Now, Daryl had warned us about this very thing, but he hadn’t said a word about the sheer volume of the alarm. It sounded for a full minute before stopping. But here it is: blessed silence. I take a solid second to let my ears recover. And then I dive right in.
“Hey, Elaine, would you like to go to —”Errrr. Errrr. Errrr.And there it goes again. Like the world’s loudest fire alarm. And then we strain to hear Daryl, urging us to stay calm.
“You think we should go?” Elaine asks, wincing at the clashing metallic sound of the alarm. “I thought Daryl said we should stay? They’re just testing it, right?” She’s yelling now, because the alarm has gotten impossibly louder.
Errrr. Errrr. Errrr.
“Yea, we should stay, but do you want to go and get coffee later?”
Errrr. Errrr. Errrr.
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Do. You. Want. To. Go—” I take a breath, because I’m basically screaming at this point.
“No.” She screams back, and it takes me a minute to realize I never finished my request, and she’s not actually turning me down.
“He. Said. Not. To. Go.” She’s holding her hands over her ears in a futile attempt to mitigate the sound.
Errrr. Errrr. Errrr.
This is getting ridiculous. And I swear I’m losing my hearing.
I try again. “I know. But….”
ERRRRR. ERRRRR. ERRRRR. ERRRRR.Louder still.
Oh, sweet Jesus. I better go see what they’re doing. Daryl’s probably messing with the sound system, and two minutes of his tinkering could take me hours to fix. Knowing she won’t be able to hear a thing I say, I grab a post-it and scribble a hasty note.
I’m going to go and try to fix this. Cross your fingers. -S
I can’t even think about what a complete and utter failure that was because the ringing gets mercilessly louder as I take the stairs to my office.
