My Year of Rest and Relaxation (50)

I put on the Home Shopping Network. In a haze, I ordered a rice cooker from the Wolfgang Puck Bistro Collection, a cubic zirconia tennis bracelet, two push-up bras with silicone inserts, and seven hand-painted porcelain figurines of sleeping babies. I’d give them to Reva, I reasoned, to condole her. Finally, exhausted, I drifted off just a centimeter from my mind, and spent the night on the sofa in fitful half sleep, my bones digging hard into the sagging cushions, my throat itchy and sore, my heart racing and slowing at intervals, my eyes flicking open now and then to make sure I was really alone in the room.





Six


IN THE MORNING, I called Dr. Tuttle.

“I’m having an insomnia flare-up,” I said, which was finally true.

“I can hear it in your voice,” she said.

“I’m low on Ambien.”

“Well, that’s no good. Excuse me while I put the phone down for a moment.” I heard the whoosh of a toilet, some gutteral grunting that I assumed was the sound Dr. Tuttle made when she hoisted up her pantyhose, then a tinkle of water in the sink. She got back on the phone and coughed. “I don’t care what the FDA has to say: a nightmare is just an invitation to rewire your neurocircuits. It’s really a matter of listening to your instincts. People would be so much more at ease if they acted on impulse rather than reason. That’s why drugs are so effective in curing mental illness—because they impair our judgment. Don’t try to think too much. I hear myself saying that a lot these days. Have you been taking your Seroquel?”

“Every day,” I lied. Seroquel did nothing for me.

“Ambien withdrawal can be dangerous. As a professional, I must discourage you from operating any heavy machinery—tractors or school buses, whatnot. Did you try the Infermiterol?”

“Not yet,” I lied again.

Telling Dr. Tuttle the truth—that the Infermiterol had made me do things out of my nature for days at a time without my knowledge, that the stuff had ruined me for all other medication—would raise too many red flags, I thought. “Blacking out can be a symptom of shame-based disease,” I imagined she would say. “Maybe you’ve been infected by regret. Or Lyme? Syphilis? Diabetes? I’ll need you to see a quote-unquote medical doctor for thorough testing.” That would ruin everything. I needed Dr. Tuttle’s unwavering trust. There was no shortage of psychiatrists in New York City, but finding one as irresponsible and weird as Dr. Tuttle would be a challenge I didn’t think I could handle.

“Nothing seems to be working,” I told her on the phone. “I’m even losing faith in the Solfoton.”

“Don’t say that,” Dr. Tuttle muttered, gasping casually. I hoped she’d prescribe something stronger for me, stronger than even Infermiterol. Phenobarbital. DMT. Anything. But in order to procure such a prescription, I had to make it seem like it was Dr. Tuttle’s idea.

“What do you suggest?”

“I’ve heard from several esteemed colleagues in Brazil that regular Infermiterol use can activate a profound tectonic displacement. Followed up with some filigree work using low doses of aspirin and astral projecting, it’s proven to be quite effective in curing solipsistic terror. If that doesn’t work, we will reevaluate. We may need to rethink our approach to your treatment in general,” she said. “There are alternatives to medication, though they tend to have more disruptive side effects.”

“Like what?”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“In what sense?”

“We’ll cross that road when we come to it. As far as drugs go, the next level up in home-use heavy-sedating anesthetic is a drug called Prognosticrone. I’ve seen it do wonders, but one of its known side effects is foaming at the mouth. Still, we can’t discount the possibility that maybe—now this is rare, in fact, unprecedented in my professional experience—you’ve been misdiagnosed. You might be suffering from something, how shall I put this . . . psychosomatic. Running that risk, I believe we should be conservative.”

“I’ll try the Infermiterol,” I said curtly.

“Good. And eat a high-dairy meal each day. Did you know that cows can choose to sleep standing up or lying down? Given the option, I know what I’d pick. Have you ever made yogurt on the stove? Don’t answer that. We’ll save the cooking lesson for our next meeting. Now write this down because I have a feeling you’re too psychotic to remember: Saturday, January twentieth, at two o’clock. And try the Infermiterol. Bye-bye.”

“Wait,” I said. “The Ambien.”

“I’ll call it in right away.”

I hung up and looked at my phone. It was only Sunday, January 7.

I went to the bathroom and took stock of the medicine cabinet, counting out all my pills on the grimy tile floor. In all, I had two Ambien but thirty more on the way, twelve Rozerem, sixteen trazodone, around ten each of Ativan, Xanax, and Valium, Nembutal, and Solfoton, plus single digit amounts of a dozen random medications that Dr. Tuttle had prescribed only once “because refilling something this peculiar might trigger speculation by the insurance wizards.” In the past, this supply of medication would have been enough for a month of moderate sleeping, nothing too deep if I was conservative with the Ambien. But I knew in my heart that they were all useless now—a collection of foreign currency, a gun with no bullets. The Infermiterol had made all other drugs moot. Maybe it was radiating detoxifying energy into everything on the shelves, I thought, and although I knew that was nonsense, I put all the pills back in the medicine cabinet, but left the Infermiterol bottle out on the dining table, its blue plastic top flashing like a neon light as I looked through the mail. I took a few Nembutal and shot back the dregs of a bottle of Dimetapp.