Just One More Story

Episode 1: The One We Lost

By Lloyd W. Alexander

Ben had always believed there were two kinds of people at the gym.

Those who wanted to talk, and those who wanted to be left alone.

He belonged firmly in the second category.

Unfortunately, the first category seemed to have trouble recognizing the distinction.

It was a little after seven on a cold winter morning, and Benjamin Wade Amato was twenty-three minutes into his usual walk on the treadmill.

He’d intended to walk for thirty minutes. Nothing particularly ambitious. Just enough to convince himself he’d done something productive before going home.

Twenty-three minutes.

Seven to go.

Not that he was counting.

Well, all right. He was counting.

The gym was relatively quiet, which was one of the reasons he liked coming at this hour. A few regulars were scattered among the machines. Someone was lifting weights with considerably more enthusiasm than Ben thought necessary, and a television mounted above the treadmills was silently delivering what appeared to be typical news.

Ben preferred the window.

Outside, the parking lot was bordered by snowbanks that had grown considerably taller over the past few days. A man in a heavy winter coat was scraping ice from his windshield, occasionally stopping to blow into his hands.

Maine in winter.

Beautiful, provided you were looking at it through glass.

Ben adjusted the speed of his treadmill.

He’d selected manual mode, which meant the machine would keep running until he decided he’d had enough. He appreciated that arrangement. There was something reassuring about being allowed to make at least one decision for himself.

He was considering whether seven more minutes were really necessary when someone stepped onto the treadmill beside him.

There were twelve treadmills.

Ten were empty.

Naturally, she chose his.

Ben glanced sideways.

The woman looked exhausted.

Not the kind of tired that came from staying up too late watching television. This was something different.

Her dark hair had been pulled into a loose ponytail, and several strands had escaped around her face. She wore an oversized sweatshirt, dark leggings, and sneakers that looked as though they’d seen better days.

She set a water bottle in the holder, stared at the controls for a moment, and pressed Start.

The belt began moving.

She sighed.

Not an ordinary sigh.

It sounded as though she’d been carrying something heavy for a very long time and had only just realized she could put it down.

Ben returned his attention to the window.

A minute passed.

Then another.

“Morning,” he said.

He had no idea why he’d said it.

It had simply come out, the way it did when someone held a door for him at the post office. Years of habit. A reflex, like flinching.

He immediately wished he could take it back.

“Is it?”

Ben looked over.

She was staring straight ahead.

“Last time I checked.”

“Then I suppose it is.”

He smiled faintly, and then, before he could stop himself, he asked another question.

“Long night?”

Two questions. This was exactly how it started.

She gave a short laugh.

“You could say that.”

Ben nodded.

That seemed like a reasonable place to end the conversation. He’d even prepared an exit, should one become necessary. A glance at the clock. A sympathetic nod. Well, I should probably finish up.

Seven more minutes. He could manage seven minutes.

Unfortunately, reasonable endings were not always available to him.

“Just got off work,” she added.

“Night shift?”

“Twelve hours.”

“Ouch.”

“Fourteen, actually. Things got a little complicated.”

Ben glanced at his treadmill.

Twenty-six minutes.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a nurse. Emergency department.”

“That explains the tired.”

He’d meant it sympathetically. It came out sounding like a diagnosis.

She looked at him for the first time.

“Doesn’t even begin to explain it.”

Something in her voice made Ben forget about the clock.

He wasn’t sure what to say.

So he said nothing.

For a while, the only sound between them was the steady rhythm of the treadmill belts.

Then she spoke again.

“We lost somebody last night.”

Ben turned his head.

“I’m sorry.”

The silence afterward seemed too large, so he added, “For your loss.”

He heard it the moment it left his mouth. It was what people said in line at a funeral home, holding a folded program, waiting their turn to shake hands. It was not what you said to a nurse on a treadmill at seven in the morning.

He looked at the treadmill display, as though it might offer something better.

It didn’t.

If she noticed, she didn’t show it. She nodded, her eyes fixed ahead.

