Chapter 24: Signal Fade

The silence that follows is not the peaceful absence of noise; it is a heavy, crushing void. The screaming loop on the radio stops, but it continues to echo in my mind. The dial on my transceiver is dark. My corner shack, once my command center and portal to the world, now feels like a crime scene. I avoid even looking at it.

I go through the motions of my week. I attend my engineering lectures, but the professor’s voice is a meaningless drone. I sit in the library, staring at the same page of a textbook for an hour, the words swimming before my eyes. I stop eating. Sleep offers no escape, as my dreams are filled with static and disembodied, mocking laughter. My friends call, but I let the calls go to voicemail. I text back, "Busy with midterms," a lie that feels heavy and wrong.

I am isolating myself, building a wall of silence brick by brick. The joy has been leached out of everything. The hobby that gave me a voice, a purpose, and a community now feels like the source of all my pain. The thought of turning on the radio, of sending my callsign out into that poisoned atmosphere, fills me with a visceral, gut-wrenching dread. They have won. The sad-hams, with their petty jealousies and cruel tactics, have successfully jammed my spirit.

One afternoon, I am sitting on my bed, staring at the wall, when my dorm’s Resident Advisor knocks on the door. She is a cheerful psychology major named Chloe, and her smile falters when she sees me. "Haruka? Are you okay? Your friend Doretha called me. She is really worried. She says you have not been answering your phone."

Her voice seems to come from very far away. "I am fine," I manage to say, the words feeling like sandpaper in my throat.

Chloe is not convinced. She sits on the edge of my desk, her expression full of concern. "You do not look fine," she says gently. "You look exhausted. Is everything okay with your classes?"

I shake my head, a dam of emotion I did not even know was there starting to crack. "It is not the classes," I whisper. And then, it all comes pouring out. The story of my hobby, the joy of it, the community, and then the slow, creeping poison of the harassment, the stalking, the lies, the screaming on the radio. I tell her everything, the words tumbling out in a messy, tear-choked torrent.

Chloe listens patiently, her expression shifting from concern to anger. "Haruka, that is not just mean," she says when I finally fall silent, her voice firm. "That is a coordinated campaign of psychological abuse. What those people are doing is horrific."

She tells me about the university's mental health services. She explains what depression is - not just sadness, but a real, clinical condition that can be triggered by stress and trauma. "It is an illness, not a weakness," she says. "And it is treatable. You do not have to go through this alone."

That night, my parents drive to my dorm. Doretha, in her panic, had called them too. My mom just holds me while I cry, and my dad, his face a mask of grim fury, listens as I recount the story again. He wants to call the police, to sue someone, to drive to Bob’s house and have a "conversation." But he sees the fragile state I am in and holds his anger in check.

The next day, my parents take me home. We make an appointment with the university's counseling center. I walk into the psychiatrist's office feeling numb and ashamed, like a broken piece of equipment. I am Haruka, 9W8ABC, the girl who conquered the Extra exam, the girl who coordinated communications in a blizzard. How can I be this broken?

The doctor is a kind, gentle woman who listens without judgment. She gives my feelings a name: clinical depression and acute anxiety, brought on by sustained, targeted harassment. It is a diagnosis, not a sentence. It is an explanation, not an accusation.

She recommends a course of treatment: therapy to develop coping strategies, and medication to help rebalance the brain chemistry that the constant stress has thrown out of whack. My dad asks about the hospital. The doctor says that a short, voluntary stay in the psychiatric ward might be the best way to stabilize my condition, to provide a safe, quiet environment away from the triggers of my stress, and to monitor my reaction to the medication. A place to rest. A place to be silent, but in a healing way.

I look at my parents, at their worried, loving faces. I think about the screaming on the radio. I think about the crushing weight of the silence in my dorm room. And for the first time in weeks, I feel a tiny flicker of something other than despair. It is a desire to get better. A desire to fight back.

"Okay," I whisper. "I will go."

Checking into the hospital is one of the hardest things I have ever done. I hand over my phone, my laptop, my connection to the outside world. I am voluntarily entering a place of quiet rooms and hushed conversations. A place of total silence. But this time, I am not running from the silence. I am running toward it, hoping that within it, I can finally find the strength to heal.