When her brother goes deaf after an accident she wasn't there for, a woman with an unnamed sound sensitivity enrolls in a listening study — and finds a neighbor whose voice is identical to his.
Heather has never been able to hear a sound without hearing who made it. No test has found anything wrong with her ears. She wears earplugs, grinds her teeth, and drinks her whiskey neat because ice against her molars is unbearable. Her older brother Noah comes home from three years in Dublin. They spend a few days together in his half-unpacked apartment, arguing about a frog from a folktale their mother used to tell. Then he leaves for a trip and doesn't come back the way he left. A month later Heather enrolls in a research study run by Dr. Tadic, who can't treat her and won't tell her what he thinks is wrong. He can only measure it. In his sound booth she's asked to attend to one ear and ignore the other, and the sounds she's given keep arriving as things they aren't.