Not silence exactly. The station is never silent, not really. The appliance engine drops away. Doors open. Boots hit the floor. Kit moves. Someone coughs. A radio gives one last clipped murmur before it is switched down.
But the easy noise from before has gone.
Just movement.
Wet, tired, necessary movement.
I stay out of the way while they sort themselves and the appliance. I know enough by now not to hover in the middle of the bay looking concerned and useless, which isunfortunate because concerned and useless is exactly what I am.
Dan catches my eye as he passes. His hair is flattened with rain, his face tired in a way that makes him look older than he did two hours ago.
“Get yourself dry,” he says.
“Right.”
It is not an instruction I need explained. I know where my bag is. I know which corridor not to block, which door sticks slightly, which bench is least likely to make a noise that suggests it is about to collapse.
Day five.
Somehow, that makes it worse.
I am no longer new enough to be completely lost and nowhere near familiar enough to belong.
I take off the high-vis, hang it where I was told to hang it, and change into the spare clothes I was told to always have with me. Dry socks. Dry sweatshirt. Cargo trousers that are not exactly warm, but at least no longer feel as if they have been dredged from a lake.
My wet clothes go into a plastic carrier bag that immediately looks like evidence from a minor tragedy. I towel my hair as best I can, shove my feet into dry trainers, then stand for a moment in front of the lockers with one hand flat against the cool metal.
The changing room smells of damp fabric, soap and tired bodies.
Someone has left a deodorant can on the bench. There is a poster about lifting safely on the wall. My trainers squeak slightly on the floor.
Arthur had one slipper missing.
The thought comes so sharply that I have to breathe through it.
Not dramatically.
Not in a way anyone would notice.
Just enough to keep standing there instead of folding around the image like paper.
One slipper.
Grey hair plastered to his forehead.
His wife’s voice in the rain.
I close my eyes.
That is not useful.
I open them again.
When I step back out, the crew are changing into dry uniform with the weary efficiency of people who know the night is not finished just because the last call is. Wet kit is sorted. Towels appear. Damp station shirts are swapped for clean ones. Boots are dealt with. Everything checked, hung, shifted, reset enough that if the alarm goes again, they will go again.
That is the part that keeps catching me.
Arthur is dead, and they are still on duty.
