A Silent Heart: A 'Love at First Sight' Romance

by Eli Grace

  Tanner looked away from me and I hated that. I wanted him to look back, wanted his hands to move through the air again in their dance meant only for me, for my eyes, for my heart. Then his eyes found mine once more and a tightness that had sprung to life in my chest eased as quickly as it had arrived.

  “Can you hear me?” Tanner still signed the words, a little unsure of himself now. I didn’t like the way that made his face fall, making the dimple in his chin shallower.

  I nodded as best as I could, my body still laid across the blacktop. Then I signed. I signed because he would understand. The first person in Lexington that I’d met who could ‘hear’ me… in a fashion. Yes, I can hear, but I can’t speak. I signed slowly, deliberately. He was a novice and I didn’t want to overwhelm him. Of course, I also wanted to sign fast and hard and tell him everything I’d wanted to scream at someone for months now. Paralyzed―I finger spelled ‘paralyzed’, not knowing the sign―vocal cords―again, I had to finger spell. V-O-C-A-L full stop C-O-R-D-S.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his hand leaving where it rested on his thigh to move toward my neck. His fingers fluttered, hesitated, fell back down. “I can’t do anything about that, but we can make sure you’re okay otherwise.”

  Nodding again, I tried to sit up, wincing as the motion put more pressure on my hips.

  “That hurt?” Tanner’s hands did not hesitate now, this time going to my hips and pressing more firmly than he did before. “I think Silas is right, nothing’s broken. Deep tissue bruises. If there’s fracturing, it’s hairline. We’re going to take you to the hospital anyway, okay? X-rays can see things we can’t. Is there someone we can call for you?”

  I placed my hand on my chest, palm flat against my body so that I could feel my heart beating fast within, and then I signed ‘bag’. Silas handed the cocoa-brown purse to me and I dug through, finding my phone buried beneath essentials and unnecessaries.

  “Oh my, god. Is she okay?” A voice I recognized was warped with worry, high-pitched and on the edge of keening like a child. Shana, my speech therapist. I wasn’t surprised it had taken someone in the therapy building so long to see the accident. The bank of windows on the front of the building was darkly tinted and, on the inside, maroon blinds further obscured the outside world. “What in the world happened?” Shana dropped to the ground near my head. Her leg ended up pinning down a portion of my dark blonde hair and I reached up and back to pat her leg and point. She gasped, shifting her six foot two, Amazonian-frame back a few inches to release the strands.

  “She’s going to be fine. The woman who hit her was pulling out, so the speed was slow and the impact moderate as a result. Though, if the woman’s foot hadn’t slipped on the gas, it would have been even less severe.” Tanner spoke briskly in the sort of voice a doctor uses with a nurse rather than a patient―that quick ‘I have things to do, so you take over’ way versus the calm bedside manner so necessary to soothing ailing people.

  Tanner stood then, helping Silas shift the stretcher over and depress the hydraulics to lower it to the ground. They’d still have to lift me six inches or so, but that wouldn’t be hard.

  Next to Shana’s model proportions, I was basically child-sized. Five foot three, size two jeans, and wearing one of the few tops that made me look grown-up versus all the juniors’ things in my closet that I’d never gotten rid of because they still fit. The blouse was flattering, a good color against my skin that didn’t wash me out or fight the amber color of my eyes; instead, I knew the silky gold would bring out the nuances of them, make them dance a little in the sunlight. Maybe he’d appreciate that, maybe it would make him consider my face for more than a moment, make him see me as some bright and shining thing versus a victim.

  My body was lifted then, supported by strong hands and shifted until the barely-padded stretcher surface pushed against my body.

  Then I was being raised up, my things back in my bag and set upon my stomach for safe keeping. I was disappointed when Tanner moved into the driver’s seat and Silas stayed in the rear of the vehicle with me.

  Chord A.

