The Chirp I Hear in Every Room

—no, start again, sorry. You asked what I heard, not what I did. I heard a chirp. Like a smoke alarm when the battery's low. That's the only way I can put it. I was agency, not permanent staff, covering the Tuesday-Thursday nights on the dementia wing because Sandra was off with her hip. Fourteen residents, two of us on, and the concentrators going all down the corridor, that steady hiss-click, hiss-click. You stop hearing it after the first hour. Sandra's hip never did heal right, as it turned out, she was off another four months after that, but that's nothing to do with any of this. Mr. Aldous was in room six. Eighty-one, emphysema, and a concentrator that alarmed if the tubing kinked, which it did most nights because he pulled at it in his sleep. It has a tone, three short beeps, pause, three short beeps.