Chapter Text
Though pleasant, the melody that encircles you and crescendos until you have been effectively pulled from your slumber is one that you associate with pain.
Perhaps describing waking up as "pain" is a tad melodramatic. Nonetheless, you groan as you blindly grasp for your phone on your nightstand. While you roll over onto your back, you press the side button to silence the alarm and squint into the screen, which is lit up with the "Root of the Day."
Morhpe, -e, -o (Latin). Sleep
Morphine, Morpheus
You'd set up the Root of the Day alarm system you set up in your first year of medical school. Knowing the etymology of words helped you to remember the structures and functions of many medical terms. For example, the Greek root asci- means "a bag, bladder." This knowledge enabled you to recall that ascites is the abdomen's pathological swelling from an accumulation of fluid.
Six years later, and you still wake up to the Root of the Day. And if you didn't feel so fatigued, you'd find today's word ironic - being awoken by sleep.
As far as sleep goes, you consider yourself obsessed. You are its biggest fan. If there were a Sleep Fan Club, you'd be president. You cannot seem to get enough of it. While sleep lust isn't an abnormal development in a medical student, your love affair with the snooze button goes further back than your days as a neurology resident.
In high school, your friends would tease you and call you an "old lady" when you were at parties, yawning by ten pm. Even your mother fondly recollects, "You were the easiest baby to put down for a nap or to bed at night. As soon as you caught sight of your crib, you'd reach for it and giggle. I always wondered what sort of amazing dreams you were having that would make you so excited to get to sleep."
Your enthusiasm and devotion to slumber have most likely shaped most of your important life decisions: your career path, your research, and even your dog.
After tossing on some scrubs, throwing your hair up, and brushing your teeth in the dim, pre-dawn light, you slog to the kitchen, tripping over a giant sprawled out on the floor. Your yelp as you fall onto your hands and knees over the enormous Great Dane is what wakes him.
"Morning, Fezzik." You mumble as he raises his lazy head and breaths a dog-breath yawn in your face before wetting your cheek with his long pink tongue. Last year, when you'd gone to the shelter to pick out your BFF, Fezzik, you'd picked him because the manager had said, "This one's always sleeping," as if it were a defect.
Picking yourself back up and dusting off your hospital-issued light blue scrubs, you nudge him gently with your foot as you get into the fridge, "You gotta get up, boy. Mama's got to go to work, and you're going to Ms. Lizzie's." At the mention of your eccentric elderly neighbor, Fezzik jumps right up.
Though you're a smidge jealous, you can't blame him. If you got to hang out with a lady whose favorite pastimes included feeding you snacks, rubbing your belly while you watched the Game Show Network, and knitting you cozy scarves and booties, you'd be stoked to hang out with her too.
If only we all had a Ms. Lizzie.
After you drop off Fezzik, you head out into the streets of Gotham. Though the sun has yet to show its face, the foot traffic on the sidewalks is already heavy. In the past two years that you've resided in this city, you've gotten used to maneuvering yourself through the crowds and avoiding trouble. You're sure you keep your head down as you cross the intersection that branches into the crime-ridden neighborhood known as The Bowery until you jog down the stairs to the subway.
Though you keep your headphones in, you're not listening to anything. This serves two purposes. It keeps you aware of your surroundings and discourages anyone from talking to you.
Unfortunately, this hasn't worked today.
When the train begins its prolonged screeeeeech indicative of its approach to the Medical Station, you stand and move toward the doors. A malodorous elderly woman in a dirty, bespattered yellow raincoat and a teal bucket hat covering her stringy white locks approaches you.
She clears her throat and barks, "'ey, girlie! I got somefin' for yeh."
But this isn't your first rodeo. You steel your eyes forward and hold onto the bar, pretending you didn't hear her, feeling a twinge of guilt as you do so. As a physician, you feel that you have an extra obligation to face the parts of the world that the rest of the population ignores. But frankly, it gets exhausting, and you're not on the clock yet.
When you exit the train, you do so briskly, taking the stairs two at a time. You walk with long strides to cross the bustling underground plaza of Medical Station. But you are stopped by an icy skeletal hand wrapping around your wrist.
The old woman has managed to keep up with you, and after an impulsive but brief look of disgust when you glance down at her hand on yours, you slip on your well-practiced professional mask. You make a show of popping out one of your earphones to shake off her hand, but keep a kind smile on your face.
"Can I help you?"
Through her huffing and puffing, she grins a toothless grin up at you and repeats, "I 'ave somefin' for yeh."
"Do you?" You maintain a tone that is polite but clipped, "I'm running a bit late. Can it wait?"
This isn't true. You have twenty minutes until your shift starts, and the steps that lead straight up into the lobby of Gotham General are no more than thirty yards from where you stand. However, you're hoping you can politely divert her before resorting to rudely walking away.
Shaking her head, she grabs hold of your wrist again with one hand while rummaging in her large front pockets with the other. Passersby shoot you sympathetic glances as you look helplessly out into the bustling plaza.
"Ah! 'Ere it is!" she exclaims and pulls out a long ribbon of crumpled, yellowed paper. She opens your hand, puts it in, closes your fingers over it, and pats it. Taking note of her dirty fingernails, you tell yourself you'll need to spend a little extra time washing your hands as soon as you get in.
"'S that which yeh seek." she smiles proudly up at you. You try to tug away, but her thin, knobby fingers are deceptively strong, "A token o' the King of All Nights' Dreamin',"
"Oh…," You look down at the ripped ends of the paper sticking out of your fist, "Well… thank you."
