Come Back to Me

I hear screaming, lots of screaming. It's me, I'm crying. Someone is carrying me, running, it hurts. I shoot up, sweating and panting and lie back down, glancing over at the clock. It's 3:30am. The same nightmare keeps waking me up almost every night for as long as I can remember and I don't know what it means. I roll over and eventually fall back asleep. My alarm beeps and beeps and beeps, but I just can't get up to turn it off. I want to keep sleeping but I have to do my morning ritual jog. My door gets a knock, and i shout for Melanie to come in. She walks in slowly, holding a cup of tea and placing it on my bedside table.

"Thank you" I whisper.

"Well, I've heard your alarm ring for the last hour so I figured you could use a cup of tea."

"Sorry, did I wake you?" I ask as I reach over for my tea. Mel shakes her head and smiles.

"I've been up anyway, couldn't sleep." I feel bad for her, she and Robert broke up from a 3 year relationship last week. I rub her arm as she sits on my bed.

"You know I'm here if you need to talk or if you can't sleep, ok?" I say, taking a sip of my tea. She nods and stares at the floor.

"So, we jogging??" She changes the subject.

"Yeah...great..." I whisper sarcastically.