. I knew I was having bad dreams, but I never knew, until recently, that I actually fight in some of my dreams,” I admitted. She was paying attention but not betraying any emotion; I’d blocked Larry out completely in an attempt to focus. “I hurt someone,” I confessed. “I hurt someone pretty bad. Someone that I care about. I need help.”

            She continued to make notes and assured me that she could, in fact, help. She asked if I’d eaten dinner already and then what time I usually went to bed. She even wanted to know everything that I’d done that day, including what I ate.

            When she had all the information she needed, she excused herself and Larry stepped in.

            “I need to get some vital signs and start hooking you up to some of our monitors. I know you aren’t planning on going to sleep for a while, but we like to make sure everything is functioning properly and you’re as comfortable as possible. We want to try and not disturb your routine at all.” He opened a cabinet above the nightstand I’d assumed was just normal storage to reveal multiple machines and monitors. Goodbye went the normal hotel feel of the room.

            Thirty minutes later I had stickers on my chest with wires attached, more wires glued to various spots on my scalp, a blood pressure cuff on my right arm that was as tight as hell when it pumped up, and a probe surrounding my left index finger. It even had a red light. I felt like ET, definitely ready to phone home and get the hell out of there. I might as well have been in a straightjacket. There was no way I was getting any sleep hooked to shit from every which way. They explained that there would be cameras viewing me at various angles while I slept and showed me a button on the nightstand to push if I needed someone to come unhook the monitors for me to go to the bathroom.

            I felt like such a child, needing permission to take a leak. Then I immediately followed that thought with another.

            Children don’t beat their girlfriends in their sleep.

            I had to keep my eye on the prize here and focus on getting better. I watched mindless television for about what seemed like forever and shut it off to try to close my eyes. Even though I was an early riser in the mornings, trying to get my body to fall asleep before eight was just unrealistic. I don’t remember falling asleep. The last thing I did remember was the memory of Bree’s face after I kissed her senseless in the rain. I pictured her with raindrops dripping from her eyelashes, her smile reaching all the way to the corners of her eyes. And I fell.

Chapter Twenty-Three

DREW

            Detecting daylight, I woke up to an unfamiliar room and squinted my eyes closed to think before opening them again. Hotel room? No…sleep study, I remembered, reaching up to feel the electrodes still attached to my head. I slowly sat up and tried to recall if I did anything weird in my sleep. I distinctly recollected getting up once to pee during the night, which was an ordeal because I forgot that I was supposed to call first and tried to get up and go while still attached to everything. I’m lucky I didn’t hang myself before Larry came in to rescue me. I felt bad for not liking Larry at first. He was just doing his job.

            I tried to revive any memory that I might be able to conjure up of my dreams, if I had any. It was a futile effort. I never remembered, but I always knew when I had one. My blankets covers would be in disarray, the contents of my nightstand scattered and spread across the room instead of being neatly lined up. And how I felt. I always felt like shit. As if I’d just been on the scariest rollercoaster of my life with no safety strap.

            It quickly became apparent that it had happened. I’d definitely dreamed last night. Nothing appeared at first glance to be broken, but I felt it. I just hoped they’d caught it and were able to get some information about how to best treat me.

            Before long, Larry and Dr. Lagoski were knocking and coming in to tell me that everything went well. Larry was rubbing some sort of smelly solution around the electrodes on my head to get them off while the doctor spoke.

            “You did have some disturbances in your sleep, which we expected, one of which was quite violent. Do you have any recollection of this?” she inquired.

            “No, ma’am. I feel like I always do after I have a nightmare, but I don’t remember it.”

            “Interesting,” she muttered. “Well, you definitely have some form of parasomnia, with night terrors. It’s up to you and Dr. Greiner to get to the root of the problem. If anyone can help you, it’s him.” I know she was trying to reassure me, but it only made me feel even worse about the situation.

            “W-when will I get the results?” I sputtered at her retreating figure.

            “It usually takes a few days, but this is a pretty cut and dry study. I believe it would be in your best interest for me to forward the preliminary results directly over to Fra—Uh, Dr. Greiner. He’ll have them today.” She grinned and nodded her head. “Good luck to you, Drew.” And she left.

            Larry insisted that there was no hurry and that I was welcome to take a shower or do whatever I needed to do before checking out, but I wanted out of there as soon as possible. I got dressed and made my way to the exit, pausing to see that the receptionist was again engrossed in her book, completely unaware that I’d even walked by.

***

            Thankful that Pat had granted me a day off from training since the sleep study was scheduled so quickly, I headed back to Mick’s house. It was only a matter of hours before I was sitting across from Dr. Greiner in my spot on the couch. He’d called to ask how it went and let me know that he had (surprisingly) received all the results already if I wanted to come in and review everything. Taking him up on it was a no-brainer. What else did I have going on?

            “So Dr. Lagoski put in her notes that you stated that you didn’t recall any dreaming. You clearly had dreams, multiple dreams, in fact, one of which was extremely violent. You don’t remember any of that?” I don’t think he meant to sound accusing, but he did. I couldn’t help not remembering any of it. I never did.

            “It’s never clear,” I said with a sigh. “I rarely remember any of it, but I always know when I had a bad one.”

            “Tell me about that—how you know.” He wasn’t writing. He was one hundred percent focused and listening, truly interested.

            “There are signs sometimes—evidence, if you will—in the aftermath of my lashing out. But it’s mostly a feeling.”

            “Oh? What feeling?” he questioned. “Can you explain that?”

            “I feel awful. Completely exhausted, like I ran a marathon without training first. And I’m testy, short tempered, irritable. I guess because of the lack of sleep.”

