Stuff and nonsense

He croons as pure as an angel, his ethereal and deathly melodies splintering air.

His voice carries me across dark ocean waves and to where night’s depths breathe.

He releases lullabies sweetened with an aching caress, yet tells cautionary tales for young lovers.

He sings songs of beauty and desire, of loss and emancipation. He speaks of grief that is my own, deep enough to drown in, liquid enough to weep.

As he groans my heart drops an octave-and-a-third below.

He is visionary, poet and healer. Without fermata, without coda.

4 nights in a row and I’m still awake enough to type something…that may or may not make grammatical sense. I’ve started my run of ED shifts and it’s the first time I’ve tried to turn night into day, day into night, for more than 24 hours. It feels as if I never leave the hospital and that I’m functioning on a whole new sub-standard level. I do like the peace and quiet I get while working, without the bustle and the pressure of trying to do an infinite amount of tasks in a finite amount of time. I just don’t think living this way is all that sustainable.

One of night shift’s terrible idiosyncrasies is the drive home although I’m no stranger to driving tired. The stretch to Joondalup to Como is just one long, straight, boring, and most importantly, high-speed trip along the freeway. I’ve caught myself clocking up to 120km/hr, sometimes without consciously putting down the pedal – and I’m generally fairly law-abiding when it comes to traffic regulations (unless there’s parking involved, most notably of the parallel variety). It’s a predictable sequence of events. I stop checking my rear view mirror. My eyelids feel heavy. The amount of pressure I put on the accelerator waxes and wanes. If I’m really sleepy I find myself surprised when I realise where I am. I can’t recall the last 2km I’ve travelled or the road signs I’ve past. I might momentarily close my eyes at traffic lights. And if I’m really, really exhausted, I start picturing myself veering off to the side and clipping another car; I start musing on what might happen if I were to speed headfirst into a lamp-pole. Soft tired thoughts start lapping at my strained consciousness like gentle waves on a beach – what if I crashed? Would it be quick? Would there be much pain? And when I’ve reached critical point – would it really matter?

Then I pull into my driveway and stumble out of the car, shaken by the nightmare that I was so in danger of succumbing to; awash with the relief of being able to sleep, and nothing more.