Copyright © 2018 by Rachel Z. Arndt
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Arndt, Rachel Z., author.
Title: Beyond measure: essays / by Rachel Z. Arndt.
Description: First edition. | Louisville, KY: Sarabande Books, 2018
Identifiers: LCCN 2017032569 | ISBN 9781946448149 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3601.R5787 A6 2018 | DDC 814/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017032569
Cover design by Kristen Radtke.
Interior by Alban Fischer.
Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
She woke up sounding the walls of her memory
for particulars
—C. D. WRIGHT
CONTENTS
I waited in my pajamas—boxers and a T-shirt baggy enough to have wires threaded down the neck and out the bottom. There, they’d connect to a box of terminals, each tiny opening marked with a letter and number, the whole thing very advanced yet also reminiscent of a switchboard or old stereo receiver. I waited for the technician next door in the Electrode Room; I waited on my bed, listening to the muffled conversation between him and my neighbor. I have to hurry, the man explained; my next patient is someone who might have narcolepsy, and she needs to go to sleep soon. I sat on top of the covers reading because under the covers made the pose too familiar, too much like waiting for a man in my own bed.
I had my first sleep study when I was in college: narcolepsy. A couple of years later, in a new city, another: narcolepsy. (Maybe if I say the word enough here it’ll become easier to say out there, where most people don’t know how to react except with Really? and Are you sure? and I have insomnia too.) Now, living in yet another city, my new doctor wanted confirmation that I had narcolepsy, not some other problem. I could have the test—a night and day spent in a sleep lab—“whenever’s convenient,” which was never, but which also happened to be during summer break from grad school, when I could afford to step out of the world for twenty-four hours and into the benevolent but sadistic schedule of a sleep study. In the meantime, my doctor said, I probably shouldn’t drive.
When making the appointment, the receptionist on the phone asked what time I usually go to bed, which would determine when I needed to show up. We try to make things as normal as possible for you, she said, and I didn’t point out—didn’t need to point out—that if it were even remotely similar to normal, I wouldn’t be planning on the phone what time I’d be going to sleep.
I told the woman I usually turn in around ten thirty; arriving at the sleep lab by nine would give me plenty of time, she said.
The cautioned-against drive to the Sleep Disorders Center was ten minutes from my house. It took me three minutes to park, six minutes to walk to the building.
I’m here for a sleep study, I told the intercom.
Who are you? the intercom asked.
I was buzzed in. The room, with its familiar wall-mounted camera, greeted me, and the sleep technician quizzed me using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. He called me Ma’am. He pulled his jeans at the knees as he sat and asked me
