Room Seven

The first one was a man named Gerald. He died in February, a Tuesday night, sleet against the window, and what he left behind was the sound of a door closing softly in an empty house. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just the specific sound of someone arriving home to no one. I heard it the moment his breathing stopped. I have not stopped hearing it since.

I thought I was unwell. I requested a week’s leave, saw my GP, described it as tinnitus. She found nothing. I went back to work because the work needed doing and I am good at it, and room seven needed someone good at it.

Margaret left the sound of a child calling from another room. Not frightened, just calling, the way children do when they assume you are there. Assuming you are always there. I have learned not to flinch when I hear it.

By the fifth one I had stopped reporting anything to occupational health. What would I say. I carry the sounds of the dead and they are not unpleasant, only permanent, only accumulating. Harold left rain on a caravan roof. Ordinary, pleasant rain. Joyce left the particular silence after a piece of music ends, that held moment before the applause, when the room is still deciding what it felt.

I have thirty-one now.

My colleagues say I am the calmest person they have ever worked with. They ask how I do it. I tell them you find a way to carry it.

At night, before sleep, they play, not randomly, not chaotically, but in a sequence I have started to recognise. As though they are arranging themselves. As though they are waiting for one more.

I have begun to wonder whose sound I will leave behind.I have begun to wonder who will hear it.