I scoured the halls in a frenzy. I was awake in my grey and white scrubs and the hallway lights were turned down low. The night counselors hung around awkwardly with tired expressions on their faces. They were on the edge of perception. But I wasn’t a new thing at this part of the night. I had become quite a regular face for them. I went towards the sweet older lady with fake red hair and a yellow denture smile. Her name tag read Sandy, but who knows if it was really her name. She looked at me through her bifocals with a bored look. “You need Dr. Klause again?”

I nodded. An unexplained sweat was dripping from my forehead and I could feel my legs shaking beneath me. She led towards a part of the building I was familiar with. The resident doctor wing. Only the head honchos stayed here and only I ventured here on nights like these. It was different than the rest of the school. No white walls but rather a deep burgundy. The smell of smoke drifted through the walls and swept over the cherry wood floors. I heard the distant sound of classical music get louder with every footstep until it was a menace in my head, threatening every incoherent thought I was thinking.

Sandy led me past the ornate doors with names written in gold leaf. I couldn’t pronounce half of them, but the last door on the left was one I knew well. The only door I had been in over in this wing. Dr. Martin E. Klause. The door read in metallic paper.

Sandy gave two knocks and the door seemed to open eerily on its own. Dr. Klause looked up from his chair by the fireplace, the reflection of the flames in his eyes. He looked just as bored as the other attendants. “Bad dreams, again, Gerard?” he sighed and pushed his glasses up his nose.

I brushed my nose and tried to steady myself in the doorway. I was losing balance as the music kept playing from the vintage record player in the back of the Dr.’s room. The fire crackled and burned and the orange bright light made my eyes squint and sting. I registered the question and nodded quickly, gulping down my fragile attention span.

Dr. Klause reached around to the front pocket of his ruby red robe. He pulled out a small container of pills. Two red and blue capsules danced around inside as the Dr. shook the tube.

My eyes followed their movements, regretting coming to him immediately. He was gonna medicate me, again. Fuck.

“Take these two pills and try to go back to bed. You really must stop this, Gerard. It’s childish for your mind to be playing such tricks on you,” he handed Sandy the bottle and looked away into the fire again. His face looking as stressed as the sizzling logs. “Sleep well,” he waved them off without so much a glance.

Sandy walked me back to my room and gave me a glass of water, making sure I took the pills. I felt the bitter taste go down my throat and the water refuse to quench any thirst I might have had. I felt the dense shells travel down my esophagus and I winced, knowing I only had a few minutes before they’d knock me out. I wouldn’t feel right again for days, maybe weeks and as soon as the side effects wore off, the hallucinations would start again. Sometimes so bad that the only choice would to be going back to the lavish, burgundy wing for more.