Sweet Dreams

We are winning the race, my partner and I. Our jack is not your standard Safeway-issue model, this is a racing pallet jack. Bright yellow, with handles for carrying up the stairs in this epic steeplechase event, but still heavy for two men to lift. On flat terrain, one steers, the other pushes off. We alternate propelling it, but rules dictate that three feet must be on the jack whenever it is being scooted. Our legs strain as we tromp side-by-side up the endless steps, lugging our load in the dark. Sponsors' stickers adorn its vertical surfaces, non-slip tape on the forks. Our thin lead is but seconds, and the next team is hot on our heels. I can hear their panting below us, as they ferry their pallet jack...

Dong-ding-dang-dong

The distant notes descend the scale, reaching down, pulling the curtains across the strange screenplay in my brain. Hunh? 'zatta call? I place my hand over the pocket of my gym shorts. Buzzing. Aw, crap. "Engine forty-one, BLS..." I throw off my unzipped sleeping bag, shuffle into my clogs, and strain to comprehend the words on my pager, glowing teal in the dim ward. My eyes won't quite focus, so I try to recall the dispatch moments ago. Somewhere on Puget Avenue... I'm not driving us there, and that's more than I need to know right now.

My bunker pants wait beside the engine, pushed down around the boots, suspenders splayed out around the feet, ready for disaster. Holding the boot loops, I jam my feet in, wiggling into the heavy trousers, flipping the straps over my shoulder with an exaggerated shrug. As I climb up, I peer around my seat at the computer screen, glowing atop the pedestal to the left of the Captain's seat. Unknown medical. I'm awake now, and mentally preparing myself for the worst: heart attack, stroke, miscarriage...

Our trip is short, less than a block. As we roll on-scene, I hop out and pull the aid kit and O-2 kit from their cubby, behind my seat. Cap'n's saying something from the cab, out his open door, something I can't quite make out, over the idling diesel.

"Schlem! Code Green," he repeats. A young woman is standing in the entrance to the veterinary clinic, holding the door open, her hair backlit in a wild halo.

"Sorry!" She waves.

I don't wonder at how we were called to the vet's office at 0530, but I'm happy to head back to the station. We put the engine away, readying our gear for the next call. Back in my clogs, I scuff up the stairs to the ward. Chief's up, and the smell of his excellent coffee is calling me, in a round, roasty whisper. Up the stairs. I can still get one more hour of sleep. But I don't. For fifteen minutes, I wait for a mantle of relaxation to pull me down. I finally get up and resign myself to a great cup of joe. I kick my clogs back on and hope there's still half-and-half.

Sleep has become a dirty word in the fire service. The realities of protecting life, property, and the environment, twenty-four hours a day, necessitate that firefighters occasionally go without sleep. The City's taxpayers resent paying us a union wage while we sleep. Our administration is skeptical of the endless studies correlating sleep loss with health and safety problems.

Our schedule is the envy of civilians, about eight days a month, not much more than the accepted forty-hour work week. That's at least twenty-two days off, if you aren't blessed with an, increasingly rare, overtime shift. The danger inherent in our work led our union, long ago, to negotiate regulations that protect us from working too many hours in a week. Regulations also prevent us from working more than twenty-four hours in a row, excepting a disaster like fire, earthquake, or UFOs landing at the courthouse. Sleep loss compromises your ability to make decisions, drive fire engines, and, we've since learned, increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. And a busy, sleepless night will also destroy the following day, a day off, a day of plans, time with family or children.

But, for many firefighters, every night is a busy night. Sleep disorders are a common side-effect of repeated sleep interruption. Years of waking up two, three, -six times a night can shatter the gears of the internal clock governing the normal cycle of day-time waking and night-time sleeping. Once awakened by an alarm, emergency or not, these firefighters do not drop back into the restful slumber they need. Every shift has its night owls, firefighters who spend the night in a recliner, channel surfing, unable to sleep. Others find that the communal noise of the ward keeps them awake. It's no coincidence that difficulty sleeping, sleep apnea, and snoring all share the firehouse dormitory. When the subject of snoring comes up, I guiltily redirect the conversation.

Luckily, we still have a tradition of naps in the afternoon, a secret, not widely advertised. After lunch, time allowing, captains close their office doors, pipemen, drivers flop into the Laz-E-Boys. Blankets are tucked up around shoulders, eyes closed. The possibility of being up all night is a persuasive argument, but I'm seldom sleepy enough to make it happen. Recently, I began trying to nap the day after I work, usually through lunchtime, and it makes the remaining day more enjoyable. Occasionally, I'll crash for four hours or more, a luxury when I can pull it off.

In the station, at bedtime, a switch is flipped from Monitor to Alert, usually by the probie or least-senior man. The ubiquitous background of fire department radio traffic is switched off, unless a rig in your station is dispatched, in which case, tones are audible by everyone in that firehouse. A given rig may not roll on a given night, but when someone else goes out, all are roused.

We are seeing progress in our department, though. Walls have been erected in the largest wards to shield sleepers from their neighbors' noise. There is increasing talk of segregated crew quarters, isolating individual companies from irrelevant tones, and the disturbance of people coming and going from a shared sleeping area. A couple of our stations house only one company, and there the sleep is better, but that duty is generally meted out to senior members. It would be nice to have that kind of experience in the larger stations, with a dynamic collection of characters in the daytime, but peace and quiet at night.

In high school, I learned a trick from my best friend's mom. She spoke of seeing colors, lights, when she went to sleep. I didn't understand what she was talking about at the time, but now I do. The rods and cones, on the retina, fire randomly when your eyes are closed. Easy to ignore, they form random shapes and patterns, swirling, floating, when you allow yourself to see them. If you relax, your mind will impose sense onto the image, like finding pictures in the shifting clouds. You may find you need to clench or rub your eyes to start the show. It's very relaxing, and very distracting from the day's events and concerns. It's my experience that the hind brain soon takes over, segues into unrelated visions, and usually into sleep.

I know I'll sleep well tonight, I'm tired, and I have a race to win.

International Association of Fire Chiefs' report on sleep deprivation