The Sleep Room Read Free Page B

reminded of the superstitious wariness that arrests one’s progress the instant one perceives that the path ahead proceeds beneath a ladder. Irritated by my own irrationality, I marched over the linoleum, grasped the tap handle, and rotated it until the flow of water stopped. I looked at my reflection again, perhaps more carefully than before, and I was forced to concede that I was not looking my best: my complexion was sallow and my eyes bloodshot. It had been a long day and I was clearly overtired. A painful throbbing in my head accompanied each beat of my heart.
    I returned to the bedroom, put on my pyjamas, and got into bed. As I listened to the subtle music of waves on shingle, London seemed very distant. I thought again about what had happened in the bathroom. If the ‘sigh’ had been produced by natural means – an obstruction in the pipes, the acoustical properties of the environment, and so on – then it was remarkable how chance events and processes had duplicated the effect with such fidelity: an intake of breath, the slow release of air from the lungs, a suggestion of descending pitch. It had been most disconcerting.
    I slid down further between the crisp, clean sheets, and reached out to turn off the lamp. Although I was exhausted, it was some time before I closed my eyes.

2
    I will always remember entering the sleep room for the very first time: descending the stairs that led to the basement, Maitland at my side, immaculately dressed, talking energetically, cutting the air with his hands, the door opening and stepping across the threshold – a threshold that seemed not merely physical, but psychological. The nurse, seated at her station – a solitary desk lamp creating a well-defined pool of light in the darkness – the sound of the quivering EEG pens and, of course, the six occupied beds. All women – in white gowns – fast asleep: one of them with wires erupting from her scalp like a tribal headdress.
    Narcosis, or deep-sleep treatment, had originally been developed in the 1920s, although, according to Maitland, prolonged sleep was one of the oldest treatment methods in psychiatry. Distressed individuals had been using alcohol to ‘knock themselves out’ for thousands of years, and in the nineteenth century a few enterprising doctors had attempted to treat insanity with opium and chloroform, but it wasn’t until the arrival of barbiturates that narcosis gained wider acceptance. Maitland was pioneering a new form of the treatment, which combined continuous sleep with the latest drugs and electroconvulsive therapy.
    On that first morning, Maitland explained the regimen he had devised. ‘The aim is to maintain narcosis for at least twenty-one hours a day. Every six hours, patients are woken up, taken to the lavatory, washed, and given drugs, food and vitamins. ECT is administered weekly. Careful records are kept of blood pressure, temperature, pulse rate and respiration; fluid intake, urinary output and bowel function are also noted. Due to the risk of paralytic ileus, regular laxatives are used and abdominal girth measured daily. Enemas are given immediately if there is any suspicion of failing bowel activity.’
    Maitland walked from bed to bed, examining the charts, and making comments. ‘All of the patients receive six-hourly chlorpromazine: one hundred to four hundred milligrams. Lower doses are given if the patient is sleeping well, higher doses if the patient is agitated or not sleeping. In addition to chlorpromazine, the more agitated patients also receive sodium amylobarbitone. Because this drug has been associated with withdrawal fits, EEG measures are taken regularly to identify those who might be at risk.’ He indicated the woman with the wires sprouting from her scalp.
    I asked Maitland about the patients’ diagnoses and he replied, ‘Schizophrenia and schizophrenia with depression.’ When I pressed him for more details, particularly concerning the individual cases, he was not very