“Yeah.”

Then she glanced at him.

“I shouldn’t even be talking about this.”

“You don’t have to,” Ben said.

It was the truth.

It was also, he realized, his exit. The one he’d been holding on to.

He didn’t take it.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her eyes had gone suddenly bright. She looked away quickly, toward the windows, and pressed her lips together hard.

Ben looked at the parking lot and gave her the privacy of not watching.

When she spoke again, her voice was rougher.

“That’s the thing about working in an emergency room,” she said. “You know it’s going to happen. You know you can’t save everybody. They tell you that in school. They tell you during orientation. Other nurses tell you.”

She swallowed.

“Doesn’t make it any easier.”

“No,” Ben said quietly. “I imagine it wouldn’t.”

She reached for her water bottle but didn’t drink.

“Sometimes you get one that stays with you.”

Ben reduced his speed slightly.

“Sounds like last night was one of those times.”

“Yeah. It was.”

She glanced toward the windows, where the winter sun was beginning to find its way through the clouds.

“I almost didn’t come here this morning.”

“Too tired?”

“That too.”

She hesitated.

“I didn’t want to go home.”

“My apartment’s quiet,” she explained. “Usually I love that. After a shift, all I want is a shower and my bed.”

She gave a small, humorless laugh.

“But this morning, I knew what was going to happen. I’d lie there staring at the ceiling, going over everything.”

“So you came here.”

“Figured I’d walk until I was too tired to think.”

He understood the appeal of keeping busy when your mind wouldn’t leave something alone. He’d made something of a career out of it.

“Does it help?”

“Usually.”

She looked at him.

“Not today.”

The storm had come through the previous evening.

Heavy, wet snow and strong winds had knocked out electricity across several towns. Trees were down, roads were slippery, and emergency crews had been busy for hours.

The hospital had already seen its share of weather-related injuries, she told him.

Broken wrists.

A fractured ankle.

A man who’d fallen from a ladder while trying to clear snow from his roof.

And then the ambulances started arriving.

“Carbon monoxide,” the nurse said.

Ben frowned.

“From what?”

“A kerosene heater. That’s what they determined.”

She slowed her treadmill.

“An old house. Family lost power during the storm.”

“How many people?”

“Six.”

“Six?”

“A husband and wife, their two kids, and two friends of the kids who were staying overnight. Four children, all about the same age.”

She took a drink of water.

“The mother had them upstairs playing board games. They’d set out a couple of battery-operated lanterns so they could see.”

Ben smiled faintly.

“Sounds like something we used to do when I was a kid.”

“Yeah?” She glanced at him. “Where’d you grow up?”

“Oh.” Ben waved a hand, as if the question were a fly. “Around. Nowhere interesting.”

He nodded toward her.

“So they were upstairs.”

She looked at him a moment longer than necessary. Then she let it go.

“Yeah.”

She looked down.

“That’s what makes it so awful. They were having a nice evening.”

The father, she said, had been downstairs in the cellar.

There was a kerosene heater running down there, providing warmth during the outage. The old house had floor vents that allowed heated air to rise into the rooms above.

He’d settled into a chair with a book.

He wore a headlamp so he could read without electricity.

“That’s what he told me,” the nurse said.

“He was awake?”

“For a little while. Later, at the hospital.”

She hesitated.

“He kept talking about his book.”

Ben looked out at the snowbanks.

He had never been in that house. He didn’t know these people. He didn’t even know what town they lived in.

But as she talked, he found himself picturing it anyway.

A low cellar. A chair that had probably been banished from the living room years ago. The orange glow of the heater. A small circle of white light on the page.

The father had been reading for some time.

Outside, the wind pushed snow against the cellar windows. Every so often, the house creaked under a particularly strong gust.

The heater made its usual soft sounds nearby.

He turned a page.

Then another.

At some point, he realized he hadn’t understood what he’d just read.

He went back to the beginning of the paragraph.

Read it again.

