“Lucky, you hear that?”
I ask as I pull the pillow over my head, awakening from a restless sleep. I look over at Lucky, who climbs over to me and nuzzles my cheek, and I scratch behind his ears.
I try to grasp the unsettling feeling that has followed me into my morning.
There is a humming in my ears. Only it’s not humming, as humming is sonorous and rhythmic. This is discordant, jarring, like someone traipsing through a field of metal and glass rubbish, only quiet enough to be at the edge of my consciousness. I can’t place where it is coming from. Is it outside my window? In the apartment above me?
I wonder if it is something wrong with my ears or even my brain, but one look at Lucky, his black curly tail down, and ears raised, says that it isn’t inside me.
He is making that little whine dogs do when they are uncomfortable.
After breakfast, we head out for our morning walk, and the sound follows: clanging, almost metallic, so tangible that I can taste it. Rather than getting used to it, the sound seems to have grown louder, yet others are walking with their schnauzers and corgis, oblivious. They nod and raise their hands, in that companionable way that all dog walkers seem to share, but Lucky isn’t running up to greet the others as usual. We are both out of sorts from the noise.
My poor Chinese is preventing me from questioning others, but I am becoming annoyed that others seem not notice the noise, while my head is pulsing, and my teeth are grinding from the tension of the ceaseless symphony of crunching and grinding.
“Let’s head to the park this morning,” I say, making the decision for both of us. He seems to be happy with the extended outing and my mood lifts as we start our run around the park trail. After the first lap, I notice something. The noise is here, too. It must be something wrong with my ears. I think I need to see a doctor, but then I look down at Lucky, and I see that he is anxious too. He’s whining, acting irritable, completely out of character for a dog that finds joy in everything.
It is not in my head or my ears; we are both hearing the noise.
As the week progresses, the noise continues, and Lucky and I have lost our appetites, and have been constantly nauseous. I reach out to friends in the area, look up key words on social media in English and Chinese, do internet searches.
I consider if the military airbase nearby could be running exercises that would emit low level sounds.
I am becoming increasingly irrational as the sound sucks away my ability to concentrate and think clearly. I had read a story recently about the Dyatlov Pass incident of 1959 in Russia, where nine hikers were found dead in the mountains. Recent research suggested that infrasound, or low-frequency sound that is inaudible to most, caused several of the hikers to become insensible and ultimately doomed them all.
I become convinced that this is the solution.
I exhaustively research things that can cause such infrasound, and hit on such things as a Karmen vortex street, caused by a combination of air pressure and geography, meteorites, and it goes downhill from that as I am now becoming a conspiracy theorist.
Is it aliens? Something else?
The rational part of me still left after weeks of popping the Tylenol brought from home and searching dubious websites decided that I should go to the doctor. Maybe Lucky is just picking up on my discomfort. Maybe he is like one of those diabetes detecting dogs, or cancer-sensing cats and knows there is something wrong with me.
At any rate, at least the doctor can give me something to combat the insomnia which has been the constant companion of the garbage disposal constantly grinding in my ears.
The doctor orders an exhaustive array of tests: MRI’s and CT scans of my brain, hearing tests, blood work, urinalysis, the obvious stuff.
He finds nothing, and tells me to lay off red meat, alcohol, and spicy food, drink lots of hot water, and come back in a week. In a week, I return, but the noise has continued. In my broken Chinese, I try to explain my infrasound theory, and the doctor assumes that I am misspeaking, telling me to exercise more, try yoga and meditation, maybe acupuncture.
I am exasperated, tired, and something else. Maybe it’s my imagination, but the sound seems to be getting louder every day.
I find more crazy theories, and now my family back home is worried that I am losing my grip on reality or something serious is happening. All of them are urging me to return.
“Please eat, Lucky”, I beg constantly, handfeeding him bits of chicken, encouraging him to drink broth.
I am becoming more worried about Lucky than myself, however. He is doing much worse than me now.
He is laying around, out of energy, no appetite, and I go nowhere without him. Also, his condition is proof that I am not crazy. I will not let him down. He has been my faithful companion for 3 years now, sharing long walks and runs, and even sleeping by my side every night to protect me and keep me warm. He is my family in China.
I take Lucky to the vet and explain he won’t eat or drink, and they don’t find any obvious problem, but provide a few infusions to keep him going, so we both return home to suffer in silence.
I am on indefinite medical leave at work now, and I think they are about to replace me.
At home, I try music, television, and yes, yoga and meditation, yet my head feels like it is in a vise, and the noise rarely ceases for more than a few minutes.
I cradle my little, fluffy rescue dog, once surviving being thrown from a moving vehicle, and rub his fur that seems to be turning brittle and falling out now, quieting his weak whines with soft words. “It’s going to be ok, little man, I promise,” I whisper softly into his ear.
I don’t know who is doing this to us or why, I just want it to stop. As a month passes, he seems to be losing focus in his eyes, and his coordination is going.
I am feeling much the same; lack of sleep, lack of quiet have taken their toll.
I don’t know how much more either of us can bear, and I stop talking to my family back home, because their worrying only makes it worse.
It all comes crashing down one morning after a month and a half of pure hell. I wake from a brief sleep, and I don’t feel Lucky by my side. I sit up quickly and look down at the floor, where Lucky is writhing in a seizure.
I pick him up, wrap him in a blanket, and rush out the door to the emergency vet two blocks down the road.
By the time we arrive, the seizure has stopped, and he is breathing, but barely. The vet brings him to the MRI room, and I hear the muffled voices of the vet and his assistant, however, I cannot understand. The assistant comes out and sends me a Wechat message to translate: Lucky has a massive brain tumour.
We are discussing options when he seizes again for the last time, as I hold his frail little body.
After a while, I ask what the procedure is for taking care of him now, and I am given a somewhat curious option. The assistant makes a phone call, and a guy shows up with a giant cremation truck. He tells me we can have a funeral and cremation ceremony.
I have only heard of such things for pets before, but it sounds nice.
We bring Lucky out to the truck, where the man uses traditional Chinese ceremony materials: a special cloth, incense, funeral music. He proceeds to sing a song and speak words from a Buddhist text and then after that, Lucky is placed on a little conveyor belt to go into the incinerator. As we sat there watching the smoke of my dear companion rising from the truck, the man still singing funeral dirges, I noticed something.
The noise. Or rather the silence. There is nothing but wind and song in my ears.
After that day, the noise never returned. I will never know what the noise was for sure, but I wondered. If dogs and cats can sense when their people are sick, is it possible that I sensed Lucky’s illness? I will never know for sure, but in the midst of my grief, the quiet was the sound of loneliness.