            “Yes, that’s one thing that’s quite clear here,” he noted, consulting my results. “You got very little actual sleep last night. Not restful sleep, anyway.” I waited patiently for him to get the paperwork out so he could explain it all to me. “You had multiple short periods of dreaming but three clear-cut night terrors, one of which showed you acting out in a violent manner. You were unable to be roused or awakened during the most violent dream, which coincides with your story of when you attacked Brianne.”

            It sounded impossible. I couldn’t believe that the test showed all of that.

            “It was certainly a sight to see,” the doctor added.

            “You watched it?” I fumed.

            “Of course. I have the video, if you’d like to watch it. You don’t have to, but in your case, I think it would be a good idea. You need to see with your own eyes what happens.” He walked over to a small television on a rolling cart and brought it closer to where we were sitting, pressing play before he sat back down.

            The footage was slightly grainy, and in black and white, but it was clearly me. I looked peaceful one second and distressed the next. First my legs thrashed randomly under the light blanket. Then more frequently, until my arms started punching and elbowing the air, the mattress, my pillow. Once they connected with my pillow, I rotated and started wailing on the pillow as if I was straddling a real person. There was even audio. Unintelligible grunts and growls quickly transitioned into yelling, screaming, and cursing obscenities at the top of my lungs.

            I wanted to throw up. I wanted to cry. I wanted to go into a hole and hide in shame. It hit me like an anvil being dropped on my head. I did this to Bree. I hit
my
Bree like I hit that pillow. And just like the technicians and nurses at the sleep clinic who tried to speak to me over the intercom, she was unable to snap me out of it. I dropped my head in the palms of my hands and bent over to stare at my feet, exhaling a huge breath of guilt.

            “During this period of time, your heart rate spiked from a resting 63 to 210 in a matter of seconds. Your respiratory rate, when the machines were able to calculate it, was over 50. The normal range is 12 to 20. It was as if you were running a marathon, but more like sprinting it, running for your life.”

            I appreciated that he laid it all out there. No bullshit. I needed to hear it like that. I sat quietly, absorbing what I had just learned for a few seconds, before speaking again. “This happens every single night. I can’t remember the last morning that I didn’t feel like this.” It was a somber admission. Hopeless and discouraged. “What do I do? I don’t want to feel like this.”

            “Before we continue, Drew,” he said, waiting until I met his gaze, “what you need to be proud of is the fact that you’re even
here
. Most people with sleep disorders, especially men, are very much in denial that they have a problem at all.”

            “Well, I can’t exactly deny it. I almost killed someone, for Pete’s sake. It’s crystal clear that I’m royally fucked up.”

            “The good news here is that I believe I can help you. There are a few therapies that I’ve used for years for PTSD patients with nightmares, but I have found recent success with one particular treatment that I’d like to try.” He sounded confident and I felt desperate.

            “I’m game. Is this the thing you were talking about yesterday?”

            “EMDR, yes. It stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing,” he defined, which only confused me further.

            “Is it going to hurt?” I asked, though I didn’t really give a shit. I don’t even know why I asked. Maybe I needed something to hurt. I certainly deserved it.

            “Not a bit. Please let me explain.
It has been shown that when a person experiences a traumatic event, it often can’t be processed correctly and is then stored in the amygdalae, which is an “alarm center” of sorts. When using EMDR, a person’s eyes will move back and forth rapidly while they are recalling the traumatic event. This will move the disturbing material from the amygdalae to the hippocampus, where the memory can be restored without ‘triggering’ the extreme reaction.”

            “You’re losing me, Doc,” I interrupted. “Hippo—what?”

            “Don’t get bothered by the weird words,” he suggested. “I’m just trying to clarify the science behind it all. While using this method, bringing those eye movements under control while recalling the same memories, the goal is for the thoughts to be less distressing. We need to recall the trauma that you experienced with your parents and teach your body and mind to cope with it. My hope is that if we’re successful in doing this, it won’t be so traumatic. It won’t be something that you have night terrors about.”

            I listened attentively, awed that there were people out there that dedicated their lives to researching things like this, to help forlorn souls like me live more normal lives.

            “You’re dreaming the scene, reliving it over and over and over because your subconscious doesn’t know how to cope with the memory. We need to teach it how to cope,” he declared.

            “Okay.”

            “Okay,” he affirmed. “Let’s get started.”

            “What do I need to do?” I was clueless.

            “First, tell me something positive. A pleasant memory that you have, when you know unequivocally that you were happy, and when thinking back on it, you can’t possibly feel anything
but
happy.”

            I thought about it for a minute and two memories kept reappearing in my mind, almost competing with each other, fighting over which one made me happier. “Running in the rain with Bree at the shrimp festival, sharing our first kiss in the pouring rain. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.”

            The doc smiled and didn’t respond at first, allowing me to relish the moment. Finally he sighed. “Let’s save that one for a little bit. Can you tell me a happy memory with your family, perhaps with your mother? I think that may work better in this round to combat the negative memory of your father.”

            “Hmm, I guess it would be at the beach. I was maybe eight or nine. We went on a family vacation, the only one I can ever remember. My mother took me down to the beach, just me and her; we built sandcastles and played around, kicking water at each other in the shallow waves. It’s one of my favorite memories of her. He wasn’t around to taint the mood.”

            “That’s perfect. Now we need to rate these memories. On a scale of zero to ten, with zero being purely happy, peaceful, and not distressing at all to ten being the most stressful and disturbing, can you rate the beach memory with your mother?”