  “Everything you’ve been through and now this.” My mother paced about the hospital room. I had a hairline fracture in my right hip, nothing that could be addressed by anything save for a firm wrapping, compresses, and rest. I’ve declined the pain medicines the nurses have offered. They had kindly faces, concern wafting through their voices like smells from an overfilled trash can. That was a pretty thought, a pretty picture. Nurses offering their help, offering to ease my pain, and I compared them to trash. “I don’t think all of this is fair.”

  Mom, calm down. Please. They’re going to come in and sedate you. I had to finger spell sedate. S-E-D-A-T-E. I liked signing ‘calm’. It was the sort of gesture I’d expect the word to translate to in movement. Both hands in the air, palms pointed toward the floor, falling and rising in waves. I could see a husband signing this particular thing to his wife and then the ensuing fight―all fisticuffs and ill words culminating in mad, frenzied makeup sex.

  I blushed at that.

  As I felt my cheeks go crimson and hot, Tanner walked into my room.

  “Hi,” he both said and signed. Of course, signing ‘hello’ is pretty intuitive. A hand wave through the air like any person would gesture at any other person while walking down the street on any day. But this wasn’t any day, this was here and now. I was in this bed and he was standing there looking handsome and full of life. “I wanted to come see how you were doing.” He tried to sign this time, but only knew ‘want’ and ‘see’. The other words he mimed, incorrect but effective still.

  I was about to move my hands, about to relish in the wonderfulness of being with another human being who could fully understand what I was saying, when my mom butted in. “She’s going to be okay, but she won’t take the pain medicines. She’s always been stubborn. Always. If Ross hadn’t abandoned her, I’m sure she’d still be alone in Dallas trying to deal with cancer and everything else on her own.”

  Tanner stared at my mom, his smile faltered slightly. “I didn’t know about the—”

  Waving my hand in the air, a bit manically, I kept him from finishing his sentence. I made him look at me, not knowing why I was so desperate to explain, to make sure he knew that I didn’t have cancer now. The margins were clean. The chance of a recurrence was minimal. I didn’t want to talk about the routine checks, the routine screenings, the routine worries of ‘maybe it’s back’.

  I don’t have it now. I’m fine now. This time, I did not sign with such care. My fingers moved in a frenzy, a storm of words and feelings. I did, that’s why I can’t speak. It was a tumor―T-U-M-O-R―here. I leaned forward and reached my right hand back, indicating where the small depression was. I’m fine now. I’m fine.

  When my hands quieted, I slowly realized how childlike I seemed. Protesting that I was sick, interrupting my mother. Childlike and desperate.

  “I’m glad of that,” is all he said and signed. And the smile that had faded some came back to life.

  “She’s fine. She’s always fine.” My mom’s voice came back into the picture, pouring in against Tanner’s smile like tar over a flower. “I need a cigarette,” she muttered and walked out of the room without a backward glance. She’d always been manic, more so now. I think she was afraid to lose me like we lost Dad. I could forgive her a lot for that fact. It meant she cared, even if she did it in the most excruciating, annoying ways.

  When she was gone, I gave Tanner my most apologetic look and then shrugged while also signing ‘moms’. He laughed and it was a glorious sound, deep and rumbly like a storm over still waters. “I know exactly what you mean”. He left out the word ‘exactly’ when he signed, but I could hear it of course. “My mom was such a helicopter parent that I was teased mercilessly about it until I turned sixteen and was big enough to beat up anyone who crossed me. Not that I’d really beat someone up. I’ve always been about saving people versus making them need saving.” His sign was spott
y, but his words eloquent and full-bodied. I liked the sound and I wondered if he would like my voice, if he could only hear it.

  I thought about the surgery the doctors have suggested. I wondered if it would help, if it would give me my greatest wish, or become a thread of hope quickly snipped. The latter, more likely. So far, I’d snubbed the idea. We’d still have to wait a while, anyway. I had to be two years cancer free, two years in remission before Doctor Marks would put me under the knife. It was a personal policy, she said, but backed up by research studies that she was more than happy to show me and discuss.

  Tanner was saying something else, signing something else. I hadn’t been paying close enough attention to know what he’d said.

  You don’t have to sign. I can hear you.

