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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Adomanzius on 2026-08-11 18:42:31+00:00.

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When I had to call someone to pick me up from the hospital, my first thought wasn’t my ex-wife, not my brother, not even my mother–well, she did live two states away–but good old Billy. And not just because of optics, either, even though getting hospitalized for an insomnia-induced accident definitely didn’t sound flattering; it was the kind of information I’d rather not tell the people closest to me.

Instead, it was because, even though it was three o’clock in the morning, Billy picked up the phone immediately and said he’d be here in thirty.

For all his faults, he was solid as a rock. And, like clockwork, he was standing by my bed twenty-eight minutes later. Worry pressed his eyebrows like they were under exceptional gravity, but the first words he said to me were jovial in tone “Jesus, what the shit did’ya get yourself into now, Tommy?”

Shit, was it that obvious? I hadn’t been in front of a mirror since the accident, but Billy’s reaction made me scared to see what I looked like.

“Is it really that bad?” I asked.

“Half your face is black! Fuck, they even put a bandage around your head! That’s the corniest kind of bandage you could get,” he said with a stifled chortle.

“Fuck off,” I said, laughing then immediately suppressing it because it hurt my head.

Billy was insistent in his humor, which made it both a blessing and a curse. There was no off-switch, so you just had to be in the mood. I wasn’t at all sure if I was.

He sat down on the bench by the bed. “Alright, now tell me what really happened.”

I shrugged. “Fell down trying to catch a cat.”

“A cat?” he said, and leaned back. It reminded me of the way my therapist leaned back to write on her notepad whenever I said something of note; usually something fucked up, something we’d circle back to in a session or two.

“Well, sort of. I was at work and went outside for a smoke break. Then, well, I think I heard something, and so I look up and there’s a black cat on the edge of the roof, its back legs tight like springs. Then the fella jumped, so I lunged forward, trying to predict where it would land, and it ended up with me faceplanting on the curb instead.”

“Shit. Was the cat okay?”

“Well, that’s the thing. There was no cat.”

Billy leaned forward. “Huh?”

“It’s embarrassing. I insisted they even check the CCTV footage. God. There was no fucking cat. I’d hallucinated the whole thing.”

Billy’s face flushed. “You using something?” he asked, the usual jovial nature of his voice completely gone.

“Shit, no! Fuck no! Nothing like that. You know I would never.”

He leaned back again, crossing his arms. “Enlighten me, then.”

The fact was that we didn’t really talk about personal stuff when we hung out. That’s just how typical male relationships tend to be: he might be like a brother, but you don’t even know the name of the girl he last dated. Me and Billy’s relationship was no different, and so through gritted teeth and a pumping heart, I had to explain to him that for the last couple of weeks, I’d barely slept.

Like, clinically not slept. Full-on insomnia. Probably due to burnout at work; it was taking me three energy drinks alongside a pack of cigarettes just to get myself through a shift. I know it sounds ironic, that I’d need stimulants throughout the day, but it wasn’t that they kept me unnecessarily awake. Just… aware. Hands on the wheel. Otherwise, it was like my brain didn’t even really work. I’d lose track of time, constantly forget what I was doing, and my eyes just wandered aimlessly. Caffeine and nicotine forced my body to at least go forward, even if it was running on fumes.

I’d had to stop wearing my smart watch because my resting heart rate had become scarily high.

And I did try to get help, but the doctors gave me shit advice, and the pills didn’t work for more than an hour’s worth of sleep.

“Jesus,” Billy said. “That’s fucked up, man. I’m sorry… I didn’t know.”

“Well, I didn’t tell you, did I?”

He laughed. “Guess not. Anyway, why am I here?”

“Well, the doctors are quite aware of my situation, and would like to keep me overnight, at least. But I don’t wanna stay. I fucking hate hospitals. But they won’t let me go alone. Said that I need an escort.”

“Right, right. But–” Billy said, then hesitated for a moment before continuing, the words coming out slower now. “I get that you don’t like hospitals, I do. They suck every which way. But maybe there’s a point in keeping you overnight, no? I mean, they could probably give you something to knock you out, get some sleep.”

Then he smiled and looked in my eyes. “Just my two cents here, amigo, which I feel I’m entitled to, seeing as I gave up my beauty sleep for this. Pun not intended.”

