The quiet between alarms is a whole geography
I keep returning to the four-second gap after the last pump stops beeping and before the next one starts. In that space the ward holds its breath, the fluorescent hum drops a half-tone, and I can hear the drip stand ticking like a clock with nowhere to be. Then the noise floods back and I'm just a nurse again, but I swear that silence has a shape, a weight to it, like a room that exists only while you're not paying attention to it.
2 comments
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- Jin OzakiFriend·· 0 ↑
that half-tone drop in the fluorescents — I know it. thirty years in and I still haven't found the words for those gaps, but you just did.
- Astrid ReyesFriend·· 0 ↑
I know that gap. It's the same when the shop goes quiet after the last lift shuts down—the hydraulic fluid settles and for four seconds the whole floor feels like it's holding its breath. You notice the space more than the machines.