The words were familiar, but they didn’t seem to fit together.

He rubbed his forehead.

Perhaps he was tired.

He tried another paragraph.

A character said something. Another answered. He couldn’t remember what either had said.

He frowned and adjusted his headlamp.

Upstairs, his wife and the children were laughing over a board game.

Ben could almost hear them. The two lanterns casting warm circles of light across the table. One of the visiting children accusing another of cheating. A noisy argument that nobody took particularly seriously, and a mother settling it.

For a little while, everything was normal.

Then the alarm in the cellar began sounding.

A sharp, repeating electronic warning.

The father looked up from his book.

He listened.

The sound seemed strangely distant.

He glanced toward the stairs.

Was something making noise upstairs?

He waited.

The alarm sounded again.

He looked back at his book.

He knew he should recognize the noise.

He was certain he’d heard it before.

But the thought wouldn’t come together.

He tried to read.

The alarm continued.

He became irritated.

How was anybody supposed to concentrate with that racket?

He looked toward the ceiling.

Maybe the children were playing with something.

He couldn’t remember what game they’d been playing.

Had they told him?

He closed the book and rubbed his eyes.

The cellar felt unusually warm.

He was sweating beneath his sweatshirt.

He stood.

For a moment, the room seemed to tilt.

He reached for the back of the chair.

Something wasn’t right.

He knew that much.

But he couldn’t have said what.

“He was sitting right there,” the nurse said. “With an alarm going off.”

Ben blinked. The cellar was gone. There was only the parking lot, and the man still scraping his windshield.

“Carbon monoxide alarm?”

“Combination smoke and carbon monoxide detector. It was sounding the CO warning.”

“And he didn’t understand?”

She shook her head.

“Carbon monoxide affects your thinking. Your judgment. Your ability to recognize danger. With enough exposure, people get confused, disoriented. Sometimes they don’t even understand how sick they are.”

Ben looked down at the moving treadmill belt.

“That’s frightening.”

It was a small thing to say. It was the only thing he could find.

“It is.”

She hesitated.

“He kept trying to tell me about the noise. I didn’t understand what he meant at first.”

“What did he say?”

“Just pieces. He said he was reading. That he had a light on his head. Then he said there was a noise.”

She swallowed.

“He told me he thought it was coming from upstairs.”

Ben didn’t respond.

“He couldn’t make sense of it.”

She looked toward the window.

“And while he was sitting down there trying to figure out what that noise was, his family was upstairs breathing the same poison.”

The mother told the doctors later that she’d had a headache for nearly an hour before anything seemed wrong. She’d blamed the storm.

Ben could see that, too.

One of the children said his stomach hurt. Another leaned against the table, unusually sleepy. The two visiting friends had gone quiet.

It had been a long day, she told herself. They were tired.

Then one of the children stood up and nearly fell.

She reached to steady him, and the room swung.

She sat down hard.

The lanterns were still glowing. The game pieces were scattered across the board. One child had laid his head on his folded arms. Another was staring at the wall.

She tried to speak.

The words came slowly.

Downstairs, the father had started up the cellar stairs, gripping the railing, his legs heavy.

Halfway up, he stopped.

The alarm was still sounding behind him.

Something about that bothered him.

He turned as though he might go back.

Then he heard his wife’s voice above him, and he kept climbing.

In the kitchen, breathing hard, he looked into the next room.

His wife slumped in her chair. One child on the couch. Another on the floor. The two visiting children barely responding.

Had they fallen asleep?

He called his wife’s name.

She stirred but didn’t answer.

Something was terribly wrong.

He knew that.

He couldn’t understand what.

His phone. He needed his phone.

It wasn’t in his pocket. He stood by the table, staring at a board game that suddenly seemed unfamiliar, trying to remember what he was looking for.

Then he saw it, beside one of the lanterns.

The screen blurred.

He pressed the wrong number.

Tried again.

Somehow, he managed to call 911.

Ben realized he was gripping the handrails of the treadmill.

He let go and looked at the display.

