{"id":141600,"date":"2019-12-31T11:00:42","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T16:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=141600"},"modified":"2019-12-17T12:32:18","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T17:32:18","slug":"on-nighttime-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/31\/on-nighttime-2\/","title":{"rendered":"On Nighttime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re away until January 6, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2019. Enjoy your holiday!<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_136371\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/2016-08-30-telenocturnist-to-add-inpatient-care-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-136371\" class=\"size-full wp-image-136371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/2016-08-30-telenocturnist-to-add-inpatient-care-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"464\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/2016-08-30-telenocturnist-to-add-inpatient-care-1.png 800w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/2016-08-30-telenocturnist-to-add-inpatient-care-1-300x174.png 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/2016-08-30-telenocturnist-to-add-inpatient-care-1-768x445.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-136371\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Thinkstock.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I find myself most aware of silence when I am thinking about the many ways it can be punctured. Under the wrong circumstances, a hospital room can become a symphony of noises, each of them courting the worst of a person\u2019s anxieties. There might be an incessant but inconsistent beeping, or the sounds of several machines doing the work of keeping a person alive. It is a privilege to be told that someone you love is going to survive. The message comes from some exhausted doctor, eager to give the good news after the tests, or the surgery, or whatever else. I have also been on the other side: knowing that I would be watching a person I love slowly fade until they vanished altogether, and understanding there\u2019s nothing that can be done.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s something uniquely challenging about the moments in between, when the good news of a person\u2019s continued living is delivered, but they still have to stay in a hospital room for a few more days before they can go home. From far enough away, underneath a wave of monochromatic hospital blankets, it can be hard to tell if someone is still breathing. Particularly if you\u2019ve already imagined a world without them in it. If you\u2019ve spent enough time imagining someone as dead, it can be difficult to visualize them as simply sleeping. I don\u2019t love hearing the beeping and the sonic hiccups of hospital machinery, but it is worse not to hear anything.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/05\/15\/on-nighttime\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Read more &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hanif Abdurraqib on Lucy Dacus\u2019s \u201cNight Shift\u201d and all the night shifts he has known. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1701,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60329],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2019"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>On Nighttime by Hanif 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