Falling For Her Dream

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was a beautiful morning in Paris, despite the way it started for Abby.  Her nightmare was not the perfect start to this leg of her vacation.  It was becoming clear to Abby that her nightmares were a projection of her fears.  Fears of the inevitable separation from Kristopher she would have to face when she left to go back home to Australia.  During the days, she did her best to be ignorant of those fears and pretend everything was fine.  But as the days progressed, she tried harder and harder to stay awake each night in a vein effort to stave off the onslaught of nightmares.  Staying up was two-fold.  One, it was a way to put off the inevitable bad dreams and two, she hoped that by exhausting herself, she’d be far too tired for her subconscious to take over when she slept.

The second night in Paris for Abby was restless and she woke in the middle of the night in a panic, sweat beading out of every pore and shaking from the terrifying dream she’d had.  Kristopher had slept right though her bad dream.  When she’d woken in her frightened state, he was sound asleep.  She’d gotten up and splashed some water on her face, tried to compose herself and quietly slipped back under the covers of the bed she was sharing with Kristopher, all without disturbing him or Alli in the next room.   For the remainder of the night, she was unable to sleep and just laid under the covers, staring up at the ceiling.  It was on night three Abby devised her plan to stay up as late as possible.  She was already tired from her lack of sleep the night before, so she figured that pushing herself to the limit was the best way to avoid another bad dream.  She had to at least try.  At around eleven o’clock in the evening, after annoying both Alli and Kristopher with her odd incessant need to stay up and ‘experience everything Paris had to offer’, Alli and Kristopher had won the battle and convinced Abby it was time to turn in for the night.  Abby had managed to make a quick stop during the day to buy a box of ‘sleep aid’ pills.  Her hope was with utter exhaustion and something to help her sleep, her body would be unable to conjure up any subconscious activity that could lead to another nightmare.  It was time to put her plan to the test!

Kristopher was beginning to worry about Abby.  She was having bad dreams every night.  He felt helpless and didn’t know what to do for her.  He knew she’d had a bad dream the night before.  Her tossing and turning and mumbled cries had kept him awake well after the nightmare had passed.  Each time Abby had a bad dream, he tried to be there for her, comfort her and reassure her that everything was okay, but it wasn’t helping.  Abby seemed embarrassed and she would become withdrawn and sad for hours afterwards.  Despite his concern, it nearly tore him in two when he chose to have Abby believe he’d slept though her latest nightmare.  He felt awful.  When he heard her go to the bathroom and run water, he wanted to go to her and make sure she was alright.  It was tearing him up inside.  Kristopher had a feeling that tonight’s antics was Abby’s way of trying to avoid going to sleep and facing another bad dream.  But it had become extremely late and coupled with lack of sleep, he was unable to stay up any longer.  Alli’s eyes were red from being overtired as well.  Kristopher understood what Abby was doing, but the night had to come to an end.

Abby conceded defeat and went into the bathroom so she could take a sleep aid pill where no one could see and question her.  She slipped into her embarrassing flannelette pyjamas and mentally prepared herself to go to bed.  When she entered the room she was sharing with Kristopher, he was already in bed and looked like he’d already fallen asleep.  Abby thought to herself, ‘some people are so lucky, close their eyes for two minutes and could be in a deep sleep, just like that!’.  She was envious.  Abby lacked that ability.  Some nights it would take her hours to finally fall asleep.  Even on the odd occasion when she was so tired and it only took around thirty minutes to fall asleep, she’d wake after an hour or so and be right back to square one!  Awake and no chance of falling back asleep for at least another hour.