Thirty-eight minutes.

He had passed thirty without noticing.

“The dispatcher knew something was wrong almost immediately,” the nurse said.

Ben turned toward her.

“Could he talk?”

“Some. But he was confused. He couldn’t explain what was happening.”

She paused.

“He told them his family was sick.”

“Did he know why?”

“No.”

She shook her head.

“He didn’t even know he was being poisoned.”

The dispatcher had kept him talking long enough to get the address and understand that several people needed help. Firefighters and paramedics were sent.

By the time they arrived, the father had lost consciousness.

“The firefighters’ carbon monoxide meters went off as soon as they got near the door,” the nurse said. “They knew right away they were dealing with something serious.”

They went in wearing breathing equipment.

They found six people in varying degrees of distress. The mother and the children upstairs. The father on the kitchen floor, not far from the phone.

They got everyone out into the cold, fresh air, started oxygen, and called for more ambulances.

“All six were transported,” the nurse said.

“That must have been quite a scene.”

“It was.”

“And the weather didn’t make anything easier.”

Snow still falling. Roads still slick. Crews moving patients through the cold, trying to keep them warm and keep the oxygen going.

But everyone made it out of the house.

“Everybody?” Ben asked.

“Everybody.”

She hesitated.

“That’s the part that gets me.”

The emergency department had already been busy when the first ambulance arrived, she said.

Then she stopped.

“I really shouldn’t be giving you details.”

She said it to the window, not to him.

“There’s privacy, and there’s… I could get in real trouble.”

“I won’t ask anything,” Ben said.

“No names. I’m not telling you any names.”

“I wouldn’t want them.”

She looked at him.

“I know,” she said. “That’s probably why I’m telling you.”

She took a breath, the way people do before stepping into cold water.

And she went on.

She remembered the doors opening. The stretcher coming through. The paramedics giving their report while they walked.

A man in his forties.

Severe carbon monoxide exposure.

Found unconscious.

Oxygen administered.

Altered mental status.

Possible cardiac involvement.

She’d moved alongside the stretcher as the team transferred him to a bed. His skin was pale. His hair was damp with sweat. Someone was cutting away his sweatshirt. A respiratory therapist adjusted the oxygen. A physician started asking questions.

She checked the monitor and helped get an IV in.

Other patients were coming in, too. The mother. The four children. Different rooms, different teams, everyone moving quickly.

“That’s how it works,” the nurse said. “You do what needs to be done. You don’t have time to stand there thinking about how terrible something is.”

“Because you’ve got a job to do.”

“Exactly.”

She took another drink of water.

“And sometimes that’s the easy part.”

The father’s first tests showed serious poisoning. His heart was showing signs of strain. The team kept up the oxygen and talked about whether he might need more specialized treatment.

For a time, he stayed unconscious.

Then he began to stir.

She told the next part slowly, and Ben found he could see that room, too. The monitor. The pale man. The nurse leaning in.

“I was right there when he opened his eyes,” she said.

He looked frightened.

“Where am I?”

She leaned closer.

“You’re in the hospital. You’ve been very sick.”

He stared at her.

His eyes moved around the room.

He tried to sit up.

She gently encouraged him to stay still.

“You’re safe. We’re taking care of you.”

He looked at her again.

“My wife?”

“She’s here at the hospital. She’s being treated.”

“The kids?”

“They’re here too.”

He closed his eyes.

For a moment, she thought he’d drifted back to sleep.

Then he spoke.

“I was reading.”

She leaned closer.

“I’m sorry?”

“My book.”

His voice was weak.

“Downstairs.”

She nodded.

“All right.”

“Had my light.”

He lifted one hand toward his forehead.

“On my head.”

“A headlamp?”

He nodded faintly.

She glanced at the monitor.

His heart rate was up.

He was still very sick.

“There was a noise,” he whispered.

“What kind of noise?”

He frowned.

“Kept making that noise.”

She waited.

“Thought it was upstairs.”

His breathing was getting harder.

