Arithmomania
Barry Weir stared at the white ceiling and listened to the clock ticking the hours away, second by second. He had never experienced insomnia until his wife left him two months earlier. Like many people, he rarely appreciated the little things in life until they were gone. A good night's sleep was not all he had taken for granted. Had he paid more attention to Mary Rose, most likely she would not have had an affair with the local butcher and walked out on their sixteen-year marriage.
Berating himself for his past mistakes would do him little good. He could not change the past.
If I could only sleep at night, I would gladly get on with my life, he thought and turned to face the alarm clock on the night table. Half past three. I've got to get up and get ready for work in three hours!
Afraid of the addictive nature of sleeping pills, Barry tried natural remedies to fight his insomnia. Melatonin, valerian root and ginkgo biloba failed to do the trick. Neither did reading before bedtime, drinking warm milk or taking a hot, relaxing bath. Desperate to get some much-needed rest, he tried the age-old panacea of counting sheep. His eyes closed, he imagined one fleecy lamb nimbly leaping over a split rail fence and landing on a sun-drenched, grassy meadow.
One, he counted.
The first little lamb was followed by a second, a third, a fourth and so on. At four o'clock, exhausted, he finally fell asleep, but not before he counted almost two thousand imaginary sheep. When the alarm went off two and a half hours later, he was awakened by the jarring sound.
"Why wasn't I this tired last night?" he asked as he forced himself to get out of bed.
A cold shower did little to recharge his drained energy cells. Perhaps a large cup of strong coffee would help. Even though he took his morning brew black, he added sweetener to soften the bitter taste. While he sat at the kitchen table, stirring a packet of Equal into his coffee, he absentmindedly counted the revolutions of the spoon.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen .... Wait! What am I doing? I don't have time to waste. I've got to get to work.
The one cup of coffee left him just as tired as when he was awakened by his alarm clock, so on his drive to the office, he stopped at a gas station convenience store and purchased a four-pack of energy drinks. Thankfully, the detour did not prevent him from getting to work on time.
An insurance claims examiner, Barry did not have the most mentally stimulating job. It mostly entailed rubber stamping patient's medical forms with only an occasional claim requiring further investigation. By midmorning, he opened and downed his second energy drink.
"You should go easy on that stuff," Lloyd Halverson, a coworker, cautioned. "It can cause high blood pressure and irregular heart rhythms."
"Normally, I would never drink it, but I got less than three hours of sleep last night. Now I'm beat."
"I sympathize with you. If I don't get at least eight hours a night, I find myself nodding off at my desk."
Thanks to his energy drinks, coupled with two more cups of coffee, Barry was able to make it through the day. At five o'clock, he walked to the parking lot, got into his Honda and headed home. Along the way, he found himself counting the cars he passed in the oncoming lane. In the seven-mile commute, there were one hundred fifty-eight vehicles.
Dinner was a frozen meal heated in the microwave. He missed the home-cooked meals Mary Rose always had on the table when he walked through the door.
"Stop it right now!" he told himself. "I refuse to wallow in self-pity."
Trying to take his mind off his failed marriage, he took his dinner to the living room and turned on the television. He pressed the channel button on the remote control, once, twice, three times. The search from one tedious program to another left him distracted, and he found himself counting the number of times his thumb hit the forward button.
Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six ....
He had reached ninety-seven before he realized what he was doing.
"There's nothing good on, just reality shows and talent competitions. Maybe I'll take a shower and then go to bed and read."
Although it was not yet eight o'clock, Barry crawled under the blankets with a Ken Follett novel. Opening the book from the rear cover, he noticed there were over nine hundred pages. Expecting to fall asleep before finishing the first chapter, he flipped to the prologue and began reading. Three minutes later, he turned the page.
One.
Six minutes later, he turned another page.
Two, three.
Although he was not in the habit of counting pages while he read, he did not immediately see anything peculiar in doing so. Was it any stranger than keeping a tally of imaginary sheep hopping a fence into a green meadow? Four hours later he was maintaining two running totals in his head: the number of pages read and the number of chapters. In spite of the mental computation and his lack of sleep the previous night, he remained wide awake.
