Bad Dreams (Episode 2, The Best Burger In New York)
Barney hadn't been able to sleep properly since the accident.
He tried to fill his days and nights as best he could:
* Gym three times a day to stop his body seizing up.
* Shrink three times a week to stop his mind from seizing up.
* Days spent catching up with three months worth of missed work and those pesky new banking regulations.
* Evenings spent in forced-normality with his friends.
* Nights spent drawing up increasingly implausible plans to pick up women.
All of these things were starting not to work. His life was becoming a kind of grey nightmare of insomnia, panic attacks and exhaustion.
"Talk me down, Doc!" He said, flopping down onto the sofa in Doctor Grossbard's office. "Talk me down."
The doctor sighed and rolled his eyes. Barney had never been in therapy in his life before the accident. They'd forced him to start seeing Doctor Grossbard at the hospital and, being mostly bedridden with no-one to talk to, had actually found the experience a whole lot of fun and a great distraction from the crippling pain and drug frenzy that had been his waking nightmare during that first month. Now these sessions were becoming a crutch and, if he was honest with himself, Barney blamed the good doctor for his sudden outbreak of feelings recently.
It probably wasn't ever a good idea to examine himself this closely.
"What's wrong this time, Mr Stinson?" His psychologist asked, getting out his notebook and pen.
Barney sighed dramatically. "Everything! Regis keeps talking to me at the gym and that's just… distracting! The guy's a menace! The Koreans want me to go to this week-long conference and I haven't flown since the accident. What if they confiscate my pain meds? I can't sleep still. I've got this idea for a pick up - lesbians! It's practically impossible! But I know I can do it if I could just work out the kinks. Heh. Kinks." He chuckled.
Dr Grossbard nodded patiently through Barney's stream of verbal diarrhoea. "Everything is getting on top of you again because your mind needs to rest. Did you take the sleeping pills?"
Barney rolled his eyes and scoffed.
"Mr Stinson, you were given those for a reason."
"If I take them then I just have bad dreams and I wake up in a cold sweat! It's worse than not sleeping at all!" Barney protested.
The doctor tapped his pen against his chin. "Tell me about the dreams."
Barney opened his mouth, but no words came. He closed it again. Then he opened it again. His expression twisted in comical confusion.
"Are they about Miss Scherbatsky again?" The doctor asked him with a patient smile.
Barney crossed his arms angrily. "I'm paying you a lot of money not to say her name."
"I didn't say her first name," The doctor chuckled softly.
Barney glared at him.
"So the dreams are about her?"
Barney let out a frustrated, strangled yell. "I can't help it! The more I try and not think about her, the more she seems to worm her way into my brain!" It was true. For example, on their recent escapade to find Marshall's favourite burger, they'd all been joking around and she'd muttered "I want you inside me…" (to the burger, not to him, he had to remind himself). Those words had streamed across the table like a cruise missile and set off an explosion in his brain. Now, every time he closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep, Robin was there, haunting him, always naked, always on her back beneath him and always murmuring those words in his ear. And yet in his dreams he couldn't move - he was still immobilised by the casts, the pain in his limbs, the fractured memories of the accident…
It was really, really annoying.
There had to be a way to get her out of his system, surely? The trouble is, there simply wasn't enough time in the day to increase his dosage of bimbos any further. Goliath National Bank had even got him working weekends.
"It's because you're trying so hard not to think about her," Dr Grossbard said. "The human mind doesn't work like that. You have to confront your feelings for her if you are going to be able to sleep."
Hmm, perhaps that was it? Barney wondered if he somehow just needed to get Robin out of his system? If he slept with her in real life, she might stop bugging his sub-conscious. "Maybe," he drawled. "I could give that a try, Doc. Thanks."
Dr Grossbard looked surprised and scribbled something in his notebook. "That's excellent, Barney. I think you're really making progress."
Barney got to his feet, grabbing the back of the leather sofa to steady himself. He sighed. "And what do I do about Regis?" He asked.
Dr Grossbard laughed. "There are plenty of other gyms in New York."
Barney grinned. "But he keeps texting me!"
"Maybe he just wants a friend? We all need friendship, Barney."
Barney gave him a thin smile. "Sure we do, Doc. Sure we do." He held up his hand as he headed out the door. "Later!"
"See you on Monday, Barney," The doctor yelled out after him.