Ambien is rollerblading on a tabletop. There is a place to start, a prescribed distance, and then, for me at least, an edge you fall off.
I get 7 hours. I do not get 6:43. I most certainly do not get 7:12. An example:
4:59 Asleep.
5:00 Not.
You know; distinct differences.
4:59 non-dreaming vacuous space of, at best, grey movement beyond a veil of grey-blue.
5:00 I have been thrown out the front door like the house-saber-tooth-cat in the Flintones intro. Abrupt, uncalled-for.
And for my personal comedy, I cannot get up and jump through the window as the Flinstones cat does and deposit Fred on the steps instead. Abrupt, justice.
In fact, to walk this metaphor as far down the garden path as we possibly can, I am extremely amused by the image I get of myself trying, in this current state, to leap through a window seeking justice. I would likely get what my step-father refers to as 'credit-card' air, which means I would jump just high enough off the ground to swipe a Mastercard between my feet and the soil. You know, the height golfers jump when they put the little ball in the little hole.
I would not make it onto the window sill. My slack and skinny ass would hang in the balance for a second, and then--hopefully with some uttered half-word like 'z'tnah!' I would fall backwards into a difficult-to-extract-oneself-from location between a bush and a large potted plant, there to lay, stunned and scraped, until N came out onto the porch and tried very hard not to laugh. Which would be wasted effort, because in the physical release I am getting from this horse-beaten metaphor of a wipe-out, I am already roaring with laughter, because at least I am somewhere, at least I am in dirt, at least I tried to jump up and down. At least I'm not here.
Sorry, back to master Ambien and his night rules.
You can awaken, which is nice and has saved me a lot of dark bedfulls of chemical-laden urine, I would imagine. But the rising is a specified sub-version of consciousness, and you must do what you are told.
Ambien lets you know that it owns you by lightly salting your eyes with lye, so that any movement of them hurts just a bit. But it is not eye-boogers, it is a layer on the eyeball, so that it cannot be rubbed off. It is just a telltale. A leash.
So you scrape your aching eyes open because you have to pee. You swing your legs off the bed and into the absolutely perfect 'sports slippers' N bought you when the leather boat shoes you wore the first week literally began to smell visibly.
When you press your quickly waning weight into the floor and stand, the Ambien reminds you that you are merely renting your body. For me it is always a lean to the left--maybe muscle atrophy, maybe just an older sense of balance, but always the left. Just a sway. A little sway. Ambien: "Don't go far, sweetheart."
Then you have to put your left hand on the corner of the bed as you go 'round. Again, weak left, again nothing serious. Just a reminder. By the bathroom at the front of the 'suite' you place the left hand against the wall at the door for the final straightening, and then you are probably OK for the rest of the pee. This has taken a minute or so.
The peeing has it's own issues caused by the extreme brightness of the bathroom--we have mentioned that the Ambien is holding the eyes hostage--and the fact that you have to pre-pee (a phrase I just fell in love with) into the measuring bottle before noting, dumping, and washing up. So there's a whole dexterity/aim/concentration/don't fall asleep thing that makes for a quiet, but intense, 40 seconds or so. There's a lot of nose-breathing at this point; I'm not sure why.
By then you are at your most awake, and beginning to worry that maybe you have actually shaken off the Ambien--silly boy--and that you may have fallen beneath it into the grip of the pred again and so your night is over. You walk somewhat steadily back to the bed, having learned the first week of Ambien use that your mind is of little or no value in this jaunt and so you must muster all your functions to remember what your output was and write it on the board as you go by. This added surge of quasi-normal brain function further fuels your fear that you may indeed be awake, and therefore screwed.
You sit back on the bed, discard the sports slippers--those Addidas things with the feet-tickling nubs and the single flap over the top: those who know me know that I consider flip-flops to be the most universally true sign of a broken man, and simply won't wear them.
Anyway, barefoot, you reach for and swig from the sports bottle, trying to keep a fluid flow through the night even if it is less than you are used to. You lay back against sheets and pillows that have cooled and so you can feel the exact outline of your night sweats and settle yourself on the other half of the bed for the next stint, which should last about three hours. Because of human anatomy and the bed's width, you will have one of your elbows in the cooling damp, but otherwise you are likely to feel dry as you sleep.
You take the bandanna you keep rolled for your eyes and rewind it around your head, which also serves to push the earplugs a little more firmly into place--you never take them out and so your whole Ambien pee has a scuba-breathing soundtrack that, actually, I think the Ambien prefers. I think that's the voice in which the Ambien speaks. Blood muffle and slow air. Life, bright-muted, tilting.
And then you find the spot where your heavy heavy head notches high enough on the pillow to not be flat but low enough to not be bent.
And you hope. It is a small little worry, a tiny little hope, because by now your are really scared you beat the Ambien, that it left you, and that you are about to start one of the multi-layered, thinly connected thought-puzzles about football strategy and rotating tires and issues of secondary insurance EOB forms that may tie into earnings reports you have forgotten the password for and staff people at the union and what exactly does the hall outside our home look like and I read a story where a man shot a dog and in parallel why can't I figure out the best way to get the wood stove installed without changing the schedule for the lead abatement while I need to know exactly what is in the plastic they use on the food-plate-covers here that allows them to stay warm but also makes everything smell a little like a combine picking a straw field in Montana?
But have no fear. You didn't beat the Ambiem. You're gone again.
And a note on hospital beds. Years ago, George Carlin did a bit about certain foam couch cushions holding farts for a long time. It was a piece about modern materials, really. The comment was that there were now rubberized foam cushions that would keep a fart indefinitely; that only upon actively going to the cushions and banging it out as you cleaned house would you release the gifts left there by asses past.
I would like you all to know that Hill-Rom Versa Care mechanical bull bed on which I ride has been designed and constructed with pride and craft by its over 6000 employees world-wide using the latest version of this space-age, fart-capturing polymer.
No matter how long it may or may not have been since the ongoing conversation between the pred and myself has produced an olfactory statement of purpose, as it were, the cushions have taken their sampling. And they have waited, patiently, to remind me of the sins of my slumbers.
I refer you back to the second Ambien moment; the slipping of the legs off the bed towards the thoughtfully-provided sports slippers.
Well, that moment has accompaniment. In just the tiniest, most gentle way, the movement of the rubber mattress and the shift of weight sends me an archaeological tuft of air as my face passes the bed's threshold. A little puffy historian of the night, telling the recent tale of the body and it's slumbers, the steroids and their meals on my muscle, my flesh, my sense of calm.
Just a waft, just a tidbit off the top of the brandy snifter: 'Hello, sir, please recall this passing moment. Please know that we were here. Enjoy your pee. We'll see you soon. Hurry back. You have two more hours and twenty-six minutes to sleep.'
