The normal ringing of tinnitus was replaced with the buzzing of some nocturnal critter outside the bedroom window. A cricket perhaps.

She listened and wondered at it for some time. She rarely heard any outside noises over her fan, save for the occasional owl that would perch itself on the fence. The fan drowned out the ringing. One white noise traded out for a more comforting one. A noise that didn’t remind her of anything. A noise that was not a consequence of anything. Just a steady blowing to set her mind at ease.

It was some time before she realized the chirping was not a critter, but the fan itself. Something was loose.

“Oh, well,” she thought. “Leave it be.” The change in sound was a welcome one. It reminded her of warm summer nights of star-gazing on a blanket in the bed of the truck. Nights she didn’t have to worry about anything. Nights she could hear every magical moment around her.

Nights when, after a hard rain, she would sit on the back porch sipping tea, his hand in hers, and she would listen to him sigh with a breath she too often took for granted.

She longed to hear him next to her again. His even breathing as he slept. The rustling of his skin against the sheets as he rolled over after she kicked him for snoring.

But now there was nothing. No snoring. No sleep talking. And no rustling. Only the hum and chirp of the fan that drowned out the ringing. The ringing that was her constant reminder of why she slept alone, and that he was never coming back.