The grandfather's clock struck twelve after playing all four sets of Westminster chimes. Midnight. That meant he would have to get up in six and a half hours. Barry put a cardboard bookmark in his novel, shut the book and put it on his night table. Then he turned out the light, rolled onto his side and closed his eyes.
He waited. And waited. And waited some more. One hour. Two hours. Three hours. Sleep failed to come. He tossed and he turned. After counting more than a thousand fleecy lambs vaulting over a successively lower hurdle, he abandoned the sheep scenario and simply recited the numbers.
Eleven hundred thirty-two, eleven hundred thirty-three, eleven hundred thirty-four ....
He was still wide awake and counting when his alarm clock went off.
* * *
"So, what seems to be the problem, Mr. Weir?" the doctor asked, glancing at the clipboard that held a summary of the patient's medical history.
"I can't sleep."
"Oh? Is it something you ...?"
"My wife recently left me," Barry explained, not waiting to hear the entire question.
"I see. I assume then that you've come for a prescription for sleeping pills."
"Yes. I didn't want to resort to such drastic measures, but I tried taking melatonin and other natural remedies, hot baths, warm milk—nothing else works."
"I'm not surprised. Frankly, when my wife left me, I drank half a bottle of wine every night. No. Sometimes you need something stronger. Your vitals all look good, so I'll write you out a script for Ambien."
"Thanks, Doctor. I didn't sleep a wink last night. I had to call in sick and come to see you."
"You take those and let me know how they work. If you still can't sleep, we'll try something else."
On the way home, Barry stopped at the drug store to pick up his sleeping pills. While waiting for the pharmacist to fill the prescription, he strolled down the first aid aisle. He yawned from sheer exhaustion and then began counting the bottles of aspirin. When he was done, he moved on to the Tylenol. Next came the Motrin, then the Advil and Nuprin.
"Mr. Weir," the pharmacist called. "Your prescription is ready."
After paying the cashier, Barry took the child-proof cap off the bottle, spilled the pills into his palm and counted them.
"They're all there," the pharmacist said, somewhat defensively. "A thirty-day supply."
Barry continued counting, paying no attention to what the other man said.
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.
"Everything okay, then?" the cashier asked.
Barry did not reply. He simply turned and headed toward the exit, counting his change along the way.
* * *
It was not long after Barry placed his head on his pillow that he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. It was the first time in months that he had not tossed and turned or struggled with sleeplessness. When the alarm went off the following morning, he woke without feeling sluggish and tired. Just one cup of coffee was all it took to jumpstart his day.
Yet despite a good night's sleep, he still suffered from the compulsive need to count things—a personality quirk he acquired along with the insomnia. During his morning commute, it was utility poles and stop signs. While stopped at a busy intersection, he counted the seconds it took for the traffic signal to turn from red to green. By the time he pulled into the insurance company's parking lot, the various totals clouded his mind.
"Are you all right, buddy?" Lloyd asked when he noticed his coworker standing beside his Honda, staring at the surrounding vehicles.
"What?" Barry asked, confused.
"Are you feeling okay? You were out sick yesterday."
"I'm fine. I went to the doctor, and he gave me something."
"Good. We're early. Why don't we stop at the cafeteria, and I'll buy you a cup of coffee?"
While the two men sat at their desks drinking coffee and eating bagels, Lloyd asked about Barry's social life.
"Have you been seeing anyone since your wife left?"
"No."
"The reason I ask is that my wife's sister has been divorced for two years and she's eager to meet new people. I could introduce you to her."
"I appreciate the offer, but I'm not ready to begin dating yet."
"Well, if you change your mind ...."
"I'll let you know."
Lloyd did not normally take on the role of matchmaker, but he was worried about Barry. His timid coworker had always been an introvert, but since Mary Rose walked out, his behavior resembled that of a hermit. Still, if he did not want any help, there was little Lloyd could do.
