Kareem had been having some
very bad nightmares. So bad they were, that he had already gotten used to waken
up two hours before it was needed to, drenched in sweat, with the sensation of
having been screaming for a while. He had no idea if that was the case, but the
sensation was more than enough to make him very uncomfortable. He would go then
and shower right away, trying to clean away every single corner of his body. It
wasn’t the sweat that made him do it, but the images in his brain after he had
the nightmares.
He would see them again,
sometimes, as he walked from his home to the bus stop and also at work, where
he was supposed to be focusing on sales and numbers. Kareem had always been
very good at his job but his performance had steadily dropped from the moment
his nightmares had started to the moment his boss called him to his office in
order to explain to him how important it was for them all to have their
employees focused on the job. It was a way of telling him that they would be
many eyes on him from now on.
When he got home from that, he
realized that it was time to deal with the nightmares and, by definition, with
whatever was causing them. He hadn’t been sick recently and he knew very well
he hadn’t done anything wrong at work or to anyone else around him. His
relationship with his family was a bit tense, but that had been happening for
years. The nightmares couldn’t have any relation to that, unless his brain was
too slow to understand how his familiar bonds were a problem to him and maybe
to his way of life.
He decided the first step was
helping himself fall asleep faster and in a deeper way. So he started buying
various types of teas and herbs to make infusions with, which he would take
religiously before going to bed. Some of those worked and some others were
definitive disasters. But even those that worked never did the same good job
twice in a row. The nightmares always came back, one way or the other. He also
tried exercising, which he had considered for a while but he was too lazy to
properly commit to a workout routine.
Kareem would go to the gym for an
hour late at night and try to make himself as exhausted as he could. He would
arrive home, shower in a few minutes and then just drop dead on the bed. It
actually worked for a full week before, one Sunday morning, he woke up thinking
he had wet himself on the bed. Thankfully, it was sweat, but that meant the
nightmares had made a comeback. He even tried not sleeping at all but that
caused even more problems at work, problems he just couldn’t afford to have. He
was even summoned once more to his boss’s office for falling asleep at his
desk.
Kareem went to the nurse’s office
located on the office building he worked for. After all, she was supposed to be
there for all the employees of the company, which was one of the top investors
in the region. So he just made an appointment with her on the phone and visited
one day after work. He explained his whole problem to her and she asked for
some time to reflect on it, as she couldn’t determine at first sight if there
was something physically wrong with him. She also asked him to go to the
hospital and get some tests done.
He spent a whole Saturday doing
that, which had to be the worst way to spend one’s weekend. He had to give a
blood sample, a urine sample and a stool sample. He was also checked by at
least three different doctors and even a psychiatrist appointment was
scheduled. Everything was done to know what was going on with him and he was
actually grateful so many people took an interest in his life. Actually, they
were more interested in him not being able to sue the company, if they happened
to be the ones to blame.
The process took several weeks,
in which Kareem still woke up sweating and screaming. He was so desperate and
sad, that he started going to bars that closed late in order to have a drink
and just avoid falling asleep. At least, he did avoid doing that at home. It
was very uncomfortable when he was woken up by a very angry patron at a bar,
where he had apparently fallen asleep and then started screaming like a
lunatic. That just made him drink even more, which resulted in the formation of
an addiction.
He would go out at night and buy
several beer cans and bottles, as well as wine boxes and sometimes other things
that he could be able to afford with his salary. But all that booze was only
making him fall more and more into an abyss, the same one to which his
nightmares had been pushing him to. The day he found himself drenched in sweat,
after passing out on the living room, all stained with vomit and alcohol, he
knew he had to do something to really fight whatever was happening with him.
But the doctors couldn’t find one
single problem with his body or his mind. Kareem begged them to tell him he was
insane or stupid or something, but they refused to do so. They insisted that
there was nothing wrong with his and that his problems could be psychological.
That was rapidly denied by the psychiatrist he had been forced to talk to, as
he explained in a letter that Kareem was only a bit anxious and worried about
his future, but that there was no evidence to support any other theory. So he
had no answers and he was probably a lost cause.
As a consequence, he was fired a week
after the test results had been sent by mail to his boss. As the company had paid
for every single test and appointment, they were obliged to notify his boss.
The man treated Kareem very badly, practically ignoring all the good work he
had ever done in there. He accused him of being just too lazy to realize and
acknowledge that his work was too much over his head and that he wasn’t really
able to deal with all of it. Kareem had to hear it all and then receive the
letter were his firing was made official.
He grabbed a box, threw all of
his things inside and just left. He didn’t talk to anyone, as no one had had
the balls to say something to his boss. Everyone had been able to hear what he
told Kareem, as the offices were made of glass and nothing could be left to the
imagination. But again, no one said anything and that hurt him deeply. He even
grabbed a report he was working on, due a few days after that day, and just
took it home to burn in the oven. The company depended on that report but
Kareem had depended on them.
After all of that, one would
think the nightmares would have stopped. But they simply didn’t and Kareem dove
even deeper into alcoholism. He was so out of himself sometimes that he would
actually go out and just become that crazy person that yells crazy stuff on the
street. That was how he was arrested one night, after running after a girl who
had not wanted to tell him what time it was. Two police officers beat him and
took him to the station.
He was freed days later, because
the woman had come and had decided to remove all charges against him. The
police wanted Kareem to stay for longer, but they couldn’t do that. So they
just threw him out. He was sober but very sad and walked the longest route to
his house. When he got there it was very late and he wasn’t interested in all
the emails and calls he had been receiving. He would deal with his former boss
the next day. He just wanted to fall asleep and die or at least rest for a
couple of hours, before the screaming began.
However, he was woken up by his
cellphone ringing loudly. He didn’t even know he had the volume on so high up.
He almost didn’t answer but he decided to do it anyway. It was one of the
doctors from the hospital with some very important news. He needed Kareem to
come to his practice as soon as possible.
In that doctor’s office, several
medics and nurses were gathered. They announced that a very rare parasite had
been discovered living inside of him. They had concluded all of his problems
had come from the presence of that organism. Kareem stared at them for a while
and then just left, in silence.