“I couldn’t read.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to explain everything right now.”

He looked at her.

“I couldn’t think.”

“That’s because you were very sick.”

He shook his head slightly.

“I didn’t know.”

“I understand.”

He stared at the ceiling.

Then his expression changed.

“My kids.”

“They’re being cared for.”

“Are they okay?”

She told him everyone had been rescued and was being treated.

He seemed to struggle with that.

Then he looked directly at her.

“But I called somebody.”

She nodded.

“Yes.”

“I think I called somebody.”

“You did,” she told him. “You called 911.”

His eyes filled.

“I did?”

“Yes. You got help for your family.”

He closed his eyes.

For a moment, his face softened.

“Good.”

The nurse stopped talking.

She looked down at her hands.

Ben waited.

“That’s what he said,” she whispered.

“Good.”

Her voice broke on the word.

She reached for her water bottle, but her hand was trembling.

She set it down again.

Ben slowed his treadmill.

There was a tightness in his throat that he did not care for. He became very interested in the parking lot.

The man had finally gotten his windshield clear. He was knocking snow off his boots against the tire, one foot and then the other.

Ben watched him do it.

He wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to say something.

He suspected she didn’t.

The nurse wiped beneath one eye.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

She nodded without looking at him.

“I keep hearing his voice.”

Ben waited.

“He was so confused. He didn’t understand what had happened. But the one thing he kept asking about was his family.”

She swallowed.

“And when I told him he’d called for help, he looked so relieved.”

Her eyes filled again.

“I thought maybe we were going to get him through it.”

Ben looked at her.

“But you didn’t.”

She shook her head.

“No.”

He got worse a few hours later, she said.

His heart, already damaged by the poisoning, began to fail. The team worked to stabilize him. She helped with medications and equipment. She watched the monitors. She did what the physician asked.

When his heart stopped, they started resuscitation.

For several minutes, the room was all urgent voices, people moving, and the relentless rhythm of chest compressions.

They tried.

They kept trying.

He didn’t survive.

“I was there when the doctor called it,” she said.

She remembered the sudden quiet. The way everyone seemed to stand still for a moment.

Then the work of an emergency department went on around them.

Another patient needed attention.

Another ambulance was arriving.

The world did not stop.

Even when, for one family, everything had changed.

“I went into the supply room afterward,” she told Ben.

He looked at her.

“Just for a minute. I needed to get away from everybody.”

She gave a small, embarrassed laugh.

“I stood there staring at a shelf of bandages.”

Ben said nothing.

“I couldn’t cry. Not really. There were still patients to take care of.”

She rubbed her forehead.

“So I washed my face and went back out.”

“That must be hard.”

“Sometimes.”

“People think nurses get used to death.”

“Do you?”

“You get used to what you have to do.”

She paused.

“I don’t know if you ever get used to the rest.”

Ben thought about that.

Outside, the man with the clean windshield finally drove away.

Another car pulled into the lot.

People arriving.

People leaving.

No one knowing what had happened in a hospital only hours earlier.

“What about you?” the nurse asked.

Ben looked over.

“What about me?”

“Is this your thing? Strangers unloading on you before breakfast?”

“Apparently.”

That got the smallest smile.

“Seriously,” she said. “I’ve been talking for half an hour. What’s your story?”

“Me?” Ben laughed. “I don’t have one. I walk on a treadmill and look out the window. That’s about it.”

“Everybody’s got something.”

“Mine would put you to sleep.”

He considered that.

“Which, actually, might not be the worst thing for you right now.”

She shook her head, but the smile stayed a moment longer.

Ben looked back at the window before she could ask anything else.

“What about the others?” he said.

“His family? The two friends?”

He nodded.

“They’re doing well, considering. A couple were treated and sent home. The others needed more care, but they’re expected to recover.”

“All five?”

“All five.”

He let that settle.

The nurse kept walking.

“Before I left, I heard more about the house.”

“What did you find out?”