  “I don’t mind,” he dually replied with his voice and hands. “Unless it bothers you?”

  I thought for a moment―did it bother me? No, not the signing. What was bothering me was that he could speak and sign at once when I could not.

  The truth is that I’m a little jealous―J-E-A-L-O-U-S, finger spelled, and I skipped all the nonessentials. A tip an ASL teacher had given me is that you can omit things without losing meaning. You can compound feeling by being over-expressive. It’s more than hands kiting through the air with long, ribbon tails to guide them. It’s an experience of body. I was still getting the hang of it and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be as skilled as the teacher. She was back in Dallas though. We skyped once a week, her teaching me new words and me trying to hone my abilities so I could carry on proper conversations.

  Of course, those proper conversations don’t happen here in Lexington. Maybe there is a deaf community here and I’m too squirreled away in my own bubble to find it. That’s probably it, a whole pack of wonderful people who don’t care if I can speak, who could wave their hands about and beckon me into their confidence.

  The truth is, every day I think I’ll be okay with not being able to talk and sign at the same time, but I’m not. I’m not sure I’ll ever be. I continued signing; only seconds have passed since I’d admitted I was jealous.

  “I suppose I would be too, if our positions were reversed.” Tanner smiled and then shook his hands out the way a runner might before a race―jerky, wild movements and then clenching and unclenching his hands quickly. “You know, I took ASL all through college, but I don’t really use it much.”

  Then stop. It’s really okay. I don’t mind.

  My mother returned then, reeking of cigarette smoke and giggling like a schoolgirl. Behind her, the doctor who’d been overseeing my care, who was at least two decades her senior, was laughing also. The way he looked at her as they both pushed through the room was leacharous, and I know my mother was enjoying every second of it. She’d loved my dad to a fault, but she wasn’t made for the widow life. In the past year alone, she’d been on more dates than I could boast in my entire life.

  Dates with different men, I mean. Ross and I had gone out plenty, before he turned bastard, cheated on me, and ran away from my problems, because ‘he wasn’t built for coping with a sick person. He couldn’t handle it.’.

  But I could handle it on my own, because I was stronger than him. I’d never known what a bloody coward he was until that conversation. I should have realized it back when we’d first met, when he’d failed a test and panicked over how to tell his father. He’d bribed the professer instead.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re doing alright.” Tanner took the entrance of Mom and my doctor as a signal to leave. I didn’t want him to go. Silly, since we’d just met, but he was the first real connection I’d felt since my diagnosis.

  “It was nice of you to come check on her,” the doctor said, eyeing Tanner’s uniform. “You were one of the first responders?”

  Tanner nodded. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Laurence.”

  “Oh, I go by Misses now. Widowed these five years.” Mom looked at the doctor as she said it and the doctor, to his credit, repressed the horny grin that wanted to sprout on his face.

  “Bye, Laurie,” is what Tanner said, but what he signed was I’d like to see you again? I could tell it was a question by his expression. He came closer, leaned over as if to pat my hand in parting, and I felt something cool and papery slide beneath my fingers.

  Yes. I’d like that. I signed back. Mom knew a few signs, she probably would have understood had she been paying any attention to the exchange. But no. She was all eyes for the doctor with his white whiskers and thick glasses.

  The last thing Tanner signed was ‘date’, making dual ‘d’s with his hands and touching them together lightly, as if his fingers kissed and spoke of things to come. I knew I blushed then, and went even more crimson when the blush elicited the widest, most sincere smile from Tanner.

  Chord D.

  A date.

  I hummed mentally. That felt strange, to feel the music strolling through my head like a dear friend, but know that if I opened my mouth, my voice could not mimic what my mind produced.

  Tanner had slipped me a card with his number on it before leaving my room. After my mom and her would-be-suitor the doctor had finally left, I’d stared at the matte surface of the cut-in-half index card for longer than I care to admit, until I knew for sure it was real. I’d not been out with anyone since Ross. All of my time had been consumed by treatments, and therapies, and moving across the country.

