Also — as light reading for an average of 20 to 30 minutes before Hope customarily struck the elevated sconce’s light above her bed at home was a fairly firmly established part of our marriage’s routine for preparing to retire — Hope and myself spent, for three consecutive Wednesdays in a row, 20 or more minutes sitting awkwardly up in the narrow and ‘crib’-like (because of the high lateral railings) beds with only a crinkling institutional pillow for back support, ostensibly ‘reading’ in our respective beds in the Sleep chamber as we did at home, each holding our current ‘livre de chevets’ of choice, which Hope had brought in her Book club bag from home, but which were here, in this artificial setting, mere ‘props,’ and I did little more than absently turn the pages of Kurt Eichenwald’s Serpent on the Rock, as the idea of relaxing or ‘winding down’ while covered in E.E.G. leads and extrudent wires and fully reflected in three of the small room’s walls was somewhat farcical or absurd; but I was — in what remained close if sub-rosa ‘consultation’ with Jack Vivien — determined now to go through the experiment in full technical compliance, and not to complain, demur or give Hope any cause to suspect or think that I was not fully prepared to go through with my side of the ‘bargain.’ (Sometimes, nevertheless, admittedly, for instance when driving — particularly along the daily commute via the Garden State Parkway, or west-ward via 195, the ‘Jersey’ Turnpike, and ‘I’-276 around metropolitan Philadelphia’s northern border to the campus of out-of-State Bryn Mawr, to there-upon park the vehicle along Montgomery Avenue and upwardly observe the lights of our Audrey’s Freshman dormitory [or, more formally, ‘Ardmore House,’ in honor of a Nineteenth century college benefactor, and designed or ‘done up’ in the steep, grey, vertiginous, crenellated tower or ‘Martello’ style of a medieval era fortress] room on the tower or ‘keep’’s Fourth floor’s north-east corner come on or off as she moved about the room with her room-mate or prepared to retire or undress — I become so distraught, melancholic or consumed with over-whelming anguish or ‘dread’ for no apparent or discernible reason [the feeling, unrelated to the sleep deprivation whose symptoms I knew so well by that point in time, seems to come ‘out of nowhere’ and arise, as it were, out of some profound, unconscious, psychic void or ‘hole’] that I consider intentionally ‘jumping’ the median into on-coming traffic. This fear, on average, will last just a moment or two.)
Despite, however, my nervousness or excitement at the prospect of objective verification of my ‘side’ of the dispute, my life-long custom or habit of lying supine on my back with my elbows bent and hands atop one another upon my chest made relaxing as the Sleep chamber’s soothing vistas and harsh lights were extinguished from somewhere outside the chamber somewhat more straightforward for myself as opposed to Hope, whose habit (unlike our Audrey, who tends to curl somewhat ‘foetally’ on her right side, and often appears to awaken in precisely the same position in which she had originally lost consciousness) is to fall asleep procumbent or ‘prone,’ with her arms splayed and her head rotated or, as it were, almost ‘twisted’ violently to the side, as though some great, unwelcome weight were pressing her down from behind and above (a position which most adults would find noticeably uncomfortable), and she complained to the ‘Sleep team’ that it would be nearly impossible for her to fall truly asleep when supine and facing, as it were, ‘up’ as the E.E.G. leads and wires seemed to dictate. Nevertheless, she subsequently did (as usual) fall promptly asleep; and, on our second Wednesday ‘over-night’ in the Sleep chamber, neither she nor ‘Dr. Paphian’ (the Sleep specialist’s cognomen or sur-name) ever again referred to her vehement protests of the week prior.
As previously mentioned, our diagnostic protocol dictated our traveling to and ‘checking in’ to sleep together at the Darling Memorial Sleep Clinic once per week for a possible time frame of up to six weeks, with Hope and myself’s brains’ respective wave patterns monitored and any untoward movements, sounds or awakenings recorded on state of the art Infra-red or ‘low light’ videotape (Hope often made a point of verifying the audio’s quality, as well, while I gazed neutrally at the Fourth wall’s screen’s relaxing tableaux), which would be analyzed by our Somnologist and eventually form the basis for a medical diagnosis and recommended course of treatment. I myself, of course, as previously mentioned, was looking forward with some anticipation to the recordings’ empirical verification of the fact that, when Hope cried out in vexation to accuse me once again of ‘snoring,’ my E.E.G. waves would indicate that, not only was I myself not truly asleep, but that, on the contrary, Hope’s own brain ‘reading’ would prove conclusively that it was, in reality, she herself who at that time was actually asleep and had dreamt, hallucinated or otherwise ‘fantasized’ the unpleasant noises which she so steadfastly believed were ‘robbing’ her of her sleep, health, youth and ability to trust that she and myself were ‘on the same wave length’ enough anymore to make our marriage anything more than a sexless sham, especially now that Audrey was no longer at home to ‘preoccupy’ me or serve as the ‘focus of [my] affections’ (this among the charges which Hope had levied in the vindictive heat of the very worst morning arguments respecting the conflict and our whole viability as a marriage and putative ‘family’).