Lance pecked away at his keyboard doing his best to draft the monthly progress report Doug insisted he file. Writing these things always reminded him of being back at Ryerson and trying to type up an essay or term paper. One thing about going to boarding school was it meant you learned how to work through any manner of distractions. A soccer game going on in the hallway? No problem. Half a dozen boys in your dorm room shooting the shit about whatever movie or band was the in thing at that moment? Nothing but background noise. And a cell phone that wouldn’t stop ringing? Lance told himself he barely heard the thing, but he did slip open the drawer where he had stashed it to take a look at the display.
It was the damn dream whisperer again. He had been dodging her calls for days. Well, he had himself to blame for that. He’d actually answered the first time she called. It had been his intention to apologize and try to set things right with her. She responded by suggesting that he should bring Adam back in for a follow-up visit, at no charge. He assured her that was generous, but used the excuse that he was busy with work. She had countered that with suggesting that Adam’s mom perhaps could bring him in. So he had to lamely say that his wife was busy too. It should have been enough, but for all her mystical intuition, Phelicity Green seemed to not be able to take a hint.
He didn’t answer any more of her calls, but that didn’t seem to deter her. She left one voicemail message after another. There was a lot of new-age mumbo jumbo interspersed with her assurance that she wasn’t after his money, an assurance that to Lance’s trained ears meant most assuredly she was after his money. She had no doubt taken note of his watch, his shoes. Maybe she had even spied his Audi parked on the street. She knew he had some dough, and now she just needed to figure out her best strategy for parting him from it.
His phone chimed to let him know he had a new voicemail message. He should ignore it and get the damn progress report done, but curiosity got the better of him. The dream whisperer’s voicemail messages had been growing increasingly more bizarre, and he wanted to hear what she had to say this time around.
He set the phone on the desk and switched it to speaker. Her tinny voice spilled out of the device. “Mr. Walker, I’m sorry I missed you.”
“Yeah, I bet you are,” he muttered to his empty office.
“I can’t stress enough how imperative it is that you and Adam come back to meet with me,” she said. “As I’ve explained previously, there would be no charge for the visit. I detected a certain psychic energy when I spoke with Adam, and I think it’s very important for me to see you and him again so that we can explore this further. I must emphasize that there could be grave consequences if we do not address this issue at once.”
There was a rap on his door, and when he looked up, Corey was standing in the open doorway. Lance quickly silenced his phone.
“What’s that all about?” Corey asked and nodded toward the phone. “Sounds serious.”
“Just some nutter,” Lance assured him.
“You’re not sick or something are you?” Corey glanced back out into the hall to see if the coast was clear, then stepped into Lance’s office, closing the door behind him.
“Trust me, I’m fit as a fiddle.” Lance looked hopelessly at his computer screen where the two lackluster sentences of his unfinished progress report seemed to taunt him.
“Yeah, well, check this,” Corey said. “I go into the doctor a few weeks ago because I feel like the old ticker’s maybe not working like it used to, right? Honestly, it was Evelyn who made me go, you know what with my dad having his heart trouble and all. So Doc goes and gives me a prescription for these pills. Well, next thing you know, I can’t get it up.”
Lance abandoned any pretense of trying to work on the progress report.
“Probably just an off night,” Lance said.
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too, I mean, it was Evelyn, who, let’s face it, could probably shrivel up the testicles of even a sex-starved prison inmate with just one glance, but then the other night I’m with this fucking model, and it was just not happening, man.”
“Maybe you should talk to your doctor,” Lance said.
“I did one better. I took a look at that little paper they give you with the pills. You should see all the side effects this thing has. I mean, it’s like a mile long in microscopic type, and right there in black and white: impotence. I threw the whole goddamn bottle in the trash.”
“Is that such a good idea?” Lance asked.
“Look, I’d rather get felled by a heart attack than be some limpdick loser,” Corey said. “So all I’m saying is you watch out for these doctors. Who knows what the hell shit they’re trying to shove down your throat.” Corey nodded at the phone still sitting on Lance’s desk.
Lance stared, transfixed by the words on his computer screen. After Corey had shared his story about the heart pills, Lance was reminded of something he wanted to look up. He had meant only to track down the sleeping pills Caitlin claimed couldn’t be picked up in the local drug store. He thought he might be able to track some down online. Instead he found an article about the pills having been discontinued and a statement about the host of side effects that had prompted this.
Like Corey’s heart medication, the side effects list was lengthy, but there were some particular symptoms that jumped out at him. Prolonged use could lead to cognitive dysfunction, memory issues, mental fog and periods of confusion. Right away he saw their oven in flames. He heard Caitlin’s panicked voice on the other end of the phone when she called to tell him about her car accident. He had chalked up her recent mishaps to work stress and trying to balance her career with the equally demanding task of being a mother, but what if it was all side effects from those damn sleeping pills?
He blamed himself. It had been clear to him for some time that she was addicted to the pills, and a part of him was troubled about her overuse of the drugs, though not troubled enough to try to help her. It had been pure selfishness on his part, because having a wife who slept soundly through the night was a huge benefit to him. There were a million things he loved about Caitlin, but the fact was he never would have considered the two of them moving in together and then later marrying if he had learned that she was a light sleeper or someone who woke often during the night.
Now Caitlin was suffering from the cognitive dysfunction that was listed in the side effects, and it might have all been due to his own selfishness. He might have saved her from herself without realizing it with his mad bathroom cleaning, but he also wondered, if the drugs were that habit-forming, if quitting them cold turkey might have serious repercussions.
There were other sleeping pills out there, ones that were still sold legally. Certainly their side effects couldn’t have been anywhere near as severe as the Pacifcleon list. Weren’t there even some herbal sleep remedies? If all else failed, maybe he could purchase some sort of magic sleep amulet from Phelicity Green.
That last idea made him laugh out loud in his empty office.
“I need to head out a little bit early,” Lance said, peeking his head into Doug’s office. “Have an errand I need to run.”
“Did you have that monthly progress report?” Doug asked.
“I’m gonna finish it up tonight,” Lance promised as he started backing out of the doorway. “I’ll email it to you first thing tomorrow morning.”
Doug might have protested, but Lance had already made it so far down the hallway that his friend and boss would have needed to physically get up and intercede, which Lance knew wasn’t going to happen.
Lance picked up one of those little baskets on his way into the drug store and navigated to the sleep aids aisle. Insomnia was clearly big business, judging by all the competing products that promised a good night’s sleep. And this was only the over-the-counter junk. There was a whole market of prescription-strength stuff as well.
Lance started off reading the fine print on the back of each package, trying to compare them to each other, but there were too many different products, and he found he was losing track of which box had said what. He had a better solution. None of the packages were overly expensive, and since the ultimate decision would come down to Caitlin anyway, he would just buy one of each and let her decide what she wanted to use. She could even experiment with the different pills to see which worked best for her—well, if that was advised.
A woman stepped into the aisle as Lance was filling his basket up with sleeping aids.
“Wow, you must really have trouble sleeping,” she said.
Lance chuckled politely. He waited for the woman to move on to the next aisle before he finished his sleeping aid shopping spree as quickly as he could. He didn’t want to attract any more attention to himself.
When his phone rang, he thought it would be Caitlin wanting to know where he was, but when he looked at the display, he saw it was Phelicity Green calling again. He went into his phone’s settings and did something he should have done about five phone calls ago. He blocked the dream whisperer’s number.