This Sound I Once Heard

I college, during psychology class, one of the students was pulled from the class into the hall. We all knew why.

It was a small college. She was the best friend of a girl who had been involved in a car accident who was in a coma in the ICU for the past three or four days. The other people in the car had died the night of the crash and in succession, she was the last.

There was this odd silence as the professor just stopped her words. Not stopped talking, but like, the words seemed to mellow into silence over just stopping.

From the hall this sound erupted – the words were: "Oh my god. No."

I remember the sound that carried those words. Through the cement blocks and layers of paint, the carpets and ceiling, it would be cheap to say it was the sound of a heart breaking. I think I spent years of my life re-hearing that sound and not sure how to describe it. I had been in other situations where people had screamed and cried. It was never that sound.

What comes the closest to explaining it was that heart already had been broken. It was actual the sound hope makes when it dies. It was understood from the night of the accident, nothing would ever be the same, it was known this girl was pulled from the wreckage probably only held together with her skin. It was known the situation was grave. All of that is heartbreaking.

It’s heartbreaking when a beloved relative or parent dies. When illness or accident claims someone suddenly or quickly. Because hope generally surrenders quietly and slips from these rooms and hearts with a quiet dignity while the bodies and souls left behind work to cope.

Or the death or thing happens so fast there was never time to let hope in.

I can only describe the sound as the death of hope. Not the loss of hope. Not the inability to see hope. Not hope quietly leaving the room. It was the sound hope makes when it's killed. It's the rarest of sounds I have ever heard.

The professor said there was no point in trying to continue class, so we were dismissed. To give some perspective – on September 11 2001 – classes were held as normal and we were told not spend any class time discussing the "incident."

When leaving class, the halls of the building were empty except for this stain of sound that I think I could still find if I ever went back to campus.