He lay down again. Closed his eyes. Breathed.
He lay on the hotel bed, staring at the ceiling. He tried a hot shower, letting steam curl into his ear canals. He chewed gum until his jaw ached. He lay on his side, then the other, then on his back with a pillow wedged under his neck. Nothing. ears popping after flight
He nodded, a small, pathetic motion.
The first thing Mark noticed, stepping off the plane in Denver, was the silence. He lay down again
“Long flight?” she asked.
Not the peaceful kind. The muffled, underwater kind. It felt like someone had stuffed cotton balls deep into his ears and then wrapped his whole head in a blanket. The chatter of deplaning passengers, the ding of overhead bins, the weary sigh of the woman behind him—all of it reached him as if through a long, hollow tube. He lay on the hotel bed, staring at the ceiling