her to sit down. “Tell me everything from the beginning.”
Chapter 2: The Nightly Torment
Anna took a deep, shaky breath, her fingers nervously twisting the strap of her leather
handbag. “She wakes me up every single night,” Anna began, her voice barely above a
whisper. “And it’s always around the same time. Always around three or four in the
morning. Never earlier, never later.”
I nodded, taking notes. “Does she vocalize? Yowl? Ask for food?”
“No,” Anna shook her head. “She is completely silent. That’s what makes it so unnerving.
At first, it starts gently. She will climb onto my chest and tap my cheek with her paw, just
softly. If I don’t react, the taps get harder. If I try to turn over and ignore her, she starts
scratching at my arms. Sometimes, she even bites my hand. Not a playful nip, but a hard,
warning bite. She will literally pull the blanket off me with her teeth. She won’t stop. She
becomes completely frantic, pacing, scratching, digging at me until I finally surrender, get
out of bed, and leave the room.”
“And where do you go?” I asked.
“I go to the living room. I sleep on the couch,” Anna said, a tear finally escaping and
tracking down her pale cheek. “And here is the strangest part, Doctor. The moment I leave
the bedroom... the absolute second I step out and lie down on the couch, Luna completely
calms down. She stops crying, she stops scratching. She simply walks back into the
bedroom, jumps onto the bed, curls up on my exact pillow, and sleeps peacefully until
morning.”
I leaned back, intrigued. “How long has this exact routine been going on?”
“About three months,” Anna replied, her voice breaking. “Three agonizing months. I
haven't slept in my own bed for a full night since the summer. At first, I thought she had just
developed a bad attitude, or maybe she was protesting a change in her food. But she eats
normally, uses the litter box perfectly. Then, I started thinking maybe the problem was me.”
Anna explained the depths of her desperation. As the weeks had turned into months, her
sleep deprivation had begun to destroy her life. She was a senior accountant at a
prestigious firm, a job requiring intense focus. Lately, she had been making
uncharacteristic errors, forgetting appointments, and falling asleep at her desk. Her social
life had evaporated; she simply didn't have the energy to see friends.
“I went to my own doctor last month,” Anna continued. “I thought I was losing my mind.
My doctor told me it was severe insomnia caused by stress. My husband passed away three
years ago, and my doctor assumed the grief was finally catching up to me, manifesting as
night terrors. He prescribed me a very strong sedative. He told me to take it right before
bed, promising it would knock me out so deeply that even a hurricane wouldn't wake me.”
“Did it work?”
Anna let out a hollow, humorless laugh. “It made things worse. Two nights ago, I took the
sedative. I fell into a deep, heavy sleep. But at 3:15 AM, Luna woke me up anyway. Only this
time, because I was so heavily drugged and unresponsive, she escalated. She bit my arm so
hard she drew blood. She was screaming at me. I was so groggy, so confused. I stumbled out
of the room, crying, bleeding, dragging myself to the couch. And just like always, as soon as
I collapsed on the sofa, she trotted back into the bedroom and went to sleep on my pillow.”
Anna looked at me with pleading eyes. “Doctor, please. You have to help her. My family is
telling me I need to put her in a shelter, that she has gone crazy, that she has some kind of
mental illness or brain tumor. But she is all I have left of Thomas. I can't lose her. But I also
can't survive like this.”
Chapter 3: The Examination
I opened the carrier and gently lifted Luna onto the examination table. She was a