The Sleep Room Read Online Free PDF

was deferential with me, she was brusque with her juniors. I suspected that she must be a strict disciplinarian. When she was ready to leave she said to the trainee, ‘I shall return at eleven o’clock. Do exactly as instructed.’ She then left with the nightingale. The trainee nurse sat behind the desk and took a copy of the British National Formulary from one of the drawers. After studying it for a few seconds she put it back and gazed into the darkness. Her expression soon became blank with boredom.
    I walked around the beds, examining the latest entries on the charts, and decided to run an EEG on a patient called Sarah Blake – one of three being given sodium amylobarbitone in addition to chlorpromazine. She was in her early twenties and possessed an interesting face, with features that are often unsympathetically described as ‘witchy’: long black hair, a pointed chin and a bridged nose. Yet, cast in a certain complimentary light, one could imagine those same features transformed, becoming something closer to devilish beauty. Her most recent ECT had been administered almost a week earlier, so I judged that the recording would be interpretable – within reason. EEGs taken shortly after ECT are often spurious. The paper rolled beneath the twitching pens, producing irregular peaks and troughs, the big slow waves of sleep.
    A curious hush descended and I was reminded of something that I had read many years before about the healing rituals of the ancient Greeks. The sick and troubled in those remote times were frequently instructed by a holy man to spend a night in an underground temple. There, they would have a dream that would cure them. It seemed to me that the sleep room was a modern-day equivalent.
    I was familiar with sleep laboratories. I had studied and worked in Cambridge and Edinburgh and they all had in common a strange, unreal atmosphere. But the sleep room at Wyldehope was different. The atmosphere was more intense, almost religious. It evoked feelings in me that I associated with certain churches – experienced in solitude and usually at dusk. In the hush and the shadow that enveloped those six beds were unexpected registers and suggestions of something beyond the reach of the senses. The subterranean healing ritual of the ancient Greeks was called ‘incubation’. An apposite word, because it is composed of elements that produce the literal translation ‘lying in the ground’.
    Before leaving the sleep room, I removed the electrodes from Sarah Blake’s head and examined her EEG results. The red ink looked unusually vivid on the white paper, like thin trails of blood. There was nothing remarkable to see: slow waves with brief bursts of faster activity originating from the frontal lobe of the brain. I wrote some comments in her notes and said ‘goodnight’ to the nurse.
    ‘Are you going already, doctor?’
    It struck me as a rather peculiar thing for her to say.
    ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Why? Did you want to ask me something?’
    Her face reddened and she said, ‘No. It’s all right. Goodnight, Dr Richardson.’
    I returned to the ground floor to make sure that all was well in the wards. Michael Chapman was still awake, but he had remained in bed and only his frown persisted from his former agitation. I may have spent a little more time on the men’s ward than was strictly necessary, chatting with Nurse Turner. She had been at Wyldehope since its opening. I asked her if she missed London. ‘Not really,’ she replied. ‘Although I do go back about once a month. To see my mother – and my friends. The summer here was lovely.’ I wanted to ask her more questions, mainly about herself, but I was wary of seeming unprofessional and brought our conversation to an end.
    As I ascended the stairs, I was quite preoccupied by the day’s events, but not so inward-looking as to be oblivious of my surroundings. I heard what I thought was the sound of someone following close behind, and glanced back over