Night Noises

Just when you think you're doing okay, that you're faultless and were meant for the movies, God laughs.  Only, I have come to believe that God's laugh comes disguised as the rumbling, echoing night noises that humans make during sleep.  Yes, the creative power of the universe invented human nasal passages, larynxes and esophagi vulnerable to the vibratory effects of deeply inhaled air while sleeping serenely.  Snoring and other barnyard noise production is a humbling experience that may or may not happen to everyone.  One thing I can tell you is that if you snore, you usually don't hear yourself.  And that is a very good thing.

As a nurse who worked on the night shift for a few years, I checked patients' rooms on rounds.  If I heard regular breathing and the equipment in the room was humming along normally, I was satisfied.  Snoring was good as it indicated normal sleep that was restful for the patient, and I went on my way.  Choking, gurgling, gasping and no sound at all caused a little bit of concern, and I checked further just to be sure.  Apnea was no laughing matter, an extreme condition that had to be remedied and monitored.

Our unit was on an upper floor of two stories with the lower floor's lobby visible from the nursing unit.  The hospital is architecturally unusual and seems more like a hotel in certain areas than it does a hospital.  One night, after I had done my initial assessments and hung IVs, I was back at the nurses' station to chart on each of my patients.  The unit was relatively peaceful and quiet, and each of us was sitting at a computer catching up on doctors' notes and writing our own for the work done so far.  In the distance on the main floor there is a large indoor fish pond with a fountain that provided a peaceful white noise of flowing water that everyone enjoyed, just loud enough to really soothe tired spirits.

I was sitting at my computer and heard a loud rumbling noise I hadn't heard before.  It was stopping and starting at regular intervals, and I attributed it to mechanical things working somewhere out of sight.  I went on with my work and didn't pay much attention.  It continued.  It got louder and took on a more ominous quality somehow.  We began to glance up every once in a while as it was certainly a more unusual kind of a night noise.  The sound was low, rather like a large motorcycle revving in the distance. I supposed it was possible that I was actually hearing a motorcycle outside, but it seemed like that would have been a pretty obnoxious thing to do, rev your Harley at 2 AM at a hospital.

Two of my nurse cohorts and I stood up together at last after we heard the sound crescendo and reach a level we could call a roar, and it seemed to be coming up through the floor and through the walls from a neighboring unit.  We called Engineering and asked what they were doing downstairs that was causing all the noise.  Nothing going on, they said.  We all got up and rounded on our patients and came back to the nurses' station feeling mystified. Our eyes narrowed, heads turned, ears pricked. The sound reverberated everywhere.  It was hard to locate and seemed to be everywhere.

I walked slowly from my station to a point nearer the fountain area and listened.  I leaned over the balcony and listened some more.  Then I found the culprit and couldn't believe what I was hearing.  A large man was sleeping on one of the couches in the lobby below, lying there like a rag doll someone had dropped from above, snoring in a way that, had it been recorded, would have set a record in the Guinness Book of World Records.  He was doing what many people do at hospitals:  Visiting a loved one overnight and taking a nap, totally useless to the world and the person he was there for.  I watched him for a moment and wondered why his teeth didn't shake loose from their sockets and his skull develop cracks for the immense sound he was producing.  I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm so glad I don't snore like that."

Last night, deep asleep, I heard a loud awful noise, an embarrassing noise that only a mythical creature like a dragon could have produced.  It was a deep resounding snort that probably cracked our window and sent small animals running for cover.  It woke me up as well as my husband who yelled, "Oh my God!" He described the sound being akin to a culvert vacuum cleaner.  How romantic, how lovely, and oh how humbling.