“The firefighters had been going over what happened. Apparently, there were two combination smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.”

“Two?”

“One downstairs, near where the father had been reading. That one was working. It sounded.”

“And upstairs?”

She shook her head.

“Dead batteries.”

Ben stared at her.

“The upstairs detector never went off?”

“No.”

She looked down.

“Five people sitting around a table, playing a game by lantern light, and they never heard a warning.”

He said nothing.

“The father heard the alarm downstairs, but he was already so confused he couldn’t understand what it meant.”

She swallowed.

“That was the noise he kept telling me about.”

Ben nodded slowly.

“His alarm.”

“Yes.”

She wiped at her eyes again.

“And I didn’t know that when he was trying to tell me.”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“I know.”

But her voice said she hadn’t entirely accepted it.

She stared ahead.

“He kept saying he couldn’t think. He couldn’t figure things out.”

Her voice grew quieter.

“And I keep wondering whether he thought he’d done something wrong.”

Ben opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Whatever he said next was going to matter, and he had no idea what it should be.

“Maybe he was just…” He stopped. Tried again. “He was trying to figure it out.”

She looked at him.

“Maybe.”

“I mean, he couldn’t think straight. You said that. He couldn’t read his book, he couldn’t figure out the alarm, he couldn’t—”

He was making it worse.

He could hear himself making it worse.

He stopped.

“But he called,” Ben said. “That’s… I don’t know. He still called.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“He got them help,” she said slowly.

“Yeah. That.”

Ben looked toward the window.

“That’s something.”

The nurse didn’t answer.

He turned back to her.

“I’m not saying it makes it… easier. Losing him. I don’t think it does.”

“No.”

“I just…”

He didn’t finish.

He didn’t know how.

For several seconds, she said nothing.

Then she nodded.

“He did call,” she said.

Ben let the silence settle.

He wasn’t particularly good at moments like this.

He never knew whether he was supposed to say something profound or offer some comforting observation that would somehow make everything better.

Usually, he suspected, there wasn’t anything that could.

So he stayed quiet.

The nurse wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

She took a breath.

“All night, I’ve been going over it. What else could we have done? What if he’d gotten there sooner? What if we’d known something we didn’t?”

Ben listened.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

Then she gave a shaky laugh.

“I’m sorry. I don’t usually tell strangers all this.”

Ben glanced at his treadmill.

Fifty-six minutes.

He’d been walking for almost an hour.

The conversation had lasted close to half an hour, and he’d barely noticed.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose there are worse things than a few extra minutes of exercise.”

She laughed.

A real laugh this time.

Small, but real.

“You’re a strange guy.”

“I’ve been told.”

He smiled.

“Usually by people who know me better.”

That earned another laugh.

Then she grew quiet again.

“I didn’t know what to do with all of this when I left work.”

“Sometimes talking helps.”

“I guess it does.”

“Even when you’re talking to somebody who doesn’t know what he’s talking about?”

Ben shrugged.

“Especially then. Less chance of getting professional advice.”

She smiled.

They walked for another minute.

Then Ben pressed Stop.

The nurse did the same.

They stepped off their treadmills.

She picked up her water bottle.

“Thanks for listening.”

“Anytime.”

He winced slightly. It was another thing people said.

This time, though, he found he meant it.

She started toward the locker rooms, then stopped.

“You know something?”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve been thinking about the one we lost all morning.”

Ben waited.

She looked at him.

“I guess I haven’t spent much time thinking about the ones we didn’t.”

Ben wasn’t sure he had any business saying anything.

He said it anyway, carefully, as though setting down something that might break.

“Maybe there’s… room for both.”

Her expression changed.

Not into happiness.

Nothing that simple.

But something in her face seemed to soften.

She looked down for a moment.

Then back at him.

“Yeah,” she said quietly.

“Maybe there is.”

She started walking away.

After a few steps, she turned.

“Hey.”

Ben looked up.

“What’s your name?”

“Ben.”

She smiled.

“Thanks, Ben.”

