Caffeiene-Powered

She works herself too much.

Four nights with less than five hours of sleep. When I wake up, it’s the immediately clicking of the keys that fill my ears, and no longer the soft, slow breathing that accompanies the feeling of warmth wrapped around me. Instead of that same warmth, only the cool of the blanket against my skin provides a false comfort.

Coffee lingers on her skin, the slightest hint of vodka mixed. This makes me wrinkle my nose. 

She never took alcohol with her coffee at all. Hunched over her laptop and folders containing papers scattered all over the table, the look in her eyes is almost an exhausted kind of weary that resembles her sleepless, occasionally slumber-lacking nights. Pictures and reports litter the place, a paper stuffed under her coffee mug and a plate of unfinished toast lying on top.

Her immersion with her work is too much – too much, in fact, that when I wrap my arms around her, she doesn’t even move until I kiss her cheek, arms tensing and body stiffening in silent shock until she recognizes that it’s me. At that, she relaxes. I smell the coffee – much stronger, more caffeine than milk and sugar and creamer. The vodka isn’t so prevalent, but I could detect it in the way her fingers twitched, high on caffeine and alcohol.

She doesn’t speak. Neither do I. I just close my eyes and she doesn’t move her fingers, not daring to type another word or sentence or anything else. We stay there, her an ideal image of her profession and me just doing what I had to do. It was unsettling. She occasionally forgot that she was human, that she had needs and needed to fulfill them. When she forgot, she turned into a machine. And when she remembered, she had a hard time transitioning back to human.

Sleepless nights.

“I’m exhausted.”

She almost makes no sound. But our closeness, my face to her neck and nearly her jaw makes me hear her pitch perfect. At pulling away, it feels like pulling away from a doll. She doesn’t move, limbs falling to her sides and refusing to close her eyes in fear of drifting far, far away.

“Please sleep.”

No reply.

“I’ll do it for you.”

“Can’t.” her eyes struggle now, I pull a chair and sit next to her, “I have to finish all of this soon. It’s…urgent,” her last word catches on a yawn and she attempts to type, her hands shaking over in a ghost-like manner and attempting, trying to do what she can. Minutes pass. She repeats this cycle, convincing and trying and failing until she can barely even lift her hands up to the keyboard and press a single button.

Enough.

I save her file and exit, then turn off her laptop. She doesn’t even protest. When I lift her in my arms after rising from the chair, no color comes to her cheeks. When I carry and bring, she doesn’t bury her head into my chest like she always does. It’s pure exhaustion and tension, the caffeine slipping away, alcohol turning her thoughts hazier and dimmer to the brink of slipping and sliding from reality.

When her body touches the mattress, she reacts and curls up. The thin, slender frame which is her merely curls like a child and her eyes are shut, the bags under them obvious and her hair strewn, almost carelessly tied and untied as she typed and did her work. Taking the blanket, I gently and slowly cover her with it, making her make a soft noise and wrap her arms around a nearby pillow. The image is almost endearing to a fault.

I fix her belongings. Put the papers into the right folders, alphabetize them and leave them in two neat stacks. Tuck the pictures back into where they belong and keep them together with her paper clips. Red for crime scenes, green for belongings, blue for associates. I know this because I’ve seen her fuss over them for so long, and now, they were previously just scattered like petals. She likes her things neat, and I do that for her. Wash the dishes and throw out the stale coffee. Put the vodka back where it belongs (never by the coffee, God forbid) and come back to see her deeply asleep.

The clock reads 7:32AM, and the sky is littered with flecks of grey.

She looks peaceful – instead of her worrisome and short-tempered manner.

In her peace, she clings tightly to a pillow and mumbles something in her slumber.

It’s enough to make me climb back in with her.