In the days that followed, Barry's actions gave him further cause for alarm. More often than not, he appeared to be distracted. One day, he sat at his desk silently counting the number of times the telephone rang.
"You gonna get that?" another employee asked, annoyed by the ringing.
"What? Oh, yeah," he answered, finally picking up the receiver.
"Are you sure everything is all right?" Lloyd asked. "You haven't been yourself lately."
"It's nothing," Barry lied. "I'm just getting used to my medication."
"Maybe you ought to see your doctor. Your dosage might be too high."
"I just might do that. Thanks."
His friend's concern notwithstanding, he saw no reason to seek medical help. The Ambien was working, and he was sleeping without any difficulty. What did it matter if he had an irresistible urge to count things? In his opinion, he was fine. But that was soon about to change.
His arithmomania began to have dangerous consequences. While counting pedestrians along Main Street, he ran a red light and almost caused an accident. Although he narrowly avoided a collision, he received a ticket from a police officer who witnessed the incident. Days later his supervisor gave him a written warning because his performance at work was below par. That same evening he sorted through his mail and found the divorce papers his wife's lawyer had mailed.
This is it, he thought. Once I sign them, there will be no hope of Mary Rose and I ever reconciling.
Despondent, Barry popped a Swanson TV dinner into the oven and sat down at the kitchen table, divorce papers in hand, without removing his jacket. He counted the pages. Then he counted the paragraphs, the lines and finally the words. Even as the perspiration beaded on his forehead and his frozen dinner burned in the oven, he remained in his seat. He counted the letter A's and went through the alphabet letter by letter until he reached Z. With the smoke from the incinerated Salisbury steak dinner seeping through the oven door, he counted the digits, zero through nine. It was while he was counting the commas, after having counted the periods, that the blaring smoke alarm brought him out of his trance-like stupor.
"What's wrong with me?" he cried, realizing for the first time that his obsessive-compulsive behavior was getting out of hand.
Determined to get his life back on track, he opened the windows, put on the exhaust fan, took off his jacket and made himself a grilled cheese sandwich. Whenever he found himself counting, he managed to stop before reaching ten, but it took a lot of effort. Hopefully, he would be able to keep it up.
* * *
When Lloyd Halverson arrived at the office at quarter to nine, he was surprised to see Barry sitting at his desk, hard at work.
"Getting an early start?" he inquired.
"I've got a backlog of work I want to clear up."
"Want to go down to the cafeteria and get a cup of coffee?"
"No thanks," Barry replied. "I've got to keep working if I want to catch up."
By midmorning, however, the claims examiner's good intentions began to falter. When he reached for a new box of paperclips out of his top desk drawer, he could not resist the urge to spill them out onto his desk and count them.
One, two, three, four, five ....
Lloyd looked over and frowned.
"Is something wrong?"
Barry did not answer.
Six, seven, eight ....
Suddenly, Lloyd's hand came down upon the pile of paperclips. Barry looked up at him, questioningly.
"Something is going on," his coworker insisted.
"I don't know what you're ...."
"A few of us are worried about you. You're not acting ... right. Is it Mary Rose? Is she giving you a hard time with the divorce settlement?"
"No. She's actually being quite reasonable."
"What is it then?"
"I don't know. First, I was bothered by insomnia, but then the doctor prescribed Ambien, and I'm sleeping normally now. The problem is I can't stop counting things."
"Counting? What do you mean?"
"Take these paperclips, for instance. When I opened the box, I couldn't help but count them."
"When did this start?"
"While I was having difficulty sleeping, I tried counting sheep. Since then I've counted cars, people, streetlights, bottles of aspirin at the pharmacy, the rings of the telephone—you name it."
"Maybe you ought to talk to a doctor."
"I don't think he has a pill for what I've got."
"I'm not talking about a medical doctor," Lloyd explained as delicately as possible.
"You mean a shrink?"
"There's nothing wrong with talking to a therapist. My wife saw one after she had the baby."
"Maybe what I need is to get out more, to develop some new interests."