“Get some sleep.”

“I think I will.”

Then she was gone.

It occurred to him, a moment too late, that he hadn’t asked hers.

Ben stood beside the treadmill for another minute.

He’d come to the gym hoping for thirty minutes of peace and quiet.

Instead, he’d heard about a family he’d never met, a father he’d never know, and a nurse who was carrying something heavier than anything in the weight room.

He looked at the empty treadmill beside him.

The woman had been a complete stranger when she’d stepped onto it.

She still was, in a way.

He didn’t know whether he’d ever see her again.

Ben picked up his towel and wiped his face with it, longer than he needed to.

Dry air in these places. It did that to your eyes.

Ben thought about the people he passed every day.

The cashier at the grocery store.

The man shoveling his driveway.

The woman waiting behind him in line at the pharmacy.

People carrying stories he’d never hear.

Some funny.

Some ordinary.

Some heartbreaking.

He couldn’t possibly know what any of them had been through.

But maybe he didn’t have to.

As he headed toward the locker room, Ben found himself thinking about something as simple as saying good morning.

He’d regretted it the moment it came out.

He didn’t regret it now.

Afterthoughts

Ben

He’d been thinking about the father all morning.

A man reading by headlamp in his own cellar. An alarm he could hear but couldn’t understand. And somehow, through all of it, a phone call.

Ben wondered whether he would have been able to do the same.

He hoped so.

But he wasn’t entirely sure.

He sat with that for a while, longer than he was comfortable with.

Then he got up, turned on the television, and found something to watch that had nothing to do with anything.

The Nurse

She slept for nearly six hours that afternoon.

It was the first decent sleep she’d had in days.

When she woke, the apartment was quiet.

For a moment, she lay still, listening to the familiar sounds of her building.

A door closing somewhere down the hall.

A car passing outside.

The soft hum of her refrigerator.

Then she thought about the father.

His face. His confusion. His voice.

But I called somebody. I think I called somebody.

She got up to get a glass of water, and on her way to the kitchen she stopped in the hallway.

She looked up.

The detector was right where it had always been. A small white disk on the ceiling, outside her bedroom door. She walked under it a dozen times a day. She couldn’t remember the last time she had actually looked at it.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had tested it, either.

She dragged a kitchen chair into the hallway, climbed up, and found the button.

She pressed it.

The sound filled the apartment. Sharp. Repeating. Impossible to ignore.

Unless you couldn’t think.

She made herself keep her thumb on the button and listen.

She thought about the father in his cellar, looking up from his book, trying to decide whether the noise was coming from upstairs.

She thought about the other detector. The one over the board game.

Dead batteries.

Probably nobody had meant anything by it. A low-battery chirp, months ago, in the middle of some ordinary night. Somebody pulling the battery out so they could get back to sleep. Meaning to replace it in the morning.

People did it all the time.

She had probably done it herself.

She let go of the button.

The silence afterward rang in her ears.

She climbed down, pulled open the drawer by the stove where she kept everything that didn’t belong anywhere else, and dug through rubber bands and takeout menus until she found a package of batteries. She checked the dates.

Then she picked up her phone and called her mother.

“Is everything all right?” her mother asked. Nobody called at four in the afternoon unless something was wrong.

“Everything’s fine,” she said. “When did you last check your smoke detectors?”

There was a pause.

“Why?”

She looked at the little white disk on the ceiling.

“Humor me,” she said.

Later, after her mother had gone around the house pressing buttons and reporting back, after she had promised to buy batteries for her father’s camp, after she’d finally hung up, she sat on the edge of her bed with the phone in her lap.

She still wished she could have saved him.

She suspected she always would.

But tonight, in houses all over town, there were probably detectors sitting on ceilings with no batteries in them, waiting for some ordinary night.

Not hers.

Not her mother’s.

It wasn’t much.

It was something.

It occurred to her then that she had never told the man on the treadmill her name.

He hadn’t asked.

She found herself smiling a little at that.

Maybe next time.

The End