As soon as she loosens her grip, you reclaim your hand, shove the paper in the front pocket of your scrubs, and walk brusquely away.
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The encounter at the station has you starting your shift a little frazzled, and it takes until you get to the second case on your desk to get into the groove of things.
Since residents are cheaper labor than the attending physicians, you and the six other neurology residents with whom you share the office are all worked to death. Still, it's a rite of passage into the world of being a medical doctor. Thus, to compensate, you take a swig of your vat of iced coffee, which is more powerful than the Man of Steel himself, and dive in, completely forgetting your strange encounter on your way in.
Six hours into your shift, you finally finish rounding on your patients, typing up histories, and consulting with your attending. This means you get to take your lunch. Yet even on your lunch, you don't really get a break. This is when you catch up on your emails.
An email thread from your research colleagues draws your attention. The research team you're part of consists of only two other people: an attending psychiatrist at Arkham, Dr. Ryan Campbell, MD, and a neuroscience professor at Gotham University, Dr. Sadie Jones, Ph.D.
Tonight the three of you are planning to do your first preliminary sleep trial. You'd finally gotten the green light from the ethics department to use the dream control serum developed by Sadie and Ryan in a standardized research subject. The plan is to use the preliminary data from the trial tonight to submit for further funding.
Unfortunately, according to the email thread, the standardized patient has strep throat and can't participate. This means that the application deadlines for the grant applications would probably not be met. Which, in turn, means you'll all have to wait another six months to apply again.
You feel deflated. So deflated, in fact, that you put down the cookie you are eating. This is serious if you are rejecting chocolate chips. Twisting your bottom lip between your index finger and thumb, you wrack your brain, trying to think up a solution.
The door to the office opens, and Kevin, one of the first-year residents, comes in. "Ah! Just the little lady I was looking for!"
You can barely contain your eye roll.
Kevin is the quintessential All-American physician: male, white, cis, tall, blond hair, blue-eyed, perfect teeth, private-schooled, entitled, asshat. As far as the pecking order goes, as the second-year resident, he should be at your beck-and-call. Instead, he takes every opportunity he gets to patronize you. Hence, "little lady."
Kevin strides over and leans back against your desk. You wrinkle your nose, taking note of how close his ass is to your cookie. "Will you trade me your on-call tomorrow for my on-call next Saturday night? I just got a hot date."
Whenever any of the residents need a shift trade, you are the go-to. As the token workaholic with no social life, you typically don't mind. However, Kevin getting a "hot date" while working rubs you the wrong way and is definitely questionable ethics on his part. Thus, you are planning on saying no on principle. Only when you open your mouth to do so, an idea pops into your head, and you freeze.
If you have your on-call shift covered tomorrow, it will free up your evening, and you can be the standardized research subject tonight. Sure, the validity of a researcher being a subject wouldn't hold up in publication, but it would work to get the funding paperwork done. So you snap your jaw shut and nod.
"Atta girl!" he smiles and rubs the top of your head - like you are a dog and not a human woman. The urge you have to bite his fingers is potent - but since you are already replying to Sadie and Ryan and he's already moved on, you resist.
You do, however, throw away the rest of your cookie.
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You don't have time to run home before you need to be at the lab. Luckily you keep a toothbrush and toothpaste in your locker at the hospital.
"Where's Fezzik?" Sadie asks as she sticks the electrodes on your forearms.
You strap the breathing monitor below your breasts. Though you've set up plenty of polysomnograms, you've never been on this end of a sleep study. It's mildly surreal.
"Living his best life and probably getting type two canine diabetes with my neighbor."
Sadie chuckles at this, and you hold out your index finger for her to tape the O2 monitor on. When you first met the neuroscientist, you'd estimated her to be way too bubbly for you. You were convinced that doing research with her would make you crazy. With a head full of strawberry blond cherubic curls framing her round face, huge green eyes, a smattering of freckles across her nose, and a fucking dimple to boot - she is the picture of the wholesome girl next door.
Given time, you realized she had the same twisted sense of humor as you, and you warmed to her. She always surprises you and is the closest thing to a (human) friend you have in Gotham.
Once you're all hooked up to the monitors and everything is ready to go, Sadie stands up and claps her hands.
"Ready?"
You nod.
"Thanks again for doing this." She fills the syringe but hesitates at the foot of the bed, "I guess you're more qualified than I am."
You take the syringe from her, pull down the side of your pants, and without hesitation, shoot the serum into your thigh. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see her wince, "This is why I chose academics."
With a smirk, you hand over the needle for her to dispose of.
Before she leaves, she does a final sweep of you, making sure everything is in place, "Are you sure you're comfortable? I mean, you're still in your work clothes."
"Oh yeah," you wave her away, "Lucky for me, scrubs are basically pajamas."
"Sleep tight, Doc." She winks at you before turning off the light and closing the door.
I always do.
You put in the noise-canceling headphones and roll onto your stomach to get comfortable. Something in the front pocket of your scrubs makes a crackling sound, and you reach in to pull out a piece of wadded-up paper.
The paper the woman in the subway gave you this morning.
Since you're all hooked up to machines, you're stuck in bed. Accordingly, you shove the paper under your pillow unceremoniously. Then, because, as previously mentioned, you are besotted with sleep - you begin to doze off immediately.
The last thought you remember thinking is: Here I go, into the arms of Morpheus, as they say. Hey! That's funny. Morphe - was The Root of the Day…