After she took the Ambien (an experiment in 3rd person)

She took the ambien because the world that she found herself was presently utterly unbearable.

What was she supposed to do about getting an apartment when she had two dogs and no money? What was she supposed to do when she had an empty house that was going to be a sold house in three weeks and no furniture and no children? This was in the days when she didn't have a cell phone so it wasn't like she could burrow into a warped simulacrum of worldliness. To her mind the present moment was just too awful to confront. At present. So she took one Ambien. One.

Then the youngest of the sisters called her. This sister lived only fifteen or so minutes away in a nice neat house with her two girls and her occasional boyfriend. She called, she said to see if everything was all right.

So she told her sister that everything was not really all right. Not by a half. Because how could a person newly diagnosed with a big psychological disorder (not the biggest and worst but serious still) and left like a bundle on an air mattress with nothing in the house that was once full of stuff. Nothing but a dying cockapoo and a younger dog and books that no one wanted and the godforsaken Want Ads be expected to be all right?

And the youngest sister said well you sound a bit on the sleepy side. And she told her younger sister that she had taken an ambien.

"just one. Because I want to sleep because I can't handle this right now."

It was true. She had taken one Ambien.

It was not ten minutes after she got off the phone with the youngest sister than the police rang the doorbell. There were two of them with their big officious bellies and the ridiculous amount of ostentation in carrying weapons and then told her "You have been invited to a dance and you must attend."

In year after she would marvel over them and how they could be like that. Weeks before when others like them had come to take her to away they hadn't been so glib. Perhaps that was because in her feverish delirium she wanted to talk to them about their weapons. She had asked them that first time when the cops came for her if they liked glocks? Is it hot in this weather wearing kevlar? She had tried to gibe them as she sat in her backyard in one of the lawnchairs that was soon to be melted down. This second time though she didn't try. She knew what happens when you resist them.