I stopped at a pharmacy on the way home.Not something I had ever done before. I had never been the kind of man who needed help sleeping, had always considered it a point of quiet pride that my body did what it was told when it was told to do it. The pharmacist asked no questions. I took the recommended dose in the car park before I drove home.It did not work.I lay in the dark and felt everything just as clearly as I had felt it in the hospital car park, the results, Vanessa's hands over her mouth, the step back, Ella's photograph, my mother's shoulders shaking, Harold's voice saying you chose the convenient thing every single time, four pages written to a boy who did not know I existed. All of it moving through me on a loop that the medication could not interrupt. It softened the edges slightly. That was all. The thing underneath the edges did not soften at all.By eight I was at the kitchen table.I looked like what I was. A man who had not slept. Who was running on the specific
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