I lie on my back restless in the dark. This is the third night in the last week that I haven’t been able to sleep. I feel Liam breathing peacefully next to me. I don’t want to wake him up. He has to work early in the morning, and honestly, there’s nothing that he can do to help. So, I gently slide out of bed and creep into the living room. Dropping down on the couch, I turn on the TV and try to zone out. If I stare at the bright screen enough, my eyes will begin to get tired and back to bed I can go. Just 3-4 hours of sleep, but still sleep, nonetheless.

Yet, an hour later, I am still flipping back and forward between channels. In a desperate attempt to make some progress toward sleep, I open Twitter. To my delight, I am bombarded with a constant stream of jokes that cause me to muffle my laughter as not to awake Liam.

I’m not exactly sleepy, but at least I’m in a good mood… Suddenly, a tweet towards the bottom of my timeline captures my attention: “A hospital nearly killed Serena Williams because she was a black woman telling the staff what she needed and the nurses and doctors thought they knew better. Tell me how Medicare for all will stop healthcare professionals from discriminating against us and treating us like fools.” Just as it always is when a serious tweet appears in the long stream of light-heartedness that I enjoy seeing on my timeline, my initial reaction is to ignore it. I don’t want to be sad. I don’t want to think right now. I want to sleep. I want a good night’s sleep. With good dreams. So, I do. I keep scrolling. Until I found something else funny.

And it works…until I refresh my timeline. And suddenly, Serena’s name is everywhere. In fact, it’s trending. I can’t ignore it anymore. I scroll through tweet after tweet commenting on Serena’s horrible hospital experience.

As I begin to go further down the rabbit hole, I hear footsteps behind me.

“Can’t sleep again?”

I look up to see Liam staring down at me, a look of concern on his face.

“Yeah. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“No, I just turned over and the bed felt empty.” There’s a pause. “You should ask for less hours at the office. You’re overworked.”

“I know. I have a meeting with my boss tomorrow.”

He nods. “Heading back yet?”

“In a minute.”

“What’s wrong?”

I show him the tweet.

He rolls his eyes. “So the doctors made a mistake. It’s not because she’s black. Jesus.” And with an irritated sigh, he heads back into the room.

But I continue to stare at my phone, pleading my eyes to tire.

Writer’s Notes: Instead of focusing directly on the issue of Serena (and other African American women) being ignored by health officials, I wanted to focus on the attempt to ignore this tweet, which indirectly means exploring black women’s voices being ignored by the everyday person. It’s hard for the issue to be represented because anything bringing awareness to the issue is pushed to the side. In this piece, both the main character and Liam are dismissive. In my mind, I imagine the main character as African American, but I thought it would be interesting to explore how minorities can ignore voices from their own people that affects them also. I did find it difficult to resist not going into the issue itself.