  But now I had a date. Maybe we’d go to the park across town and rent one of the row boats. Maybe a chorus of animals would play a song and whisper my name in Tanner’s ear.

  Maybe I was a complete idiot for daydreaming like I was six years old and still thought The Little Mermaid’s Prince Eric was the handsomest thing alive (only he wasn’t, of course, alive. Or, in fact, the handsomest thing).

  The doctor is releasing me tomorrow, insisting I take the pain med prescription and rest as much as possible. My mom will fill the medicine, she’ll even hand me each pill at exactly the time each pill can be taken. After she’s been distracted by a soap opera and her hourly glass of wine, I’ll plop the pill into the bottle I keep in my bathroom cabinet. It’s half-filled now with an assortment of colored capsules, half of which I can’t remember the name for or why they were prescribed.

  Although, there are an assortment of blues and greens. Anti-depressants, from when I’d been at odds with life, not content to live in quietude. My then-therapist had prescribed 1 blue and 1 green to be taken daily. I’d taken them, at first.

  But God, they’d made me feel so strange, so ethereal, so transparent. They made me feel floaty and even less real than I already was. It was like… like I couldn’t be heard or seen.

  Mom knew I’d stopped taking them, but she thought I’d only recently moved past the depression, only recently not needed the pills. I’d actually stopped taking them as soon as I’d moved to Lexington, against her wishes and the doctor’s. But I felt better now, more accepting of what I’d become.

  Resting in my bedroom, I fell from a sitting position to a laying one, pushing my head against the lacy pillows and pink sheets. My room was exactly as it had been when I was a child―save for the boy band posters Mom had taken down as soon as I’d left for college.

  But the odd thing was that this house, it wasn’t my childhood home. Mom had moved after Dad died, moved away from North Carolina where I’d grown up, moved away from everything familiar, and she’d ‘started over’. Yet she’d gone about decorating the house exactly like our old home.

  So, it was both strange and familiar. Both uninviting and inviting in similar measure.

  My cell phone in hand, I punched in the number on Tanner’s card. I wanted to press the send button, to call and talk to him. Of course I couldn’t. So I labored over a short text message, trying to play it cool yet also show that I was interested.

  Me: Tanner, this is Laurie. Thanks for the number.

  DELETE. DELETE. DELETE.

  Me: Hey, Laurie here. It was nice of you to come see me in the hospital. When woul
d you like to…

  DELETE. DELETE.DELETE.

  Me: Tanner, Laurie here. You know, the mute girl with the overbearing mother that you want to see again?

  DELETE. DELETE. DELETE.

  Me: Just wanted to send you a ‘hi’ and give you my number too. –Laurie

  SEND.

  The worst part about having the smart phone that I did was that I could see it when Tanner started typing.

  Tanner is typing…

  Tanner is typing…

  Tanner is typing…

  And then it would stop, but nothing would come through. No response to my carefully-crafted, easy-breezy message.

  Tanner is typing…

  Tanner: Laurie, thanks. I’m really glad to hear from you.

  Me: I’m glad you’re glad.

  I nearly deleted that, nearly didn’t send.

  SEND.

  Tanner: I’m not very good at this.

  Me: At what?

  Tanner: Flirting, dating, the whole deal.

  Me: Well, that makes two of us. Since Ross…

  DELETE. DELETE. DELETE.

  Me: That makes two of us.

  Tanner: Our first date should go ace then.

  I laughed―that soundless futile thing that warped my face with happiness but sent nothingness from between my lips.

  Me: I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be sure to bring along a first aid kit, in case there’s an accidental flirtation injury.

  I pressed SEND before I realized I should probably have DELETE. DELETE. DELETED.

  Tanner is typing…

  Tanner is typing…

  Tanner: I’m the paramedic. Maybe I should be the one handling the medical supplies.

  Me: That sounds reasonable.

  I’m glad he can’t see me right now. I’m blushing more from embarrassment and silliness versus being flushed with the nervous butterflies of flirting. I think about how I used to dream about the perfect date, the perfect guy. The fairytale I wanted my romantic life to be.