LITMIR.BIZ

       SLEEP

      I waited in my pajamas—boxers and a T-shirt baggy enough to have wires threaded down the neck and out the bottom. There, they’d connect to a box of terminals, each tiny opening marked with a letter and number, the whole thing very advanced yet also reminiscent of a switchboard or old stereo receiver. I waited for the technician next door in the Electrode Room; I waited on my bed, listening to the muffled conversation between him and my neighbor. I have to hurry, the man explained; my next patient is someone who might have narcolepsy, and she needs to go to sleep soon. I sat on top of the covers reading because under the covers made the pose too familiar, too much like waiting for a man in my own bed.

      I had my first sleep study when I was in college: narcolepsy. A couple of years later, in a new city, another: narcolepsy. (Maybe if I say the word enough here it’ll become easier to say out there, where most people don’t know how to react except with Really? and Are you sure? and I have insomnia too.) Now, living in yet another city, my new doctor wanted confirmation that I had narcolepsy, not some other problem. I could have the test—a night and day spent in a sleep lab—“whenever’s convenient,” which was never, but which also happened to be during summer break from grad school, when I could afford to step out of the world for twenty-four hours and into the benevolent but sadistic schedule of a sleep study. In the meantime, my doctor said, I probably shouldn’t drive.

      When making the appointment, the receptionist on the phone asked what time I usually go to bed, which would determine when I needed to show up. We try to make things as normal as possible for you, she said, and I didn’t point out—didn’t need to point out—that if it were even remotely similar to normal, I wouldn’t be planning on the phone what time I’d be going to sleep.

      I told the woman I usually turn in around ten thirty; arriving at the sleep lab by nine would give me plenty of time, she said.

      The cautioned-against drive to the Sleep Disorders Center was ten minutes from my house. It took me three minutes to park, six minutes to walk to the building.

      I’m here for a sleep study, I told the intercom.

      Who are you? the intercom asked.

      I was buzzed in. The room, with its familiar wall-mounted camera, greeted me, and the sleep technician quizzed me using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. He called me Ma’am. He pulled his jeans at the knees as he sat and asked me how likely (3 = very likely, 0 = very unlikely) I was to fall asleep in certain situations, including, among others, “sitting and reading” (3), “sitting inactive in a public place” (1.5), “lying down to rest in the afternoon when circumstances permit” (3).

      Night was seeping in. The sandy day gathered itself in traces, windswept. In the sleep study the real night would arrive, then certain sleep. First, in the ebbing and flowing twilight that holds night from day, there was preparation. The technician asked if I could wait for him to set up someone else’s sensor electrodes before mine.

      Alone and unable to focus on my book, I eavesdropped. The technician pontificated about women: Men, he said, either fall asleep or they don’t. There’s no trying to fall asleep for a man, he said. If a man can’t fall asleep within ten minutes of lying down, he’ll get out of bed and leave the bedroom to be productive elsewhere.

      Women,

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