“Mary , come to the room 01 to get your medicine pls.”   , announced the voice from the speaker from te ceiling.

Mary couldn’t wait for it to end even though she was determined to stay till the end. It was just that her eyes wouldn’t open fully. When she signed-up for the experiment , she didn’t consider that not sleeping for a few days would have such a negative effective on her body and her mind.

The experiment was rather simple. It was to measure the effect of not having sleep for conservative days on the human body. Mary had always been a light sleeper and at that instance , she needed the money desperately. Economics crisis meant that jobs are hard to come by , even the temporary jobs , and she still owed the bank more than half her college tuition fees. The experiment and the promised payout at the end was like a god-send to her.

As she walked towards the clinic room to get her dosage of non-sleeping pill , she tried to imagine receiving the money at the end of the enperiment as a motivation to herself. It must have worked as she felt more awake after each step and soon found herself back in front of the clinic’s glassdoor.

As she pulled the handle , she was bumped by a well-dressed , overweight man who was just coming out of the clinic. She recognised him as Mr Thomas , a small town lawyer , who was sitting by her right side when she first registered for the experiment. They chatted for a while before being separated. Honestly , he looked like a giant panda with the black rings around his eyes.

The nurse gave her a big wide smile and 2 cups as usual. One cup containing the assortment of colorful pills prepared to keep her awake and the other was just plain water. She took the cup full of pills and emptied it without hesitation before gulping down the water. It was her 4th , or 5th? , time doing so and frankly , she was getting sick of the whole routine. Once done , she turned around and made her way towards the private observation rooms at the other end of the corridor.

She sat down on the sofa and picked up a magazine to occupy her mind as she knew it would be another 5 hours before the effects of the pills disappear and she would then be finally able to take a good night rest. Every minutes seemed like an eternity to her as she flipped the pages back and forth without reading anything at all. After all , her eyes were wide opened yet too tired to read anything.

Before long , definitely not to her , she realised that only 15 minutes separate between the nice comfy bed at her rented one room and the pills. To be honest , she thought to herself , she could have been happry to lie anywhere. She whistled for the first time in her life and probably the last. She felt her mind clearer and saw the envelope with the money she was promised. Then she heard an annoucement coming from the speakers along the corridor.

“Mary , come to the room 01 to get your medicine pls.”