Going to Midnights

For various family-related reasons, I adjusted my work schedule this week so that I'm now working almost exclusively third shifts at the hospital -- 10:30 PM to 6:30 AM, that sort of thing. As you can imagine, there's a psychiatric sticker shock that comes along with re-jiggering those deep circadian cogs and sprockets, and I'm in smack in the middle of that now.

I've always been fascinated by what happens when you tinker with the mind's sleep patterns. Re-reading J.G. Ballard's classic short story "Manhole 69" only made the whole process more ominious. In it, a scientist named Neill experiments with a team of volunteers, severing the hyphothalamic loops that allow the flow of consciousness, essentially making sleep unnecessary. The experiment takes place over a series of weeks in a large and mostly vacant clinical space, and as the men slowly begin to come unhinged, they imagine that they've been abandoned inside it, and that walls and ceiling are slowly closing in on them.

Under the right--or wrong--conditions, such neurological blowback doesn't seem all too far-fetched. Back in the nineties, when I was living in Boston (he rhapsodized) I almost volunteered to participate in a hospital sleep study at Mass General. It was good money and I would have had plenty of time to write while I was in there. What stopped me were the terms -- you weren't allowed to bring any sort of watch or clock into the experiment, which meant for three weeks, you would have no idea what time it was...which of course was the point of the whole exercise. Fascination with the mind's flexibility under such harsh circumstances is one thing, but I remember being a little afraid of how I would ultimately emerge from such an experience. Would I be able to sleep at all? Would I even recognize the pale, slope-shouldered thing gazing back at me from the mirror?

Compared to that, working the midnight shift is not all that dramatic. I've got my Advil PM and a quiet room to sleep in during the day. But if this blog unexpectedly slides off the side of the Earth--or abruptly seems as though it's being written by a total stranger--at least you'll know what happened.

Right?