"What did I tell you!" Lloyd exclaimed. "My sister-in-law is still unattached. Come one. Try one date. If you don't like her, then no harm done."
Barry looked at the paperclips on his desk.
One, two, three, four .... No! I've got to stop this!
"You're right," he said. "I think I will ask her out to dinner."
* * *
Saturday evening Barry picked Nadine Bowles up at her apartment. A computer programmer by profession, she was a fairly attractive woman who dressed tastefully and wore a minimal amount of makeup. Thankfully, she was not nearly as shy and reserved as her nervous blind date.
"Where are we going?" she asked, as she got into the passenger seat of Barry's Honda.
"I thought we'd try that new Italian restaurant on Spring Street."
"Sounds good. I love Italian food."
A well-read woman who had traveled extensively, Nadine was able to keep the conversation going during those lapses when Barry was at a loss for words. When they arrived at the restaurant, her date helped her remove her jacket. He immediately noticed the strand of pearls she wore around her neck.
One, two, three. Stop it!
"Would you like a glass of wine?" he offered, as he forced his eyes from the pearls to the menu.
"Sure."
Once the waiter took their order and confiscated the menus, Barry was forced to turn his attention to Nadine.
"Have you ever been to Italy?" she asked, trying to break another uncomfortable silence.
"No. Have you?"
"Yes. Several times. I've been to Florence, Pisa, Pompeii, Rome ...."
As his dinner companion listed the highlights of her Italian trips, Barry could not help glancing at the pearls on her neck.
One, two, three, four ....
"Sorrento, Capri, Naples ...."
Nine, ten, eleven, twelve ....
"While they're not actually part of Italy, I've also been to Vatican City and the Republic of San Marino. In fact, I enjoyed ...."
When Nadine noticed Barry's gaze was directed below her face, she took offense.
"Hey! My eyes are up here!" she declared sarcastically.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't looking at your ... I was counting the pearls on your necklace."
"Sure, you were! If you want to be a creep and stare at my chest, at least have the decency not to lie about it!"
Needless to say, the date did not go well. On the contrary, Nadine asked to be taken home once she finished eating her entrée, not even bothering to order dessert and coffee.
* * *
Despite his best efforts to combat his arithmomania, Barry Weir did not have the strength to beat it. After the disastrous blind date with Lloyd Halverson's sister-in-law, his condition worsened. By the end of the month, he was let go from his job. Shortly thereafter, he was forced to sell his car for money to pay his bills.
What will I do now? he worried once his unemployment benefits ran out. That was the only job I've ever had. Where can I go? All I know is insurance.
Having no vehicle, Barry walked into town to fill out employment applications for the mom and pop businesses along Main Street. Heading back home, he knew he would cut three miles from his journey by walking along the railroad tracks rather than the paved roads.
Nostalgically humming a Queen song from his youth, he ambled between the two rails. Before he realized what he was doing, he started to count the wooden ties.
One, two, three ....
He was easily able to hum "We are the Champions" while counting.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen ....
Switching to "Bohemian Rhapsody," he did not miss a single number.
Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty ....
Main Street was left far behind. There were no houses in sight, just trees and empty fields. Still, he put one foot in front of the other at a steady pace and kept counting.
Three hundred four, three hundred five, three hundred six ....
The whistle blasted, taking him by surprise but not causing a single misstep. He was not stupid; he knew what the shrill sound meant.
Three hundred seven, he continued stubbornly. Three hundred eight ....
The engineer saw the man walking ahead on the track.
"What's that damned fool doing?" he cried, and blew the whistle again.
Three hundred nine, three hundred ten ....
The engineer applied the brake, but there was little hope of stopping the train in time.
"For Christ's sake, get out the way!"
Three hundred eleven, three hundred twelve, three hund—
Barry Weir no longer had to worry about his failed marriage, his loss of employment and his pile of unpaid bills. Like a knocked-out fighter, he was down for count.
And he would never rise again.
If there's something Salem does not suffer from, its insomnia! He can sleep anytime and anywhere.
