White Noise
1317 Words
The first thing Malorie reclaimed was her sense of smell.
But it wasn’t the comforting scent of home, the expensive sandalwood candles Timothy insisted made their living room feel “curated,” or the warm, familiar whisper of freshly brewed coffee that usually drifted down the hallway on slow weekend mornings.
No.
The smell that filled her nose was a violent invasion: the sharp, chemical sting of antiseptic and the flat, metallic chill of recycled hospital air. It carried that distinctive, sterile emptiness that only places untouched by real life ever held. It wasn’t a smell meant for
living people.
It was the smell of time suspended. The smell of endings disguised as preservation.
A smell she had fought, tooth and nail, to banish from her dreams.
And now, it surged back with merciless clarity, smothering her before she could even fully open her eyes.
Then came the sounds, soft at first, disorganized, like her mind was tuning into a distant radio station through static.
Electronic beeps morphed from faint tapping into insistent punctuation around her. Metallic whirs hummed like mechanical breathing. Somewhere beyond the walls, muffled footsteps passed in quick, rhythmic bursts, and the rubbery squeak of tennis shoes echoed like people scurrying through a busy hallway.
Closer, right beside her, was the rustle of fabric, the quiet scrape of a chair being pulled even nearer, and then the unmistakable sound of someone exhaling unevenly, as if bracing themselves.
She tried to lift her eyelids.
They didn’t move. They felt weighed down by something far heavier than flesh, as if her body had been sealed shut with lead plates while she slept. Everything beneath her skin felt distant, wrong, unreachable.
Her body wasn’t her body. It was an abandoned house she’d forgotten how to move through.
Timothy?
She tried to call for him, to reach for the one voice that she knew would be there the moment she stirred. The attempt scraped against her raw throat like broken glass. Only a dry, rasping wheeze escaped, more ghost than sound.
“Malorie?”
Her heart fumbled.
No, the voice wasn’t right. It wasn’t Timothy’s polished, controlled baritone, the voice that always sounded as if he were halfway through a closing argument or dictating an email, even in casual conversation. His voice never cracked, never wavered, never betrayed anything beyond irritation or efficiency.
This voice was rough. Frayed at the edges. Thickened by emotion, startled, aching emotion.
A voice that sounded like it had been speaking into the void for months, hoping for an answer that never came.
Then a hand closed around hers. Swallowing her whole hand.
It wasn’t Timothy’s hand.
Not the soft, manicured palms of a man whose world revolved around pristine legal pads, polished desks, and climate‑controlled offices. No, these fingers were warm and calloused, textured by real work. They trembled just slightly as they wrapped around her still foreign-feeling fingers. The grip was firm but tender, desperate yet careful, as though he feared she might dissolve if he held too tightly, or drift away if he didn’t hold tightly enough.
Malorie gathered everything inside her, every flicker of strength, every spark of will, and pried her eyes open.
Light slammed into her like a tidal wave.
Searing white shards.
Blinding.
Her vision swam, shimmered, distorted. Tears blurred everything together, turning shapes into melting silhouettes. Slowly, painfully, the blur softened, edges sharpened, and a figure took form, a man leaning forward, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath brush her cheek. The warmth woke up her senses just a little more.
“Gill?” she croaked, though the name felt half formed on her shredded throat.
Her childhood friend.
The boy who once dared her to climb the old oak tree until they could see the whole neighborhood. It was glorious.
The boy who taught her to ride a bike after her father missed yet another promise.
The boy who helped her build her first greenhouse in the backyard, beaming as if they’d constructed a portal. Not knowing that would set her on the journey to exploring a passion that would turn into her calling.
The man who walked her down the aisle when her father couldn’t be bothered to show up. Again.
But that boyish grin was gone.
Gill looked hollowed out.
Dark, bruised crescents pooled beneath his eyes. Deep grooves carved themselves into his forehead as if worry had taken up permanent residence. His stubble, messy, salt‑and‑pepper, uneven, made him look older than she remembered. Older than yesterday…
Was it yesterday?
Her mind spun. Reeling.
“I’m here, Mal,” he whispered, and the sound of that nickname, Mal, hit her harder than the overhead lights. She hadn’t heard it in years. Maybe longer.
He didn’t release her hand.
Instead, he brought her knuckles to his forehead, like he was making a vow or offering a prayer. She glimpsed a tear trail across his cheek, and something inside her twisted.
“I’m right here, Mal. You’re okay. You’re okay, Mal.”
Mal.
God, she’d forgotten how that felt, someone saying her name like it meant something beyond obligation.
But then reality pressed in, heavy and suffocating.
“Where’s… Timothy?” she managed, the words tumbling out clumsy and thick.
Gill’s body reacted before his face did.
His shoulders tensed, a small, subtle lock she felt through their clasped hands. His jaw tightened. Something flickered across his expression too quickly for her to name.
Guilt? Anger? Both?
This time he didn’t look at her.
Instead, he stared at the heart monitor as if it were safer than the truth. The green line shuddered with her rising panic.
“He’s… he’s at the office, Malorie. Big merger. You know how he is.”
Malorie. Not Mal.
That alone felt like a warning.
“It’s Tuesday. Or it was. I lost track.”
“How long?”
Her voice cracked around the words. Her heart hammered, matching the monitor’s erratic beeping.
“Gill, how long was I… asleep? Where am I?”
Gill turned his head slowly, painfully, like he had to fight his own body to look at her.
His eyes were ancient.
Ruined.
Holding a grief that made her stomach flip and drop.
He squeezed her hand once more.
Then he let go, gently, carefully, like someone setting down a fragile object that might break at the slightest pressure.
“Eighteen months, Malorie,” he said softly.
“You’ve been gone for eighteen months.”
The world lurched sideways.
A year and a half, stolen, erased, swallowed by a void she couldn’t remember. She stared at her arms: pale, weak, mapped with IV lines, faint scars, and the shadowy remnants of countless failed attempts to keep her alive.
“He’s coming,” Gill added quickly, sensing the panic beginning to unravel her. He reached for a plastic cup of water, guiding a bendy straw to her cracked lips with the precision of someone who had done it a thousand times, who had learned every tremor, every twitch, every need of her unconscious body.
“I called him the second your eyes started flickering. He’s on his way.”
But Malorie noticed something.
He wasn't looking at the door.
He wasn’t waiting for her husband to burst in, breathless and relieved, as any devoted partner would after eighteen months of limbo.
No, Gill’s eyes were locked on her.
Focused.
Protective.
Fierce.
His body angled between her fragile form and the rest of the world like a shield.
And for the first time, a cold, creeping realization slid through her chest.
Why wasn’t the man at her bedside, the man holding her hand, the man who kept vigil, the man who stayed… Why wasn’t it the man she had promised her life to? Vowed fealty to ‘in sickness and in health’?
- Writer
