Signal Lost

Maria's hair fell out in strands. First just a few on the pillow, then clumps in the shower drain, then everything. The chemo took her hair, her appetite, the light in her eyes, but Mark kept going to work at the cable company like nothing was happening. That was the lie he lived — that life continued in any recognizable way.

He crawled through suburban attics and basements like a zombie, spooling coaxial cable, reconnecting disconnected households, transmitting signals to people whose lives still made sense. His customers complained about pixelated screens during the big game, missed episodes of shows they couldn't live without. Their problems were so small they made his chest ache.

"You okay?" his supervisor asked one day. Mark hadn't realized he'd been staring at a tangled mess of wires for ten minutes, thinking about the bald head that used to hold hair he loved to run his fingers through.

"Fine," he said. "Just tired."

That night, the cable went out at their apartment. Maria sat in the dark, her head wrapped in a silk scarf, watching the black screen like it was a fire. "We should cancel," she said. "Save the money."

Mark reached for her hand, found it cold. "It's the only thing that makes you forget, isn't it? The noise. The stories."

"I don't want to forget anymore," she said.

He called in the next morning, quit his job, then spent the day disconnecting their cable. He cut the wire with kitchen shears, watching the copper gleam in the light that filtered through dusty blinds. Maria stood in the doorway, watching him.

"What are we going to do?" she asked.

"Feel it," he said. "However bad it gets. We feel it."

That night they sat on the couch in silence, no signal to distract them, no stories to disappear into. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of each other breathing. It was the worst night of Mark's life.

It was also the first real one in months.