Sanus kept breathing, counting the seconds between every breath and trying his best to not let his next seconds vary with any nanosecond. His eyes were bloodshot and they itched from his lack of sleep. This wasn’t anything he could help. Sanus was afraid to sleep. His eyelids were awful heavy. He stood up from where he sat and walked over to the door. He needed coffee. He poked his head out of the door to find a long hallway with red carpet and white ivory walls. A pencil-thin nurse walked around with a notepad in her arms, looking around confusedly. Sanus motioned for her to come to him. “Excuse me, Miss, do you have any coffee?” She looked at him as if he spoke another language and shook her head no. “How long of a wait am I in for?”

“Not long.” The nurse dismissed herself from the conversation and walked into a different room. Sanus sighed, deeply annoyed at the attitude of the nurse and shut the door quick at first, then he remembered where he was and muted the slamming of the door. As he took his hand off of the cold metal knob of the door, he felt it turning beneath him. Quickly, he scampered to his seat. If it was the doctor, Sanus did not want him to think that he was much of a complainer.

A tall broad shouldered man in a white coat shut the door behind him. He made sure to lock it as well, something of which made Sanus very nervous. When the doctor turned around, Sanus could not help but be very judgemental. The man was very large. He had an enormous beer gut that sagged due to his height. The doctor looked like an idiot. ‘Why should I trust this fat doctor? He looks like he can barely solve his problem – how can he fix mine?’ Sanus thought to himself as he looked at the doctor’s face.

Looking at the doctor’s face was what made Sanus tremble. The doctor had a white face and a round red nose, and thick red lipstick spread in a smile like a clown. “Who are you?” Sanus said, annoyed. ‘This isn’t too funny for the doctor to come in looking like a clown when he knows good and damn well I’m having a problem already!’

“Well, hello patient Sanus! I’m Doctor Ribald. What seems to be the problem?” The doctor said in an over-done thrilled voice. Sanus kept an angry eye on Ribald. He had a slight suspicion something very sinister was about.

“I’m having these problems…” Sanus began, trying to sound concerned and yet trying to talk normally.

“We all have problems, patient Sanus.” Ribald said jokingly. Sanus didn’t like to be interrupted and quite frank, he wanted to punch Ribald in his clown nose.

“That’s why I am here though. I’m seeing hallucinations. I forget things quickly and I am having trouble differentiating between reality and…” Sanus paused and looked up. The sight he saw puzzled him so much that he wanted to punch himself in the face. Doctor Ribald had taken off his work shirt and was doing toe-touches.

Sanus sighed. “Doctor, I want it all to stop!”

Ribald snickered to himself, patted his stomach dry of sweat and walked over to him. “One pill. Once. Take it.” As Ribald opened his palm, a oval-shaped pill crept into the light from the many crevices of the fat hands.

Sanus took the pill into his hand, reluctantly, looked at it, then quickly and in one movement, swallowed it.

It took a minute for it to start working but when it did, Sanus felt more relaxed than ever before and everything turned white.

He took a final breath and exhaled everything. Now, it was time for the longest nap he would ever take.