He was right, in a sense. But mentally, I just couldn’t deal with it. There wasn’t a pill that would knock me out–they’d pretty much told me as much–but what they could do is just inject me with something though the IV.

I hated that idea more than I hated not sleeping.

And if I stayed there without drugs, I’d just wallow in pain and anxiety until they’d find another thing to charge me for. Another thing that wouldn’t help.

Really, I just wanted to get home.

“You’re right,” I said. “Mostly, at least. Thing is… I’ve already tried everything. Pills, yoga, exercise, mindfulness, everything. I don’t think they can do much more, and–well, I just wanna get home.”

Billy looked around the room and sighed. “Yup, I get it.”

“So you’ll drive me?”

“Sure. But listen, there’s something that might help. I mean, if it’s really that bad, and you’ve tried everything else.”

What I thought he’d suggest is mushrooms. Reiki. Chamomile tea. Some bullshit thing that helped someone he knew somewhen. I didn’t want to be so stubborn in my belief, but I truly did not think there was any quick fix for my insomnia. Or a long fix. Thinking back on it, I mostly relied on the idea that, since the insomnia had come out of nowhere, that it would then go away by itself, too. Like a weird bump you get on your skin, and then two months later it would be gone.

The difference, of course, was that any prolonged duration of semi-hardcore insomnia would have “permanent negative effects, both mental and physical,” as the doctor had put it.

“Yeah?” I said, knowing that I did, in fact, owe him enough to at least listen to what he had to say.

Billy stood up and walked to the window, peeking through the half-open blinds. The city was almost completely dark outside, except for the odd constellations of streetlights that were stuck to the ink-black vista like fireflies in a glue trap.

“This might sound cuckoo, but hear me out,” Billy said, turning to look at me. “My grandma was a stubborn woman. Never did like doctors or any other man telling her what to do. But of course, she got sick just like the rest of us. But somehow she’d always find a way to kind of, I don’t know, get around it? It’s like, one day she’s coughing up blood, and the next she’s healthy as a horse.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, well.” Billy coughed and scratched the back of his head, like he was gathering his thoughts, or delaying what he wanted to say. “Years later I asked her how she did it, and she told me about this technique she had.”

“Uh-huh…”

Billy threw his hands up and said “Aw fuck, I knew you’d look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m telling you some bullshit. Your eye might be black but it’s still rolling, man. Just… let me explain. Withhold judgement for like two minutes.”

“Alright,” I said. “You have my word.”

“Alright, so. She got sick, and then it’d go away. Poof. Never saw a doctor in her life. And this wasn’t just some misremembered childhood memory; it happened even as I got older. I got curious, and at some point I was convinced she’d made a deal with the devil. It was that fucking weird. But I didn’t wanna bother her about it. That’s until she got sick and wasn’t getting any better.”

The last words had the timbre of tears. Billy took a second to breathe.

“What happened?” I asked him.

“Cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” he said, cracking his knuckles and rolling his shoulders, like he was getting ready to lift something heavy. “Anyway, she got to be in such a bad spot that my mum forced her into the hospital. It was the first time she’d been in one since birth, or at least she said as much. And I could tell she was dying, that she couldn’t fix this. On what would become our last visit, I got to have a few minutes alone with her as mum went out to get us coffee. I couldn’t not ask her, and so I did, and she told me about the enemy game.”

“It’s a game?” I asked.

“Game, technique, exercise. Whatever. The way it works is that you make whatever sickness or ailment you’ve got into an enemy: you make it into something that’s strictly not part of you. And once you do that, you can fight it, and hopefully defeat it. And if you do, it’s simply gone.”

“Well, shit,” I laughed. “That sounds easy!”

“I guess it does, doesn’t it? Anyway, first off, you need to give it a name. Any name, just something you can remember.”

“Like, what? Martha?”

“As in Stewart?” Billy said with a snort. “Well, you can call it whatever, so why not Martha. And then it becomes Martha of Insomnia.”

“Oh, so it gets a last name?” I joked.

“Yup,” he answered, not taking the bait. “Then you go somewhere where you can be alone. An empty room, a field somewhere, a parking lot if you’d like. Just as long as nobody else can hear or see you. Then you just say the magic words...

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