was exhausted again. Since I’d moved here, I was a slow to sleep—slow to wake up girl, so I usually only got four hours sleep a night because it took me all day to wake up. How weird was that? I was exhausted all day long, then as soon as bedtime came and I got comfortable, I was wide awake.
And that’s absolutely what I was blaming for this morning’s reaction.
I also blamed it for yesterday morning, when I’d shuffled through to the kitchen to make some coffee, with my eyes still mostly shut, and something had dripped onto my neck. Most people would probably have looked up, but because I’d only achieved just over an hour of sleep, I automatically pictured something out of Alien spitting at my back and had turned around to look for it.
Never, ever would I do that if one was near me, by the way, but for some reason it was pertinent to do it then.
I want to say I looked up after that, but I’d be lying. Badly. Try ten freaking minutes of doing it.
Finally, after a drop of water had landed on the top of my head, my brain decided to kick in, and I’d looked up, getting rewarded with a drip right in the eye from the massive orange and brown stain on my ceiling.
My initial thought had been, Jesus Christ, please don’t let that be from old man Albert’s toilet, but then common sense had hit, and I’d called the landlord to report a burst pipe.
Fortunately, it’d been a pipe attached to his cistern that was busted, not a sewage pipe, but I was now having to wait two weeks for my ceiling to dry out so it could be resealed and painted, leaving me with a Donnie Darko shaped stain above me when I went into the kitchen.
Now that shit woke you up when you saw it in the faint light as the sun rose. I swear to the gods of Hollywood, I thought I needed an exorcism in the apartment when I saw it the next morning, forgetting there’d been a leak.
From my landlords lack of fucks when I reported it, I was also fairly certain it wasn’t going to get fixed anytime soon. Two weeks he’d said, but I reckoned it was going to be at least two months.
So me thinking I’d had a stroke wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence. It also sadly wouldn’t be the last time I thought dumb shit like that, either.
My brain was like an old car, it took time to warm up so that it could run without scaring the shit out of the driver.
Picking up my phone, I looked at the screen and saw there was only saw a small crack on the corner of it. I could totally live with that.
Shoving it into the waistband of my shorts, I got up and shuffled through to the kitchen and started the coffee brewing while I considered what I could do about my piercing.
While I waited for the pot to fill, I unlocked my phone and started going through new labrets for it. I loved the daisy, but I loved the duvet and pillowcases more, so it’d have to go.
Through non-caffeinated eyes, I saw a cute little silver squiggle and ordered it, smiling when it confirmed it would be delivered tomorrow. I could hack one night where I was more careful about how I moved my head.
Well, if I was honest, I could hack a morning where I had to think wisely and remember that it wasn’t a stroke, just my ear attached to my pillow.
Two days later…
“Is that a sperm in your ear?” a deep voice asked beside me, making me grind my teeth.
It wasn’t the owner of the voice making me do it—lies, it actually kind of was, but just not as bad as I was doing it at that moment—but the fact that I’d been asked the same damn question repeatedly today.
Hell, my first patient had been the one to start it with, “Girl, why’d you got cum on your ear?” and then it’d just snowballed.
Granted, it’d taken me a moment to realize he meant one singular sperm and not a big wad of it—who’s to say what intoxicated patients get up to before you take their blood? It wouldn’t be the worst thing I’ve ever walked in on—and that it was my new earring, which looked like a swimming semen tadpole.
Pretty much everyone was pointing it out now.
Throwing a