The story
Carlos had gone out into the street under the gentle rain that was bathing the city of Bogotá that early morning. The sound of puddles splashing against his boots was his only accompaniment as he approached the street corner phone booth, the one that was always lit with a yellow lamp flickering to the rhythm of the storm. He had to talk to Mariana, his wife, who worked the night shift at the Hospital San Carlos. The early morning hours had been long, and the thought of hearing her voice before the day began was what kept him going.
With trembling fingers, he dialed the number. The ring on the other end sounded, but the answer that came up was not Mariana's familiar voice. A man with a harsh, almost guttural tone replied with a clarity that made Carlos's blood run cold. The voice seemed to come from somewhere distant, as if it had been captured by a recording on an old radio tape, but with an aggressiveness that echoed inside the small booth.
"Who's speaking?" Carlos asked, trying to keep calm.
The man did not reply with coherent words; instead, he let out a series of grunts and whispers that intertwined into a murmur reminiscent of an EVP, those electronic voice phenomena heard at the edges of reality. Every syllable seemed to drag itself through the air, as if it wanted to pierce the telephone wall and get under Carlos's skin. A chill ran down his spine, and without thinking, he hung up the receiver.
He stayed there, beneath the flickering light, listening to the rain pounding on the roof of the booth. The silence went back to being just the sound of the water and his own heartbeat. Five minutes passed, but the unease gave him no truce. With his hand still shaking, he dialed the same number again, hoping the connection would reestablish itself and that, perhaps, the strange voice was just an illusion brought on by loneliness and the dark.
This time, the call connected with Mariana's warm and professional voice. She was wearing her hospital uniform, her voice carrying the echo of empty hallways and the constant murmur of monitors.
"Carlos?" she said, relieved to hear him.
"Are you okay?" he asked, unable to hide the strange sensation that was still washing over him.
Mariana, keeping her composure, replied that she had just finished logging the death of an eighty-year-old patient. The elderly man had been admitted for a respiratory infection and, shortly after, his heart had stopped beating. At that precise moment, she was preparing the body, wrapping it in the white sheet while the monitors displayed the final flatline.
Carlos felt the air grow heavier. The coincidence was impossible, but the voice he had heard minutes before seemed to have coincided with the exact moment the man's life faded out. The unease he had felt turned into a silent reflection: hospital workers are custodians between wakefulness and departure, witnesses to the transition that most people only contemplate in dreams.
"What was that?" he finally asked, with a voice that barely contained the trembling.
Mariana, without hesitation, explained to him that in the early morning hours, when the hospital is plunged into dimness, sounds that daytime noise hides are sometimes perceived. "It could be the resonance of the last heartbeats escaping through the ventilation shafts, or simply the echo of death slipping into the line," she said with a mix of resignation and curiosity.
Carlos hung up the phone and, as he walked back under the rain, he felt the city was quieter than usual. Every streetlamp seemed to cast a shadow that stretched out beyond his reach. The night in Bogotá, with its dampness and scent of wet earth, became a witness to an unexpected encounter between the voice of the living and the whisper of those who were no longer here.
That early morning, the telephone line remained marked as a point of convergence between two worlds: that of those who care and that of those who depart, reminding Carlos that the border between life and death is sometimes crossed with a simple "hello."
